For his new menswear collection, Iceland-based designer Sruli Recht created his own atypical design process, producing one of a kind patterns combined with particular materials. The result is a collection that has an extremely organic feel and strikes a balance between freedom and form.

Sruli Recht is eyeing the racks of clothing at his corner of a multilabel showroom in Paris. The garments, most of them made out of a single draped piece of exotic skins and Icelandic wool, form a muted but bold colour palette of earth tones with a splash of blood red and bright green. Its noon and Recht is just back from running errands – picking up a boot sample delivered to Paris late and unfinished, along with supplