Melbourne based jeweller Chin Teo is the talented young craftsman who creates jewellery under his eponymous label. Scoute sat down with Teo to discuss his latest collection ‘Morning Light’, featuring a selection of hand-crafted pieces in silver and precious metals characterised by strong monumental shapes and natural textural finishes.

The Chin Teo story

After studying Industrial Design at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and graduating with honours in 2008, Teo’s lack of interest in the world of commercial design led him to study jewellery making and silversmithing. He quickly discovered crafting small, hand-made objects to be the right medium to explore his fascination with raw materials. While his creations can easily be associated with fashion and clothes of a particular aesthetic, Teo’s jewellery also has the ability to stand alone; it’s beauty lies simply in the materiality, form and textures of the object itself.

“Fashion and clothes actually came much later in my life,” Teo explains. “For me, it was when I stopped looking at clothes, and got my senses in touch with raw materials; the smell of leather, the touch of wool, the shininess of precious metal. I found my inner voice, the desire to be creative.” Using raw materials as a starting point allows him to explore the possibilities of the material on two fronts; form and texture. “Raw materials have different faces, the ability to be seen in different angles and also the potential to be altered and manipulated. As a designer, it’s important to place myself as a medium and translate these to the audience in my own design language. And that’s essentially what brings out my desire to create, to let others see what I see.”

Tradition and experimentation

Crafting jewellery is a laborious process that requires patience; a simple piece can take three hours to complete. “It varies with more complicated designs,” Teo says. “A couple of pieces in the new collection can take almost a whole day to make.” He takes pride in the fact that he personally crafts every piece that comes out of his studio in Melbourne. The tools he chooses to work with are traditional (although he confides an egg is used in part to achieve a particular finish). “Each piece is made from a piece of raw sterling silver, manually bent, shaped, formed, sanded, polished… into a finished piece of jewellery. Therefore each piece within the same style is unique in their own way. There are quite a few different finishing treatments I have been experimenting with, especially in this new collection. Many pieces come in multiple finishes to choose from (polished, heat oxidized, chemically oxidized, flooded and porcelain). They are the ‘faces’ I look to discover in the material. Each ages differently, but yet, eventually revealing themselves; they are all the same material. I find this reversion of aging pattern fascinating.”

This experimentation of form and texture results in jewellery with a surprisingly organic presence, but the process is not without challenges. “Unlike casting jewellery where I could create one piece and then reproduce it in almost 100% accuracy, recreating a piece each time exactly from start to finish from scratch means there is much higher chance I could stuff up the piece during the complicated process,” Teo candidly reveals. “It is a delicate balance of consistency and irregularity that I am constantly weighing to ensure I am 100% happy with every piece that goes out of my studio; it’s the part I struggle with the most. But I like that challenge, it’s a learning curve, and it’s old fashioned. If I stuff something up, I redo it again. There is no shortcut.”

Morning Light

If Teo’s first collection ‘Long Dream’ was an exploration of the surreal, his latest collection ‘Morning Light’ is an awakening to reality. Nascent ideas of shapes and textures explored in the former are now more tangibly elucidated, as well as introducing a new forms and faces. When asked about the inspiration behind the collection, he simply replies, “My work is very much influenced and derived from my own personal life and its surroundings. It’s a mixture of elements in life experiences rather than (inspiration from) a particular creation/artist that I come across. The object (jewellery) is abstract from its purest form (material); how it is perceived (seen), is not critical.”

As well as being represented at the leading Melbourne boutique Eastern Market, Teo also works with select clients one-on-one, crafting pieces to meet their individual needs. “Recently, a male client approached me with a silver pendant a friend had given him as a gift bought from an op shop,” Teo describes. “The pendant was a circular cross design with a light oxidized finish. He loved it, but couldn’t find the right chain to go with the pendant – he wanted something unique and masculine. So he commissioned me to create a one-off hand made chain. I wanted to make something quite texturized instead of plain circular or oval chain links. The initial idea was to plait three thin wires to form one body then make the chain links out of that. But it didn’t go the way I wanted and it was unsuccessful. Then the idea shifted; I decided to twist the thin wires this time, quite tightly but not tight enough to look like machine made. And it was a success. The chain consists of just over 100 twisted circular links, each individually soldered by hand, then later, chemically oxidized and lightly polished to match the pendant. The client now wears it everyday. This kind of relationship is what motivates and drives me to do better.”

Visit chinteo.com

Interviewed by Brian Chung
Photos courtesy of Chin Teo

Adeline Basely is the talented young French creator of hand-made garments behind the label Stat-ment. She runs a made to measure service at her own atelier, alongside a small, experimental capsule collection, creating garments that infuse the tradition of a tailoring service with the modernity of a distinctly unconventional vision of masculine elegance.
 
A search for quality

Having first decided to pursue menswear after becoming fascinated with Saville Row tailoring, Adeline’s interest in tradition and noble fabrics led her to study at ESMOD (l’Ecole Supérieure des Arts et techniques de la Mode), the oldest fashion school in the world. Yet after joining the industry and working with a successful brand that sells in Paris, she became aware of a deeper fundamental issue; the decline in the quality of garments.

“It’s a problem,” she says. “The question I’m always asking myself is how to keep this quality growing.” This drove her in search for answers. Disappointed with this issue of quality in the industry and witnessing the economic failures of fashion greats, including the bankruptcy of the house of Christian Lacroix, she realised there was another way – quite simply, to do everything herself.

“I have built my label with this objective, because I was really angry with this problem of quality. I want to make garments with construction that’s really special, to have something of very good quality. It’s possible if you’re not too big. At my size, I can choose and buy my fabrics in small shops. I can find a lot of rare and beautiful things at a good price, and it’s possible for me to live because of this. I want to find a way to keep this growing – growing in a certain measure to keep quality and to be able to live.”

As a testament to this objective Adeline insists on being involved in every step of the process, from sourcing fabrics, pattern making and sewing, to meeting customers for fittings and adjustments. “I think it’s really important, because you can forget your customer when you work in a large company.” As a completely independent designer, Adeline does not need to spend money, time or energy dealing with agents. She is free to focus all her energy on what’s valuable; creating excellent work for her customers.

 
Listen to the fabric

Experiencing Adeline’s garments one immediately notices the use of interesting fabrics; elegant canvassed jackets in traditional birds-eye weave wool, pants in raw broadcloth lined in soft cotton, or long sleeve tops in boiled wool. However, this focus on fabrics is not merely a means to an end of creating luxurious clothing; it underlies an ethical stance on clothing and fashion. Having gained valuable experience working with Dormeuil, one of the worlds finest luxury fabric suppliers, Adeline insists on personally sourcing and selects all of her fabrics.

“When I find the right fabric, I’ll know what I want to do,” she explains. “I like finding fabrics that are special, fabrics that talk to me in a certain way, and I try to find the best way to use this fabric.” Using the fabric itself as inspiration, the importance of the tactility of the garment and ultimately, the experience of the wearer, is never lost.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to think with just a pen, to think of a garment using just lines on paper. We don’t know how the fabric will react. We have to think of about gravity, about fabric, about construction, and particularly the comfort. For example, if you take a very heavy fabric to make pants, the heaviness creates a dragging sensation of, well, losing your pants. On the contrary, if you take a very light fabric, you may have the sensation of not having clothes. You have to think about the wearer. Most of the time, men say that they like to have a very heavy coat. So, if I make a short coat, I prefer to use a heavy material. There are a lot of parameters, not just shape. I think shape is just a detail. Shape is really easy, you think of the body. It’s just one parameter to think about. Yes, fashion is not just a drawing.”

Such thoughts are reminiscent of the renowned Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto, who once explained the difficulty of teaching his pattern makers to wait and listen to the fabric – no easy task given their job was, simply, to cut. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Adeline’s design teacher at ESMOD shared the same thoughts as Yamamoto. “I don’t know if she influenced me in a certain way,” Adeline laughs, “well not quite, but she said he once made an entire collection in the same fabric. And in a certain way, it was a performance to think of a whole collection all in cotton gabardine. Yes, it’s a kind of challenge. I think for me, it’s the best way to think and to work.”

 
The human touch

At this level of involvement, the human relationship between the maker and wearer is of utmost importance. In contrast to the industry of fast fashion where clothes are mere disposable commodities of mass industrial production, Adeline puts the human touch back into the creation process, evoking the time honored relationship between tailor and wearer. And as each of these sartorial relationships are unique, each made to measure piece is constructed with a unique pattern specifically for that person.

“I like to have this proximity with my customers. You will learn alot from your customers and it’s the only way to know what they want, what they need, what they feel in your clothes. With these indications you can grow in your designs and in yourself. I’ve learnt a lot of things speaking with them and I love this relationship with them. I always wanted to have an atelier to welcome my customers and to make fittings in a private, confidential way. To listen to them and discover what they want.”

Fabien Courtal, one of Adeline’s customers, has found this sartorial relationship very rewarding. “I do not speak much to Adeline when I come to find her with some new garment in mind,” he explains. “I just give her mere orientations concerning shape, colour and texture; then I let her work. Adeline knows enough about what I look like; she’s perfectly aware of my taste for anachronistic silhouettes, as she’s familiar with most of the pieces I already own. Thus all that’s left for me is to progressively discover, through the fabrics she chooses, the pattern she designs and the final result, how right she guesses my needs. This is certainly the most pleasant part in dealing with her: not to know what exactly to expect, and yet to be certain it will respond to the rest of your wardrobe and, beyond that, to your aesthetics. As some people have a talent to find the exact words you are searching for, Adeline succeeds in giving a concrete shape to your vague ideas of a garment, designing it out of what she perceives of your own personality.”

 
“Less is more”

Adeline’s distinctive vision of masculine elegance and experiences with her existing customers has led her to define her work in more concrete terms. Her experimental new capsule collection named ‘Postulate’ explores six archetypes that form the foundation of her menswear, namely; the Frock Coat, the Turning Pant, the Sarouel, the Breeches, the T, and finally the Tank.

Each of these postulates symbolises a unique component of her work and more importantly, such a structure allows for progression and the deepening of these same ideas over time. Seen in this way, this ready to wear capsule collection forms a symbiotic relationship with her made to measure service. Each postulate forms the basis from which a unique made to measure garment can be created for an individual, and a new experimental made to measure piece has the potential to bring to life a new postulate; each strengthening the other in an evolutionary melting pot.

Yet interestingly enough, fashion is not a word that inspires Adeline. “I don’t like this word, fashion,” she confides. “There are two things for me. There are clothes, and there is fashion. Fashion – it’s trends, money, industry, and companies. On the other side you have clothes – construction, fabrics, and people who want to know about clothes. How we make clothes, how we wear them, how we feel in them. It’s my way to see the clothing, the exchange between my customers and I.”

Despite this, Adeline still remains pragmatic and refreshingly down to earth. “I don’t want to be rich, I just want to be able to live normally,” she smiles. “I’m so happy in my work, I don’t need to have so much money to be happy. Really, it’s a pleasure and my happiness to do this work. So I have to find a good way to work, to be able to do both – to keep quality and to be able to live comfortably.”
 

Visit stat-ment.fr

Interviewed by Brian Chung.
Photos courtesy of Matias Indjic & Adeline Basely.

After working in the industry for over 12 years, Canadian-born, Tuscany based designer Ria Dunn felt jaded with the world of disposable fashion.  Moving her life and work to a new landscape, she made the decision to start a project from scratch, bringing about a label called Lost & Found.

Dunn’s design background stems from her studies in art and photography, which she began from an early age. Whatever she was involved with seemed to have artistic and creative features.  “The natural evolution of these artistic sensibilities turned into design, with a focus on garment making”, she explains.  As an avid traveler, Dunn always felt the need to move and drift about, but at the same time remain focused on the process of creation. “The need to move, to detach and to recreate my life has been something that I have always done.”

Having lived in Italy for two years, Dunn felt uninspired by the world of fashion she was used to working in and seeked a more authentic approach to design. “it seemed like the right moment to explore an intimate project that could be built from zero.” She began what was to become Lost & Found by creating her studio and atelier in an isolated Tuscan landscape, which was certainly far from the fashion world she had known before.  “I really needed to empty my head with what I had learned and experienced and needed to do something much more instinctive and, if I may say so, more meaningful.”

The creation of Lost & Found utilizes many old sensibilities and techniques that have been lost amongst industrialization. This is partly what the name of the label also refers to. “The name has various meanings on different levels”, Dunn says. “It is about the cycle of loss and discovery. The idea of creating something, then letting it go in order for it to change as it interacts with different people and environments, where it will be rediscovered – found.” 

The collections of men’s and women’s garments are made entirely in Italy using complex and lengthy manufacturing processes. Many of the materials used are individually created by Tuscan artisans, some coming from elsewhere in Italy and Japan. When asked about materials, Dunn responded by describing the actual yarns used to create some of the fabrics, which goes to show the dedication and effort that goes into the creation process of Lost & Found. “In a way, it’s like talking about a food dish. We all know that the quality of the food is entirely made up of the ingredients. The same applies to creating materials, it is the yarns you begin with that brings you to an interesting end result.”

While the finishing and detailing are equally important, for Dunn, it’s clearly the actual composition and structure which give a fabric its true meaning.  “Firstly, the materials are individually created and they need to undergo many complex and often unconventional finishing techniques. It becomes a very experimental process that in the end needs to be somewhat industrialized in order to create certain quantities of garments.” Working with materials such as hemp or linen and mixing them with wool and cashmere gives the clothing a very organic and authentic feel. “Generally, I like to create contradiction in materials, blending aspects of durability and rawness together with a material that is precious or noble. Most of the linen and hemp is Italian, the cotton mostly coming from Japan or Italy.”

”Lost & Found is about trying to extend emotion and instinctive feeling to a customer, and it cannot be done simply by traditional manufacturing techniques.”

Garments themselves also go through a variety of processes after the crafting in order to create the unique detailing and finish. The result is a collection that is a combination of tradition and experimentalism, materials with character and cuts taking classic influences in a new direction. ”Lost & Found is about trying to extend emotion and instinctive feeling to a customer, and it cannot be done simply by traditional manufacturing techniques.”

Avant-garde author William S. Burroughs created  “Interzone” to represent a metaphorical, stateless area loosely based on post war Tangier, which became a haven for criminals, artists, drug smugglers and tax evaders due to its falling between rules and laws. The head-quarters of Tatsuro Horikawa, the mastermind behind infamous Japanese clothing phenomenon Julius, seems to occupy a similarly ambiguous place.

Prologue

Located somewhere in-between various well-known areas such as big city Shinjuku, shopping paradise Shibuya and trend central Harajuku, Sendagaya is hard to classify and the Julius HQ even harder to find. The Atelier is a concrete bunker, whose entrance can only be found hidden behind tight rows of black, high-powered motorbikes and the designers own “Batmobile” lookalike BMW, which he uses for inspirational runs around the city and to connect him to his factory-like Industrial Art Space on it’s outskirts. Once down the steep stairs, one can enter a concrete warren of black clad disciples all intensely engaged in various aspects of disseminating the Julius Aesthetic into the outside environment. It looks more like an anarchist sect or religious cult than a fashion movement, and in
fact, “fashion” is not really a word that Tatsuro Horikawa cares much about. In the space there is original Horikawa designed metal furniture and several of his own bronze art pieces and paintings as well as giant prints from the latest MA shoot. It is here, that he oversees every aspect of the creation of his collections, from the coating on the denim to the music mixed specially for the cat-walk and the pictures for the look-book. Everything is done in-house and much of it, for example the photography and styling, personally by the designer and his assistants.

The man himself is also difficult to track down. Doing much of his designing very early in the morning and finding much of his inspiration very late at night, early evening is the time he spends in production meetings and testing out new designs. In fact it soon becomes apparent that the designer and his staff are usually dressed head to toe in prototypes from future collections as well as his own archive, resulting in pieces on the Paris runway which have already been road-tested to the limit. When in residence, surrounded by staff, clothed totally in black, covered in esoteric tattouage and with his trade-mark intense gaze, he is instantly recognisable. One might say that his soft spoken voice and shy friendly manner come as somewhat of a welcome surprise.

The Discussion
 

You were born in Kyushu in the south of Japan where the people are supposed to be passionate, energetic and hard-working. Tell about your background.

I was born in Kyushu but I moved to Tokyo as early as possible. Tokyo is very much a part of who I am, but it is not the everyday Tokyo of tourists and salary-men, but more of an alternate Tokyo of the mind. A big influence on my early years was the manga and movie “Akira” which tells of Neo-Tokyo, a post apocalyptic megalopolis. It is this Tokyo which is MY Tokyo, it exists in my consciousness and in the consciousness of a whole generations who saw “Akira” , “Blade Runner” and “Mad Max”. It is a Tokyo shaped by Techno and Industrial Music and underground culture which exists right alongside the “normal” city and I was very much immersed in this kind of cyber-punk reality. My personal background is 100% based in the underground culture and I will always exist here in the Neo-Tokyo underground.

When I was younger and active in the underground rave scene, of course we experienced many problems with authorities, just as did the youth all across the world. Techno was like the second coming of the Punk revolution and a lot of people tried to crush our rebellion. We were doing a lot of experimentation and pushing against the limits of control. I guess this shaped my thinking also.

Neo-Tokyo sounds like the “Interzone” concept of W.S. Burroughs. He once said that he wrote in order to create the world he wished to see exist. Is this why you design?

Well, Julius was born 7 years ago, we just celebrated the 7 year anniversary because 7 is a very special number for us, for many different esoteric reasons. However, to get the whole story about me and about Julius, you need to go way back to 1996, to my first clothing related project, NUKE. Its very much a part of our story and history, but because it was underground and because of language barriers etc. between East and West, people tend to think that Julius suddenly arrived in the last few years and compare us to some of the newer western brands, without knowing just how deep our roots go. I think this is a cause for a lot of confusion when people talk about who did what first, particularly regarding underground culture and the use of industrial motifs, but this was what NUKE was all about.

I was creating artworks immersed deep in the techno underworld. I was going out to these really intense clubs and doing graphics and visuals, graffiti etc. I was reading lots of Burroughs, William Gibson who was the father of cyberpunk, and the graphic work of Moebius and Enki Bilal which included steampunk touches. Eventually we got a lot of requests and decided to print some of the work onto t-shirts and thus Nuke was started in 1996.

Basically, all my work is trying to balance my darker interests; fetishism, Cyberpunk and industrial cultures with the lighter spiritual side of my creation – the Zen and Tibetan Buddhist influence in my work which has lately grown to include the spirituality of many different cultures. But these things all started with Nuke. For Nuke to become Julius was more of a name change, and a change of our company structure. In a way we stopped being a bad boy outfit and became a professional company, but we were and still are pure underground artists and this is never going to change no matter what happens. Even after debuting in Paris and going international I feel that we are closing the circle and I am returning back to my early roots.

 
In addition to the techno and punk influences, Julius famously seems to have very strong industrial and military references.

I have been talking about my very early influences and of course these still have a strong hold on me, but nowadays when I talk about “Industrial”, I am thinking more of people like Richard Serra who works with metals and steel to produce really industrial scale Art pieces. Its very uncompromising stuff and this is my attitude also. There are other visual artists who I talk about a lot when describing my work, like Joseph Beuys and Christian Boltanski who are not so much industrial but are very, very modern. And of course Anselm Kieffer who combines monumental work with an intensely personal spirituality. A balance I wish to achieve also.

The Military aspect is much easier to explain; it gave birth to an aesthetic of practical, functional and very cool minimal clothing which is a central part of what we do. Recently this has become our concept of clothing for urban SURVIVALISM. As times get harder and tougher , as we move further into a Neo-Tokyo type reality, we are creating clothes to deal with the new harsh conditions and to protect our inner sensitivity and spirituality.

In recent years the label has expanded quickly overseas, was this carefully planned or did it happen more on its own and were you happy with the expansion?

Well, I cannot say it was carefully planned because there is always an element of chaos in my work and process which keeps things exciting and fresh. I think this was more just inevitable! The truth is, I always designed with an international idea in my mind. These were not collections made just for Japanese or Asian people, these were expressions of the feeling I wanted to express at the time. As much as I am influenced by my background, I feel like a citizen of the planet and not limited to one cultural outlook or style. There were people around me who urged me to go to Paris, to show as many people as possible what we were actually doing here. They were worried that too many labels were beginning to make their names using some of our ideas and influences but this never really bothered me. People are telling me the same thing about showing our women’s wear again and this is something we are beginning to consider for the near future.

I am happy to reach as many sympathetic people as I can with what we are trying to do. This is the reason for having a runway show. However creating a show each season is difficult because it makes us part of the “fashion game” and we have to play by certain silly rules, some of which we do not particularly respect. In the end it is all worth it if we can make something beautiful and meaningful for the world.

 
So it can be assumed that Paris hasn’t changed Julius?

No, not at all! Except I feel the pressure of always needing to show something “new”. To tell the truth the whole Paris fashion circus is totally not my style. My style is something I take over there, not from it. It does make me try harder to create a space between Julius and other labels. I am happy to try to create greater originality in my creative expression.

How are the Julius garments born?

My process stems from my youth as I have mentioned, everything is a continuation of that but recently my process begins when watching movies, listening to music while driving through the city, traveling and experiencing art. I get a lot of inspiration from the atmosphere of all these things. I try to imagine how certain things and places will look in the near future, the whole environment of these places. What kind of place will NYC be, how will Prague look? and then I guess I begin to sketch what I can imagine and this becomes the basis of the collection and thus reality. Just as Burroughs wrote what he wanted to see, I can design for my future reality. I can create Neo-Tokyo or NYC right here and now or at least in the next 6 months. I take these ideas and together with my team we make them a practical reality.

I am not sure about other labels but as you can see we have been a very strong, close-knit team here that is capable of trying many new and unorthodox techniques in order to produce any effect we may desire. We try to experiment with new techniques and materials as much as possible and try to vary our approach as I definitely believe that no interesting result can come from boring, repetitive methods. We try to do as much as possible in-house and hands on, just like painters and sculptors in their studios. Most of our manufacturing is done here in Japan but we do sometimes outsource special fabrics to places like Italy, when it is absolutely necessary. We also make sample after sample and every member of staff gets to test out any item for practicality, durability and ease of use. If they do not like it, it does not get produced.

 
Recently there seems to have been a slew of similar “dark” labels and designers, some Japanese, some American and more recently some Europeans. One of the things that seem to unite them is the use of draping, something that until recently could usually be found mostly on women’s clothing.

As much as I try not to pay much attention to what others are doing, I think that there is indeed a fundamental difference and I think that is a very important one. As you mentioned “draping” comes from a classical, historic tradition and is usually associated with a feminine, elegant look. I think that this can be seen in the designs of most of the labels you are referring to. Julius does include design which could on first glance conform to this aesthetic. However, I think my design is coming from a very different place and I can sum it up in one word - damage.

When I create a painting, sculpture or item of clothing i am trying to externalize a feeling that I have inside of me and often what I feel inside are very mixed dark emotions; pain, frustration and anger at society. This comes out in the clothing as damage to the structure and to the fabric. I hate the image of conventional beauty and when I see something looking too perfect, I like to attack it and this results in what people see as drape, which is actually a dragging and distortion of the material upon the body of the wearer. The clothes actually have to be well made and high quality because of the punishment that they receive. When I style a photo shoot I really like to drag, twist and manipulate the clothes into new shapes and attitudes. Just like in people, I think that this distressing process is often the best way to expose the soul hidden beneath.

Tell a bit about GOTH_IK, the upcoming FW2010 collection.

The unusual spelling of the theme is very much intentional. Julius has often been compared with Gothic culture and I wanted to explore some of the connections between my design and that world in all its forms. I also wanted to perhaps rescue and rehabilitate the genre whose name seems to have become cheapened and misunderstood in recent times. This is not what people have come to assume from this word. This is MY own personal take on the subject.

People tend to forget that gothic culture encompasses not only the music and an interest in the occult, but also architecture, art, literature and so on. I took time to rediscover these influences and try to juxtapose and combine gothic elements in terms of both the high and low-brow forms - the classical and the sub-cultural sides. So as well as clothing influenced by the eighties darker post-punk groups such as Bauhaus, I also want to combine this with the tailoring of a vampiric dandy and the draping and simplicity of a monk from that era. I want to take it into the abstract. I want to destroy the cliche and to redefine it. I want people to come and see our runway and have their assumptions and expectations challenged with a new perspective.

Epilogue

At this point, it was time for Horikawa to disappear back into the heart of his underground domain to oversee another of the countless projects which seem to constantly be revolving around him. Before he left, we pressed him on a story which sounded like shadowy legend in the face of the hard-edged industry of his (Neo-) Tokyo lair, and one which he had failed to mention when asked about his personal influences or background. A few seasons ago he had, uncharacteristically for a fashion designer, taken the step of posting a protest on the Julius website in solidarity with the people of Tibet in the face of the invasion by the Chinese authorities. When asked about this, he had mentioned a trip to Tibet and I was anxious to hear more details about this and how it had affected him if it was indeed true. Occupied Tibet seems like a long way from either Interzone or Neo-Tokyo for that matter.

At first reticent to go into details, Horikawa eventually revealed that the trip did indeed take place 3 years ago in 2006. He crossed over from China into Tibet in October of that year and then made his way by jeep to Lhasa. There, he spent over 2 weeks in a temple and befriended one of the monks who taught him, amongst other things, over 200 different ways to arrange the traditional Tibetan Buddhist robe (also the source of the Julius “blood” red color). It’s very obvious that he sees this trip as something of a spiritual pilgrimage, a word he often likes to use to describe his collections, and he mentions the fact that he felt closer to what he describes as the spirit of God than he had experienced until that point in his life. He also revealed that through a combination of travel and altitude sickness as well as frequent contact with Tibetan sake, he had ended up in the hospital and in an extremely dangerous state. It is quite obvious that this “secret” episode from the designers life is also one of the most important keys to it and one which explains just as much about what he is doing with his Art as did Beuys’ plane crash in the Crimea, Warhol’s childhood illness or Burrough’s shooting of his wife.

As our actual world and lives become more and more like Julius’ apocalyptic Neo-Tokyo / Interzone visions, one wonders where Horikawa will try to take us in the coming months and if he will ever truly find peace and the balance between the dark and light forces he continues to invoke and use in his creation. 

view the upcoming FW2010 collection for Julius here.   

Written by Marc R.
Edited by Arto M.

Artisanal maker of hand-made garments, Cavarzere Italy based designer Geoffrey B. Small has gained decades of experience using unique and special fabrics for his garments. Small narrates his way through the importance of fabrics and why they are a starting point in his design process.

by Geoffrey B. Small

I can remember vividly the first time I walked into a great clothing store of its time in the 1970’s when I was a teenager. The store was named Louis Boston, and its buyer at that time was a legend named Murray Pearlstein. Above all, I remembered touching and seeing beautiful, understated fabrics and fabric combinations everywhere. Things to wear that I had never seen or thought about before. Some of it was French, some English, some German, some amazingly even from the USA, but the largest variety and invariably the best and most interesting were all from Italy. Pearlstein was one of the first in the US to be bringing in well-made European clothing and upcoming new designers of the time such as Ralph Lauren who was designing a then-spectacular new tie collection called Polo, and Walter Morton, an offshoot collection made by the Hickey-Freeman people in Rochester, New York.

A few years later, I had been bitten by the bug, and decided that come what may, I would dedicate myself very seriously to trying to make a career somehow, in possibly designing and creating clothes like this. You see I had fallen in love… with clothes.

Great clothes, that is.

By that time, an upstart new fashion movement in Milan was setting the new standards of cutting-edge design in the world and I was working hard at studying all of the best players working there way before most anyone in the US had ever heard of them. At the heart of the new Milan movement was the ability for ambitious designers to have access to an extensive Italian textile industry capable of making the most beautiful and innovative fabrics for them to work with in their new collections.

And perhaps the importance of fabric was best exemplified to me by two examples then who would later become mega-names and household words in fashion: Giorgio Armani and Missoni.

Missoni was being designed and run back then by its founders Tai and Rosita Missoni, and their work during the 70’s was legendary. They were specialists in textiles and knitwear, and they were popping off the most amazing patterns, colors and textures on machines in Sumirago near Varese, and then rockin’em during the then early-fledgling industry fashion weeks being held in Milan. Their fabric was their knits, and they were beautiful different from what Missoni is doing today). Each one was a masterpiece, and that was the key to their whole story. The fabric. You could make anything with that stuff, even underwear, and sell it at any price. You had to be a design idiot to blow it. Whatever you decided to make out of those materials, would be beautiful…and sellable. So they were doing simple classic shapes, cardigans, V-neck and crew-necks, some dresses etc. The garment designs themselves were basically nothing new or special…classic maybe the best word. The fabric was everything. With the Missonis, I learned fabric lesson Number One in design: fabric is 90 percent of a garment design. Start with a great fabric and combine it even with a mediocre no-brainer design, and it will still work. You’ll end up with a piece that can be sold for a very high price in small quantities without a problem or for a lower price in large quantities—what we call a “hit” or a “winner” in the industry. But try and do the reverse, and you will very likely not get the same results. A spectacular design no matter how great and original, done in a mediocre or cheap fabric will almost always remain a mediocre or cheap garment, and remain just as difficult to sell and get people to like. And that goes double once you actually put on the garment and feel it on you and your skin.

The key concept is that the fabric is more important than the “design,” –if you view the “design” as your sketch or shape and proportion alone. This is a common mistake among a lot of designers, they think the sketch is the thing. But a sketch cannot be worn by anyone, and the sketch can only represent what can actually be executed in the cloth. So masters always work with the cloth in mind first. Even if they are great sketchers. They will draw their designs with the cloth already in their mind.

The late Christian Dior’s method is a fine example. Dior was as good a sketcher as any designer that has ever lived. But to believe that his drawings were not totally based first on his fabric decisions is a great mistake. After finishing a collection, he would start very early on the next collection, going over fabric offers and ordering sample bolts of fabric from the fabric houses. The bolts would arrive within a few weeks, and Dior would take a good look at all of them and then “go on vacation.” Actually, he would disappear for weeks on end, somewhere in France. Nobody in the entire company could, find him and as they had more and more millions of dollars at stake on him alone each season, many would begin to worry and panic that he was dead or something. I believe he was facing enormous stresses and trying to escape so he could clarify his mind and think.

Created and backed by the giant French textile magnate Marcel Boussac, he was the world’s first industrial fashion designer. Before any of us even walked. he was having to deal with the intense growing pressures of a new post-war industrial fashion system where a single designer’s ideas and decisions could either continue to provide work to thousands of people or leave them suddenly jobless each time he had to decide which design to do with what fabric…and face the myriad of hundreds of visual and technical decisions that go into making a real designer collection.

The pace and scale of this industrial cycle are both very intense and unnatural, and if you don’t watch out it can kill you. And that’s what happened to Dior.

He died at 50, only 10 years after the house was founded in 1947. The “escapes” were very likely his nervous breakdowns, and his attempts to save himself and think clearly enough to form the framework of the next collection while there was still time. He would be drawing both during this time in secrecy and upon his re-appearance in Paris—all after he had that very good look at the new fabrics before his escape. The fabrics were imprinted in his mind, and at the right moment, away from the madness in Paris and the Avenue Montaigne headquarters bearing his name, he could begin to draw the concepts of the garments knowing exactly which fabrics were going to be used for which designs.

Like all great masters, Christian Dior put fabric first as the foundation of his design work.

Balenciaga: “ down to the last centimeter–no more, no less.”

For masters, the master of masters is Balenciaga. Not to be mistaken with what is being called Balenciaga today . The real Balenciaga was a real human being named Cristobal Balenciaga, and he founded and ran the greatest couture house in the history of the métier. When he was still alive, the great Christian Dior himself called him “The Master of us all.” I do too. He was a contemporary of Dior when he was alive and he ruled the Paris fashion weeks so much, that he created his own; and showed consistently a full month after all the other designers had finished… forcing international clients and buyers to make an entirely separate trip to Paris every season just to see his new work.

And for them, it was more than worth it. Unlike Dior, Balenciaga could not draw well, and had to employ someone else to sketch, but boy could he make clothes. And just like Dior, he started first with his fabric houses before deciding anything. He was legendary among the fabric companies for knowing exactly how many meters to order of each fabric as soon as he looked over them. No more, no less. As a master craftsman, he was the only major couturier in Paris who could sew and make his own garments himself, as such, he knew the exact fabric usage lengths in his head for every design he made. So, when he told the great Swiss silk maker Abraham for example, an exact length to send him of a fabric as he was looking at their collection, he knew exactly what design he was going to make with that fabric….in his head. Fabric came first, then the design it would be executed in. And with a watchmaker’s efficiency, he was able to immediately order the exact length of cloth needed to make the prototype and the pieces for his exact couture clients he knew would buy the design once they saw it. No more, no less. Not a centimeter of waste.

Unlike almost all of the great Paris couture houses, Balenciaga did not lose money in his couture operations, and as a result did not need to license and sell the name to all sorts of product lines and deals. Instead, he made a fortune just making and selling some of the greatest pieces of clothing ever made. He never licensed, closed and retired voluntarily, and never intended his name to be used again for anything else except for the work done in his lifetime. Work which set the standard for all other clothing designers to follow.

Balenciaga was no accident, he came to Paris in his forties from Spain after personally starting up and running an operation involving 3 successful couture houses over 20 years in San Sebastian, Barcelona and Madrid. Technically, operationally, financially, and artistically, he was perhaps the best prepared couturier to ever attempt to found a Paris couture house, bar none. And his success is a testament to such preparation.

 
The New Industrial Fashion Design Movement

A few years after Balenciaga retired, another great master was just beginning one of the greatest careers in the history of the field. But unlike Balenciaga, he was of a new age and era that had nothing to do with couture, but had grown out of the licensing and ready to wear industries pioneered by the Christian Dior, Pierre Cardin, and Yves Saint Laurent businesses. He was by far, the most prepared industrial-style designer to ever enter the field and like Balenciaga, he would eventually dominate the industry for several decades.

His preparation was flawless, and involved 20 years of work prior to starting his own label. Dropping out of medical school in his twenties, he started working in retail at La Rinascente, Italy’s 2nd largest department store chain. He worked there for years, climbing up to buyer and then eventually becoming fashion director of the chain. Like Ralph Lauren who began his career with Brooks Brothers, his intimate knowledge of corporate retail and how it worked would play a key role in building a massive and unprecedented distribution for a designer brand in the years ahead.

And like all great masters, he knew his fabrics very, very, well. Spurred by his close friend and eventual partner, an architect named Sergio Galleotti, in the mid-1960’s, he answered a help wanted notice in a Milanese newspaper for a design job at a growing new collection called Hitman that had been created by Nino Cerruti. Nino Cerruti was the grandson of the founder one the great Biella fabric-weaving houses. Founded in 1881, the Cerruti’s had grown from copying the best English wools and providing them to tailors in every Italian town and city, to supplying the growing new ready to wear factory-made clothing industry that was rebuilding Italy into one of the new European boom economies after the war. Cerruti was ambitious, and had risked the entire family fortune on not only supplying the fabrics, but buying the garment factories, and making the clothes too. And something in Paris had caught his attention.

An ex-assistant at Christian Dior who had witnessed the first licensing deal in history there had set off on his own to make his own couture house and fortune in the mid 1950’s. But by this time, couture houses were many and business was not easy for the new startup. After several years of struggle, the young couturier, changed course, and changed fashion forever. Rather than only pursue haute couture for women, he literally invented the concept of men’s designer fashion, and it would be based in a new growth industry of ready to wear and licensing instead of artisanal couture. By the mid 1960’s Pierre Cardin was one of the biggest stars in global fashion and at the head of a whole new exploding market: men’s designer label fashion. He parlayed his accounting background with the first licensing deals he saw at Dior and was focused on becoming the king of licensing. By the mid 1960’s the cutting-edge “new french designer menswear” was the coolest look on the planet, and no less than four out of every five neckties sold in France had Pierre Cardin’s name on it. Cardin would go on to build a billion dollar brand with over 900 licensees in 90 countries and become one of the richest men in France.

None of this went unnoticed in Italy by the young and ambitious Nino Cerruti. The concept of ‘designer’ and ‘Paris’ was the key for his next big move. In 1966, Valentino Garavani had broken the barrier for an Italian to show in Paris with his immensely successful “White collection” during the women’s Couture week. So Cerruti had vision and bet everything in 1967 on his first men’s show and a new shop on the Place Madeleine named Cerruti 1881. Several years earlier as Cerruti himself had to be 100 percent focused on the new Paris venture, he had needed someone else to manage the existing ready to wear collections that he had created that were already being produced in Cerruti-run factories using Cerutti woven cloth, and sold in the Italian market under the label “Hitman”. And so the help wanted notice was run in the newspapers in Milan looking for that person.

The legend is that the job interview lasted only a few minutes. The young fashion director of La Rinascente, Giorgio Armani, was escorted into Nino Cerruti’s office and stood in front of him as Cerruti was seated behind his desk. Cerruti was said to have looked at him up and down, head to toe, paused a moment, and said “well, you look alright.” Then, he reached into a folder and pulled out 10 different samples of fabric, put them on the desk, and instructed the applicant to select which fabrics he liked and which fabrics he did not like. After looking over the pieces briefly, Armani made his selections and stood back waiting for a response. “You’re hired,” Cerruti said, “you will be responsible for designing our Hitman collections.”

The entire decision was based upon fabric knowledge and taste.

Once again, fabric came first. And Cerruti was making history during this time. His Paris launch was a landmark success, and suddenly men’s designer fashion was not just coming out of French houses like Pierre Cardin, Daniel Hechter, Yves Saint Laurent, Dior, Lanvin and Ted Lapidus…but now the first Italian had entered the fray very successfully and Nino Cerruti would become a household name in men’s fashion, even in America, by the early 1970’s.

Armani would work for 6 entire years at Cerruti, and there he would learn the other half of his spectacular preparatory foundation that would enable him to build what would eventually become a 5 billion dollar a year empire under his own name. Cerruti was a great master and he taught Armani the lessons of his revolutionary vertically integrated designer concept which could design and make everything from the cloth to the clothes to selling through its own stores. Above all, more than just about any other designer in the history of the field, Armani really learned about fabric and its total production process at Cerruti. After all, it was the roots of the family business.

I will never forget digging through a L’Uomo Vogue magazine in 1978, that I had just spent about 20 dollars on when I was a student (I grew up in Boston, and that was an enormous sum for a magazine at the time) and finding a 2-paragraph interview with no photos buried in the back pages on a then practically unknown new avant-garde up and coming designer in Milan who was doing some great work and beginning to be talked about in informed industry circles. His name was Giorgio Armani and he said “To be a competent designer today and for the future requires that one knows and master every aspect of the process from the creation and making of the fabric and texiles, to pattern making, cutting and clothing manufacture, to distribution, and then selling through on the retail floor. Only by mastering all elements of the entire process will one be able to adapt to and withstand all the competition and challenges that will present themselves now and in the future.” I was permanently influenced and inspired by those words and their fundamental reality and integrity. I didn’t know it then, but even though it was one of Giorgio Armani’s very first press quotes, that was Nino Cerruti talking too.

One of the first retail store customers to ever buy my collection back in 1993 was a legendary buyer named Charles Gallay. Gallay was one of the greatest avant-garde buyers of all time and worked in Los Angeles, where he had an intense rivalry with a rival store whose very recognizable name I will not mention in this text. Gallay was the first buyer in America to bring in designers such as Jean-Paul Gaultier, Azzedine Alaia, Martin Margiela, Comme des Garcons, Yohji Yammamoto, myself and Rick Owens to the American market. A visionary maverick, Gallay would find and buy the lines first based upon his passion and convictions alone, and then by sheer force of will and talent, proceed to convince the market to go a new way, one movie star or Hollywood producer at a time. Once the market had been built, the famous rival store would come in and take the line as well and make a killing with it commercially. The rivalry was a fierce one, and at times even bitter, Charles would find the designer and build the market, the famous rival would make the money and take the credit.

And in Milan in 1975, Charles Gallay was also the first to buy Giorgio Armani’s very first collection, and he recounted his experience years later…. “in a tiny room with a single light bulb hanging down over a table of fabric swatches, it was just the 2 of them, Sergio and Giorgio. Sergio Galleotti wrote the order with me and Giorgio was right there looking over my shoulder–checking all the fabric selections that were being made for the order and making sure that he liked them.” Even for Armani’s very first customer in the United States, fabric was first once again.

Armani changed and dominated men’s fashion for almost 2 decades, and at the heart of this influence was his use of fabrics. Natural subtle quiet colors that from a distance never shocked but upon closer inspection surprised the viewer. He took or reinvented the best of classic fabrications from Italy’s thriving textile industry and presented them to a growing and affluent world designer label market that he had very much helped to create and develop. Combined with a very precise reinterpretation of 1940’s and later early 50’s American and European clothing style, he was able to forge a look that was able to successfully transition from its ultra avant-garde introductions in the late 1970’s to a mass market worth over a billion-dollars by 1990…influencing an entire generation of menswear and later, womenswear too.

The importance of fabric in great clothing design is both obvious and fundamental. And it fueled the enormous designer made-in-Italy boom during the 1980’s where the biggest names achieved unprecedented sales volumes of hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars-a-year.

Yet even by the middle of the 1990’s, few designers, even in the highest echelons were giving it the quality and priority it truly deserved any more . Part of this had been a result of consistent, dragging industrial-costing pressures where many of us in the field had been conditioned into prioritizing the saving of every possible fraction of a penny, on every meter of cloth used in the design of any article, that will be put in a collection that was intended to be sold and produced.

Another part, had been the constant introduction of synthetic yarns and fibre contents in the materials from textile producers to achieve various characteristics like shine, stretch, weather-proofing, and also costs. Many very successful designers went with this flow and developed creative uses of these new industrial “high-tech” fabrics including Prada, Helmut Lang, and even Comme des Garcons and Margiela. Armani himself had also championed many of these types of fabrics with synthetic components beginning in the mid to late 1980’s. All of these effects seemed logical in an industrialized global market with a sizable middle and upper middle class interested and capable of buying designer clothes and fashion.

But then all of a sudden, the whole world started to change….

End of Part 1

Residing and working in Italy, Japanese designer Issei Fujita has always been influenced by the traditional simplicity of clothing in his native country. He has translated this into Lumen et Umbra, through which he creates garments combining traditional craftsmanship with unique and innovative techniques.

Rewinding back about 12 years, Fujita, in his twenties at the time, came across garments from Maurizio Altieri’s Carpe Diem on a visit to a boutique in Osaka. Immediately fascinated by the work, he made the bold choice to travel to Italy to meet the man behind the label. In 1999 he began working for the label, doing research on materials and visual merchandising, feeding his passion for travelling with various people involved in the label.  The experience of working on various stages of the creative process was essential to him, influencing his creative approach and laying the foundations for his label, Lumen et Umbra – “light and shadow” in ancient Latin.

Fujita’s earliest fashion related influences stem from childhood memories, sparking his interested to create his own clothing. “My mother always liked clothes from Comme des Garcons and Yohji Yamamoto. As a child, I saw her wearing these brands to express herself”, he reminisces.

In 2005, after working with Carpe Diem for six years, Fujita began working on a personal project related to clothing and photography, another passion of his. “I discovered a special technique to print on fabrics and other materials. I decided to start a small t-shirts collection, playing with light and shadows, in black and white.” In March 2006, he presented his small collection in Paris under the name Lumen et Umbra. The range of t-shirts utilizing a special printing technique was the first showcase from him as a photographer and designer, the presentation also featured a video produced by a very good friend of his, Alessandro Tinelli.

Lumen et Umbra began growing into more of label, with latter collections featuring a wider selection of garments from knit pieces to outerwear. His interest towards materials has led to extensive research in order to develop unique fabrics and methods to work with them. “I’m trying to mix materials used in the old times with new technologies. The Orbace is one of these; it’s a strong wool fabric made by a special craftsmanship and used during the Roman Empire making soldier’s clothes, it’s actually water-resistant.”

Another unique material from the current season is hemp harvested from Abaca plants, often used for ropes, fishing nets as well as specialty paper due to it’s natural characteristics of strength, flexibility and also water resistance. “I always like to test innovative treatments on experimental fabrics”, Fujita says. In the upcoming Lumen et Umbra collection, part of the knitwear range utilizes paper yarn while some pieces have carbon and metal mixed with natural materials like wool, cashmere, silk and cotton. The use of carbon in particular is a very unusual idea; when examining the garments up close one can see black streaks of fibres within the knit, whereas metal fibres create a crumbled effect on materials that still feel soft and luxurious.

Treatments are another significant element in the garments, such as airbrushing to create a unique texture on knit fabrics. “All these finishes are done by hand, one by one” Fujita explains. “I work with a team of people skilled in treatments, every collection has a special peculiarity that we work with.” All the work is created in Italy, different processes taking place in different locations, with Fujita following all the stages to build the final result. “I’ve had the chance to work with small factories that have an excellent tradition in manufacturing, we have a really close relationship with some of these craftsmen that we collaborate with.”

The label talks about Fujita’s personal style and his fascination with Japanese simplicity, combined with living his western reality. “What I am trying to do is to create a link between past and present, wildlife and big cities, tradition and modernity.” Inspired by everyday life and his passion for travelling, he hopes to see his aesthetic adapted rather than consumed. “I would like for people to approach my collection and wear my clothes with their personal style in mind”.

visit www.lumenetumbra.biz
view the current f/w09 collection on scoute.blog
 

Interviewed by Arto M.

Creator of his namesake label and its counterpart Attachment, Japanese designer Kazuyuki Kumagai has been crafting his clothing business for a  decade. He entered the world of fashion working with Issey Miyake, eventually creating his own label that has succeeded both in Japan and overseas.

Kumagai was born in Aichi-Ken – a Japanese prefecture located in the centre of the main island of the Japanese Archipelago. A centre of Japan’s automotive and aerospace industries, it’s main city Nagoya is famous for being the home of automotive giant Toyota. In a way, Nagoya could be described as a kind of Japanese Detroit, an environment which may well have influenced Kumagai’s penchant for an industrial feeling in his designs. In his early years, the designer’s main passion was Kendo – the “way of the sword” – a modern Japanese martial art of sword-fighting based on traditional Japanese swordsmanship, Kenjutsu. It is a physically and mentally challenging activity which perhaps prepared Kumagai with the discipline necessary to become a designer.

While working at Issey Miyake, Kumagai’s specialty was researching alternative new techniques and materials from industrial and medical fields amongst others, later becoming the assistant designer at the esteemed label. This experience has also fed into the creation of his own brand, which nowadays takes form in two labels, Attachment which is more focused on Japan’s domestic market and Kazuyuki Kumagai, the international diffusion line carrying his own name.

How did the label’s story begin?
15 years ago Japan was at a major turning point. It was the beginning of the end of the so called economic “bubble” era. I felt that the eighties movement exemplified by the Holy Triumvirate of Yohji, Issey and Comme was about to come to an end, and a new fashion movement combining both street and high fashion elements was needed. This became Attachment; a label utilizing traditional Japanese fabrics and techniques and combines them with the latest design and street style. We used unique methods such as tanning with Persimmon juice, and materials such as a fabric that was traditionally used to construct bags to filter sake, for example.

What drove you to create Attachment?
At the time when I started the label in 1999, there were very few new young Japanese labels. There was a boom of import designers and then there were the street culture influenced brands such as A Bathing Ape. I tried to create a new type of Japanese label which had the best of both worlds. We started as a very small independent company and in many ways we still are.

How did the process carry on?
Straight away we were picked up by the influential Tokyo select store United Arrows, this led to popularity and us being able to develop our own following. After 3 years we were able to open our own small store here in Daikanyama and begin to develop our own brand identity and our own design world. Part of this was creating our own Attachment Magazine with long time collaborator, photographer / designer / film maker Mote Sinabel. The magazine allowed me to work with and introduce young new underground musicians to our clients; Babyshambles, Dirty Three, The Rapture etc. We also got to travel and expose the scenes in different cities such as Paris, London and NYC. We got to shoot the re-union tour by Bauhaus and I ended the project on a high note by doing an issue with Blixa Bargeld of my favorite band Einstuerzende Neubauten in his home city of Berlin. I knew I could not beat that so we stopped just before we did the runway in Paris. Most of the time, the development of the brand runs parallel to my interest in industrial and rock music. This influence has grown stronger as the brand has carried on.

Tell a bit about the decision to diffuse the label into two lines.
We debuted the label as Attachment in Paris in 2006 and showed in a gallery with installations and musicians. After a couple of seasons I decided it was time to make a runway show and really show the international market and press what the label was all about. I am a big fan of high quality, real clothes – basic items such as military inspired pieces, biker jackets etc, and these have always been extremely successful for us here in Japan. However, I realised that to make a successful runway debut and really reach the international market I would need to concentrate on a more refined, high- level aesthetic and since there are only so many samples it is possible to take to Paris from Japan every season, I decided to separate into two distinct lines. This also allowed me to expand and refine both expressions in a more thorough and satisfactory way. Street taste is very popular for buyers in Japan and I think it always will be so. The international buyers and press are looking for something new, unique and original, this was more the style that Kazuyuki Kumagai became.

What are the elements in garments that you focus on?
For me the key issues will always be the originality and specialness of the textiles. I still do a lot of research into new fabrics both here in Japan and when I travel in Italy and around Europe. We have found that Japanese textiles and Italian leathers are usually the best in the world. So I am searching for the perfect textiles; simple, elegant and minimal.

How has showing in Paris affected you?
Showing in Paris has resulted in an increased popularity and press coverage for the label both here in Japan and across the world. We now have 3 dedicated Attachment stores across Japan and we were also asked to open our own corner in Isetan in Shinjuku, which is one of the most influential stores here in Japan. At the end of last year we decided to combine out 2 separate Tokyo stores into one large 150 square metre Daikanyama Flag ship store. The concept of the store reflects our new policy of mixing the brands and has been designed to be more welcoming to new customers than the old, darker and somewhat secretive stores. It is still based around concrete and metal elements but has a lighter, airier feel..

For the SS10 season we were unfortunate to not see a runway show.
FW 2009 was our fourth fashion show in Paris and by that point, I felt that we had communicated what we had to say through that medium. I felt like that project had been completed and that a new avenue of expression needed to be found to match the changing mood of the times as we descended into the recent recession. My new project is the missing of the 2 labels and showing the street and the “international” collection together. We might do installations or other special projects but I feel the mood of the runway is not suitable for these times.

What direction do you see Attachment taking now?
Basically the spirit of both Attachment and the Kazuyuki Kumagai label is to move forward into the future and to collaborate with various artists, photographers and musicians etc., I wish to push myself creatively and to continue to search for that excellence in both technique and materials which is my ultimate goal and fulfilment.

visit attachment.co.jp to view the current f/w collection from both Kazuyuki Kumagai and Attachment.

 
Interviewed by Arto M.
Cover photo by Tosiya Suda

The work of Munich, Germany based jeweller Klaus Lohmeyer can be found at some of the most acclaimed boutiques worldwide. The jewellery, all hand made in his atelier in the heart of Munich from materials such as silver and leather, is often defined by a refined roughness and solid build.

Born and raised in the Bavarian capital, Lohmeyer studied jewellery design in a highly acclaimed German art school with a strong foundation in craftsmanship. After working in the field for a few years, He returned to finish his diploma, becoming a master craftsman – the highest level of distinction a gold and silversmith can reach. The first Werkstatt:München collection was presented in 1998, followed by annual presentation of collections in Paris and Munich.

The initial catalyst for the line of work was simple; being unable to find masculine jewellery to his liking. “But the main reason is the joy I take in the art of making jewellery – it’s just a beautiful work process using beautiful materials and beautiful tools”, Lohmeyer explains. “In all
cultures throughout history men have worn jewellery as symbols of power, to denote wealth and status or as lucky charms. Where as today western culture seems to dictate that it’s almost only male musicians, punks and rockers that choose to decorate themselves with jewellery.” His pieces – rings, bracelets and pendants – all share a distinguishably heavy look.  “I love this kind of rebellious edge to making jewellery which is not effeminate but for men. My intention was always to create pieces that were self explanitory, a handsome simplicity achieved through the use of strong symbols or through clarity and the careful balance of design proportions”, he adds.

The influence of natural elements can be seen in various parts of his work, silver taking the shape of earthy materials or animals, and the use of leather. “I have huge respect for the art of individuality and the close-to-perfection achieved and created by nature – like an animal or a wild flower.  Of course, mine is an interpretation and never a reproduction – my aim and desire is to translate and reduce it to my understanding of aesthetic perfection for the piece of jewellery I am working on and capture the essence.” Take for example a rivet from his previous collection, inspired by alligator scales.

The aesthetic has changed gradually over time but at the same familiar elements are still present, for example the use of skulls. “Combining a skull with a flower, for example, indulges the elements of romanticism and irony which contrast each other.  I first started using skulls as a motif about ten years ago, but over time I’ve developed new crushes and delved further into exploring the canon of symbolism in classical tattoo vocabulary, the elementary forms found in nature – endless inspiration”.

Like the name suggests, everything is produced exclusively in the Munich workshop, the Werkstatt, which was opened at a new location in 2007. “I am a very honest person, so the development of new pieces is always born out of the creative act of crafting or making”, Lohmeyer says. “I cherish and even need to be in a comfortable environment to be able to create and make beauty.” The small team of Werkstatt:München has worked together for a long time, forging the sense of trust and understanding needed to achieve to desired working methods and results.

The hand crafting often utilizes tools built specifically for a certain craft, such as hallmarks or special anvils and hammers. “Ultimately though, a piece of jewellery takes so many careful steps from beginning to end of the creative process that I do like to be present and hands on to be able to give our personal guarantee of perfection and our seal of approval.”

The connection between jewellery and fashion is a natural one, but Werkstatt:München has been notably present at some of the leading avant garde fashion retailers worldwide, among them Atelier New York and L’eclaireur in Paris. “Although our pieces are designed to be timeless, those into this type of fashion understand and appreciate out design philosophy. In the very beginning it was rather unusual for fashion boutiques to buy real handmade jewellery, but there was a desire for qualitative jewellery which could compliment and hold its own next to the clothing.”

Aesthetically, the pieces do indeed compliment the more edgy and avant garde fashion, which is why many boutiques are carrying the line and why designers such as Ann Demeulemeester have chosen to work with the Werkstatt when designing and producing the jewelry for her collection.  When asked about the relationship between his work and clothing, Lohmeyer puts it simply: “I suppose the relation rests on an individual’s emotive aspiration to wear beautiful and handsome pieces which in turn help to express a personal taste, style and character.”

visit www.werkstatt-muenchen.com

Interviewed by Arto M.

Scoute sat down with Cavarzere Venezia based, American born creator of hand-made garments, Geoffrey B. Small, during the last Paris men’s fashion week to discuss his personal journey through the changing fashion landscape of the last thirty years and his status as the American designer with the longest running Parisian presence.

While tailoring Renaissance man Small’s past experiences and vision for the future are truly enlightening, let us go back a step and make explicit where Scoute stands regarding Fashion, that magnificent and horrible word that we sometimes fear to utter aloud, in the vain aim of avoiding being associated with frivolity and faddishness.

There has been talk of a Scoute aesthetic, a taste for the macabre, brooding clothes of designers that thread the dark corners of the world of, well, dressing up people to look dangerously cool. Some would say a thin veneer of ready-to-wear aggression, available to whoever has the fortitude of spirit and wallet to buy his entry into the black-clad elitist club. This derisive outlook overlooks the true center of what we stand for. What those brands, shops and the passionate individuals who are at their core share is not so much an aesthetic stance as an ethical one.

Consequently, we believe that presenting Geoffrey B. Small is not only an introduction to the work of an important designer but an exemplary illustration of that ethical stance. That his creations look different from what you would expect to see in Scoute is merely a sign that you should revise your assumptions regarding the magazine’s mission.
 

The Geoffrey B. Small narrative

Let us go back to a time far, far away when the Italian men’s magazine, L’Uomo Vogue, presented new and exciting designers, in tune with the world they lived in and devoid of the stultification that would stop them from morphing to continue to reflect it. This may seem ludicrous if you never had the chance to see the magazine in the 70s but it once presented something beside cocktail dresses worn by celedebutantes, star designers and dream weekends in Spanish villas reminiscent of the manicured emptiness Antonioni relentlessly exposed in his films. Two promising unknowns called Armani and Versace were unleashed in a terse, two paragraphs blurb at the back of a 1977 issue and they put forward new silhouettes, fabrics and philosophy that captivated the young Geoffrey. Here were designers that would turn men’s clothing design on its head and set the pace for what would be worn throughout the 80s. Since childhood, Small had continually expressed himself through illustrations; drawing the “toys he could not have” (can a kid ever have all the toys he wants? Get your children a pen and some sketchpads!), a passion that evolved during his adolescence to sketching clothes he wished he could purchase, many of them found at the venerable Boston retail institution, Louis Boston.

“They were one of the very first retailers in America to start introducing what was really going on at the time in European design, especially Italy. I started getting serious about a career in the field, and wanted to work there and learn from them, but it didn’t work out that way…”

Unable to secure employment at the exclusive store of his dreams, Geoffrey started working at The Gap, a retail company open to hiring an inexperienced 17-year old boy. He enrolled at a local fashion design school, spending his days working the sales floor selling and folding jeans and his evenings beginning to learn the prosaic but highly useful techniques of patternmaking, construction and sketching.

The year of 1979 turned out to be pivotal for Geoffrey as he was able to beat 14,000 competitors to win the ILGWU “America’s Next Great Designer Awards”, the largest student design competition in North America. The following year Small’s talent was again recognized at the ILGWU, now boasting 20,000 entries, by a prestigious jury composed of the likes of Bill Blass, Elsa Klensch, Calvin Klein and Geoffrey Beene. Geoffrey would continue to win design competitions, often boldly disregarding the dominant American aesthetic of the times and surprising juries with his use of the brash silhouettes and understated colours inspired by the movement Giorgio Armani had started in Italy.

Now having caught the eye of a few American recruiters he was tempted to make his entry into the world of NYC fashion houses but he quickly found out that, although the innovative silhouettes he inked on paper genuinely impressed his potential employers, the need of the American mass market meant he would have to tone them down so much as to make them undistinguishable from the comparatively bland American designs of the times. Geoffrey remembers with his typical humour a meeting with Stanley Kimmel, the president of Jones Apparel Group in New York (which now produces a large part of Ralph Lauren’s collections), to discuss his taking over the men’s design position, and who, praising his sketches, proposed a few minor modifications: “Nice shoulders but we’d need to make them a little narrower! Excellent waist suppression but our clients can be quite portly, let’s remove some of it! Beautiful choice of wrinkled fabric, but highly inappropriate for the bankers and lawyers that need a more conservative suit!”, the final result ended up being so watered down that it was identical to what the company had been putting on the racks for years.

“My passion was never to do what was already being done by others, especially in the U.S.. I wanted to take it to another level. At the time, believe or not, Milan was the super-cutting edge of world avant-garde. They were doing what everybody was eventually going to do after them. And that’s exactly what I eventually wanted to do with my own work. I talked to other designer colleagues whom I met in various competitions—all of them prize-winners and they were all in the same boat. I realized then and there, that I would have to control my own production and run my own business in order to be able to design the clothes I wanted to. Nobody else was going to make it happen, except me.”

By this time, beginning to be able to sew, he decided to start a small laboratory business, making clothes for friends using an old Singer sewing machine and the space available in his parent’s attic. This focus on the use of the basic skills of the trade and a belief in self-reliance stayed with him to this day. Without being part of the punk musical and artistic movement emerging in NYC at the time, Small, always sensitive to social undercurrents, soaked in the do-it-yourself ethic of those years and applied it to a calling of his own.

 
Do it yourself

These encounters with the business-minded but conservative American market only served to reinforce Small’s DIY ways. He opted to continue building his budding company and trying to teach himself the tailoring techniques of past masters. This, arguably intransigent way of doing things may seem counterproductive for a young designer trying to break through but Small readily admits that wanting to be a designer’s designer is, to him, worth paying a commercial price. Geoffrey was and remains the talented indie act that progresses at his own pace but remains relevant thirty years later, having seen more high-profile designers come and go, without ever feeling the need to put down or attack those choosing a different way.

The intensive technical and business experiences of the 80s would lead him to become, at the dawn of 1990, the man behind the leading bespoke tailoring house in Boston. He offered, in his Newbury street ateliers, painstakingly constructed suits for men and women, counting among his clients such diverse individuals as the Governor of Massachusetts and pop act New Kids on the Block.

Geoffrey shows a deep respect for the intricate work of bespoke tailoring, “an honourable profession when done right”, as he pointedly reminds us. The relationship is personal and often extends over a long stretch of time resulting in numerous outfits reflecting the meeting of the tailor and client’s personalities, lifestyles and interests. To Small dressing someone is not a science where a golden ratio must be respected to ensure optimal results, but an applied art that gives credence to individual quirks. Here the technical meets the relational. “People talk with their clothes. They say who they are, or who they want to be. A great tailor has to get into people’s heads, know their bodies and their needs, and then create and execute the very best solutions for that one person. You have to really know your client. And you have to be a real master of your art and craft. Unlike runway ready-to-wear, you can’t fake it. You have to look your customer in the eye, right there in person. There is nowhere to hide.”

With that being said, Geoffrey, after almost a decade and half of learning the tradition now felt ready to add to the fashion symphony a few notes of his own, and that is why he started showing ready to wear collections in Paris in 1992, notably presenting his second collection at the original Paris sur Mode salon organized by Jean-Pierre Fain, an alternative event held outside traditional venues, on the banks of the Seine. Fashion insiders had the chance to discover his work alongside the comeback collection by Roberto Cavalli and the very first Carpe Diem collection by Maurizio Altieri.

“It was exciting. Nobody from America had ever showed in Paris before us except Patrick Kelly, who had moved there and died very young, and Oscar de La Renta who of course was very classic and ladies-who-lunch. And nobody had ever tried to do Paris avant-garde from the U.S.. We were the first, and we had to go up against the likes of Comme, Yohji, Martin, Helmut Lang, the first-wave of Belgians (Ann, Dirk,), all of them pioneers. And believe me, they were kicking out tremendous work in those days; the best in the world. At the time nobody in the circuit thought Americans could even hold a candle in Paris…could create first-in-the-world design work, American designers were known strictly as giant commercial copiers who sold only in their home country. We were poor, went over there on a shoestring. But we were hungry, and focused on our Art, and made an impression when we started, and after a few years there was a wave of Americans showing in Paris from Jeremy Scott to Marc Jacobs, to Rick Owens and even Tom Ford. Prior to us, there was no one. We opened the door. People would ask us why do you show in Paris instead of New York? I always told them Paris is the most competitive designer arena in the world, it’s where the Art form lives or dies. Each time you get back in, it makes you get better.”

To this day Geoffrey B. Small stills present collections in Paris, now eschewing runway presentations to focus on the visceral experience of the showroom, an environment where the clothes, unadorned by theatrical flourishes, are there to be touched and viewed as they will be approached in shops and seen in the wardrobes of discerning wearers. Geoffrey remains the American designer with the longest, uninterrupted presence on the Parisian fashion calendar (now on his 63rd Paris avant-garde collection), having been over the years praised by Collezioni, Vogue, Women’s Wear Daily and the perceptive Pierre Bergé. You may also remember a feature on his 2006 collection, “An Ode to Toussaint Louverture”, shot by the ever-present Karl Lagerfeld.

Tradition and modernity

While the Geoffrey B. Small story presented earlier may be construed as a run of the mill rag to riches narrative, replete with references to humble beginnings and concluding on the high note of Parisian consecration, it mainly serves to highlight his approach to learning and growth. Having taken to heart the mantra of Mr. Armani, who stressed the importance of knowing the entire process, Small took it a step further and elected to take direct control of it. Most fashion companies are run like typical corporations where the skills that are judged central to the brand, such as sketching and design, are kept in-house and everything else, production being a major example, is subcontracted. In a sense this mirrors the transition from art to commercial art enterprise that such high profile conceptual artists as Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami, inspired by Andy Warhol, have perfected by coming up with ideas and overall designs and commissioning a third party to ensure production. While the final product is often of high technical quality, the value is mainly derived from the idea and the “branded image” of the artist. We are reminded of the exchange between Hirst and one of his collaborators handling the actual creation of a series of dot paintings, where she requested he sign a work she made for herself, knowing full well the value resided in the provenance of the signature and not the physical object.

Small has a different approach; like a traditional artist or artisan he puts as much effort in the crafting of his garments as he does in perfecting the designs. “Most consumers and designers don’t understand that the making is the design. A designer is always limited by his production. You’re only as good as what your production is capable of making. The better we can make things, the better the things we can design. To design the best clothes in the world, you have to be able to be the best clothes-maker in the world. This has been our continuing mission since 1979.”

This applies to his supplier network as well. With almost a decade in Italy, not in Milan, where virtually nothing is made anymore, but in the rural hinterlands across northern Italy where the real guts of the Italian textile and clothing industry are found, he has slowly built up tight relationships with the very best fabric, material and accessories makers in the country—the absolute top of “made in Italy.” From the world’s oldest woollen mill and greatest cashmere house Fratelli Piacenza in Pollone Biella (founded in 1733), to the last remaining handmade button-makers in Italy (Parma), to individual medieval artisan specializing in shoe-making and metalworking design—Small’s ability to make unique, beautiful and valuable works continues to expand deep roots backed by an ever strengthening foundation.

For Spring/Summer 2010 he is going even further, for the first time being able to be completely involved in the making of the cloth itself, that he will, as before, later cut and sew. He has developed a unique relationship with Luigi Parisotto and his family, who collectively have over a century of fabric weaving and making experience. The Parisottos are located north of Vicenza, in the town of Sarcedo, at the foothills of the Alps. Small describes their partnership as the collaboration of two master artists, going above and beyond a simple fabric supplier-designer relationship. Able to discuss thread count, types of cotton, linen or cashmere compositions and modes of yarn spinning and weaving, he can clearly share his vision for the completed product and has convinced his partner to create small runs of slowly spun, peculiar fabrics, with a tactile feel of beautiful irregularity reminiscent of pre-Industrial materials. To reinforce the signs of that unique influence, Small foregoes the final steps of industrially finishing and washing fabrics and handles this crucial part by hand, going as far as to do every piece in the bathroom of his apartment studio in Cavarzere. The normalizing process of washing and chemically finishing, helping to give fabric its smooth, even sheen is thus subverted or rather brought back to its original form. This yields uniquely wrinkled materials, ensuring distinct results for each piece coupled with enormous reductions in carbon emissions and chemical impacts to local water and environment.

Taking advantage of his bespoke tailoring years, Geoffrey designs, cuts and constructs each garment by hand with the help of a small team of 4 highly trained, dedicated and disciplined designer-tailor associates. They sew casual, uncanvassed jackets with hand-stitched collars, real hand stitched buttonholes (a job requiring 8 to 10 minutes per buttonhole), hand finished sleeve cuffs with working buttonholes and, an ultimate rarity, hand stitched lapel holes. The pieces, light as feathers, mould to the wearer’s body and stand as shining examples of the disappearing art of hand-made garments. To use an automotive example the typical designer suit would be a Mercedes, the result of a well-oiled factory process privileging cutting-edge machinery and a posteriori quality control with each worker handling a separate piece of the puzzle. A Geoffrey B. Small blazer or pair of pants is a lovingly crafted custom Rolls Royce, or better yet a Koenigsegg, each piece hand finished by a worker who is in fact, the designer himself, handling the whole process and ensuring a perfect integration of all parts, a time consuming labour of love that few are willing to even learn, let alone put into practice. Such an uncompromising, pre-modern, and in Small’s view, post-modern approach results in unparalleled quality but has its price; less than 500 Geoffrey B. Small garments are made each season and they can only be found at exclusive boutiques catering to a crowd of passionate clients, looking for the human magic of the unusual in a world of mass-produced repetition. By moving the fetishism to the process, Geoffrey has managed to remove it from the commodity, creating an item that derives its value from the quality and the spirit of its construction, materials and design.

 
The designer & the world in which he lives; an ethic of fashion design

I-D magazine in their classic “Fashion Now” books profiling top fashion designers often ask interviewees their feeling on the possibility fashion has of changing the world we live in, most choose to dodge the question to concentrate on their love of pretty shoes. Geoffrey does not wait for you to ask; he dives right into the topic and makes it the centerpiece of a well-rounded conversation. To him, designers are linked to the world they live in as fish are to the sea, while his peers may chose to live in a pristine aquarium he knows the world affects him and hopes to do his small part to exert a positive influence on it.

“Fashion is an Art. That’s why I do it. And artists have a responsibility to themselves and their audience. For those of us lucky enough to still be in this line of work–To speak the truth, not lie about it. And to do whatever we can to make life better for people, not just an elite few. And these days… there is plenty to do.”

Being based in Italy he has seen the ravages of delocalisation that has left large numbers of textile and clothing workers unable to find employment after the closing of their factories. The labour market is not kind to people that only know how to sew a pocket once their initial workplace closes. In this light, his urge to get to know the full process and to become an iterative learner takes a prescient edge.

“For those of us in Italy who are still practicing masters of our work in all the related fields, our biggest concerns are about finding and educating a new generation of masters who can carry the crafts forward. Otherwise, the skills and the know-how will be lost forever. I teach all the time. But it is very challenging today, and difficult to find young people willing to pay the real price necessary for achieving mastery in an Art. It’s a lifelong commitment, and it’s not about easy stardom or quick money. It’s a disciplined way of life that requires sacrifice, commitment, talent, passion and patience. And it’s not at all easy, especially in the current decade.”

The fashion world has become a way for him to communicate his concern to others and act as a mirror in which we may contemplate the present. As an American concerned with the direction his country of origin was taking after the tragic events of September 11, he was the first in Paris to come out publicly against the upcoming invasion of Iraq (January 2003), in January of the next year he presented the “Brumaire revisited” collection, a Napoleonic-themed show that preceded a slew of similarly inspired collections or pieces by the likes of John Galliano, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Dior Homme and Undercover. While the influence of this landmark 2004 collection on the fashion scene is undeniable, it also allowed Small to get across his position regarding pre-emptive wars and aggressive international policies, a subtext that was not as easy to recuperate as the beautiful 18th century military outfits displayed on the runway. Finding much inspiration in the garment designs of the past and faithful to his method of assimilation followed by innovation, he managed to apply the same mindset to his messages. The middle-ages were recontextualized in the years following 2006, as Geoffrey compared growing social inequalities to a form of contemporary global feudalism, explored the place of women in current social hierarchy, discussed the growing problem of illiteracy, and introduced some of the world’s first clothing designed to address global warming.

Spring/Summer 2010 saw Small put the idea of a leading-edge sustainable wardrobe, sturdy, comfortable, multi-purpose and unique enough to resist years of faddish changes to the foreground. In these times of economic and political uncertainty, a client may never know when he can purchase clothes again and these garments will remain wardrobe staples long after the world has underwent post-apocalyptic changes rivaling the Mad Max universe, or so we hope. Suffice to say that once you have tried them on, the thought of wearing them day after day does not sound like torture but clothing nirvana.

“To me today’s avant-garde is about the inside of clothes, how they feel and how they last, how they protect you. People cannot afford to only deal with exteriors now. It’s not about the outside anymore. Of course, it has to look good, it has to fit, and it has to be cool—but there are landfills of that kind of stuff available right now. And the customer knows it. Show me something that will keep you alive and comfortable if you lose your house tomorrow, a tragedy faced by 1 in every 50 people in the world in 2008. I feel a lot of cool designers and stores are still back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s mentality, but I lost interest. Been there. Many of them are my friends. But I am really on to a different thing. Every piece I make now has to be comfortable, really comfortable – good enough to sleep in. For ten years. It has to have a visual story inside that may be more poignant than the exterior. I spend more on linings and buttons than a lot others are spending on their main fabrics. The idea is to have no carbon or methane footprint, no plastic, poly, chemicals, landfill problems, unsustainability, animal cruelty, human exploitation or slavery in its manufacture. We have a higher component of handwork in our clothes than any collection showing in Paris. Handwork is carbon neutral and builds craft and gives dignity to people who do the work….Something that’s worth every penny you spent, doesn’t hurt anybody, lasts you a lifetime, makes you feel good, and yes, looks really good too, every time you put it on. That’s the new direction fashion needs to take, and that’s where I am focused. The world’s greenest designer concept at the Paris collections-level.”

While not every designer discussed by Scoute makes his principles as explicit and readily intelligible as Geoffrey B. Small, it is this shared ethos that draws us to their work. They have respect for tradition that follows the dictum of learning, imitation then followed by innovation; they treat seasonality as a way to build upon a corpus of work instead of an ever-changing attempt at aimless renewal; they value craftsmanship and technical knowledge and they realize that a broad cultural horizon that goes beyond fashion is the way to bring soul to a design thus capturing that indefinable quality that makes a garment a passageway to the wearer’s individual expression. Human rapport is central and not mediated by countless faceless entities; creators participate in the whole process, from fabric weaving to dealing with store buyers.

“It’s about 30 years of work, people, and resources, putting it all together, and making the very best clothes we possibly can with everything we’ve got. Then raising the bar one more time even higher for the next time… that’s what makes it fun.”
 

visit www.geoffreybsmall.net

Interviewed by Maxime B.
Photos courtesy of Pierre Gayte and Geoffrey B. Small

Cover photo: Hand dyed waistcoat and scarf made of Fratelli Piacenza 1733 Alashan cashmere, with real horn buttons made in Parma, handstitched buttonholes and detailing in silk Bozzolo Reale thread. Superfine cotton (Luigi Parisotto, Sarcedo) shirt with split cover butttons and striped sleeves. Six pieces made, available in September from Pollyanna, Barnsley UK and Minorityrev, Fukuoka Japan.

While studying at the University of Fine Arts in Tokyo, Tomoaki Okaniwa didn’t feel a connection with the typical Japanese fashion scene but rather found his interest in foreign media, art and culture. His interest in making garments was born from a necessity – to make something he could wear every day. This lead him to form a successful streetwear company, and later, after sifting his focus towards a more mature style, to the birth of The Viridi-Anne. Over 8 years later, the brand has become highly popular in Japan and spread overseas to Europe and North America, where it’s stocked in many notable avant-garde boutiques. With a strong attention to unique materials, well thought out details and classic cuts with a twist, The Viridi-Anne has been showing it’s collections during men’s fashion week in Paris for the past 3 years.

How did your interest in garment making come about?
The stunning appearance of the sex pistols lead me to punk fashion and then to the early work of Vivienne Westwood. So it was this interest in UK / punk culture which first inspired me to create clothing. As an art student I had no disposable income, so the only way to wear something comparable to Westwood was to make something for myself. It has always been my aim to apply what I’ve learned and love about art to creating clothes. To take art down from the gallery wall and make it into something one can wear everyday on your own body and enjoy in everyday life.

When was the label born, then?
In 2001. We decided to start making the clothes we wanted to wear ourselves. I had lost interest in street wear which was very popular in japan at that point. As said it was born out of necessity and i think this is the mother of all the best creation.

The label has been around for a good while now, how has it developed along the way?
The label has been shown for 8 years, 3 years have involved showing in Paris. During this period the brand has changed quite a lot as I have grown personally and travelled more frequently outside Japan. The market in Japan is geared towards and dictated by younger people. As we have migrated abroad we have evolved into a label and aesthetic which can be worn by a wider age-range. This has also meant a pressure to improve the quality of design, details and materials in order to appeal to the more discerning foreign customers and buyers.

Talking about the expansion to Europe and the US, is this something you aimed for?
At first, I never thought about it and I certainly never envisioned we would become this popular this quickly. But I actually started the label and business through the influence of foreign design, arts and culture, so in a way it now seems perfectly natural that this is the way things have gone. There is almost a sense of giving something back.

So going overseas has had its mark on the style of The Viridi-Anne.
Most definitely yes, as mentioned I was already heavily attracted to all kinds of foreign media and culture from a very young age. I was always the type of person who was interested in things from abroad and was not very impressed or interested in the fashion scene here in Japan, except for a few special designers. For example I never read any Japanese fashion magazines.

You’ve shown in Paris for several years now.
Showing in Paris and selling our clothes next to the very best designers in all the very best boutiques has meant and added positive pressure on me to strive to create originality and excellence. I need and want our designs to be at least as good as those from designers in say Belgium and Italy, or else I would feel shame and embarrassment to be shown in the same spaces.

How do you start working on a new collection?
Now that we have our own brand identity and look, it is mostly a case of wearing the clothes from this season and improving and refining the important pieces for the next season. The choice of fabrics and small details such as buttons, hooks and zippers are obviously crucial in shaping the designs. Originally we were known for a very Japanese zen-type aesthetic; the “wabi-sabi” – an antique look on parts of the collections, but now things have become much more complicated and varied.

What inspires you right now?
I am inspired to begin and shift the design in any particular direction by travel, the work of various artists and visits to galleries etc., and also on the street and my everyday life. I find that as time goes by, the clothes are not so much about solely the surface appearance, but more about wearability, practicality and ease of use coupled with the importance of the pleasure that wearing a piece will bring you. The touch and feel of materials and construction. These things all help to shape the process, keep it moving forward and dictate the outcome.

A japanese painter called Leonard Fujita was also a big inspiration because he actually went and lived in paris back in 1913 and hung out with Picasso and Matisse etc. He was a true original and an early example of a truly international Japanese artist and therefore his life story is really inspiring. As for the present, the atmosphere of the work of Christian Boltanski is always very moving.

You mentioned the feel of materials – interesting fabrics seem to play an important part.
I try to keep abreast of all the latest fabric developments. Here in Japan the industry is very strong and it’s also used by the very best designers world-wide, so I am very lucky in this respect. I also try to develop my own original materials as much as possible and spend time experimenting with mixes and interesting organic materials, such as bamboo and paper. Generally though, I prefer fabric that is made from a very fine thread and weaved tightly so that the touch is extremely soft whilst remaining strong. So my absolute favorite fabrics are generally linen (and its derivatives such as ramie), silk and cotton and often also a mix of all three.

What about manufacturing, where does it take place?
Obviously all our fabrics and garments are created here in Japan. I strive for originality so I try to find factories and ateliers which have unique and original processes
and sometimes we have things hand-made, particularly shoes for example.

How do you find these type of places?
In Japan, certain areas in cities and parts of the country are famous for the creation of some particular articles or for working with a certain type of material, so I’ve had to spend a lot of time traveling to various places and sitting down with these craftsmen to create a close understanding and working relationship. Small factories can only cope with small quantities and only a few clients, so I need to make sure that I find the best places and can collaborate. Many are small, secretive operations in rather out of the way places. If you want to be original and have an edge, I think this is one of the best ways to keep us distinct and unique.

Where do you see the future of The Viridi-Anne?
I have no idea because I try to stay in the present and not speculate about the future too much. Obviously the future begins right here in our troubled economic times so it does not seem to appear to be very bright. However I feel that this adversity can be a very positive pressure on me to strive to work harder and survive. To establish my label as truly original and to try to reach as many people who care about design and beautiful clothes as possible all over the world.

view the SS2010 collection from The Viridi-Anne on scoute.blog

www.viridi-anne.com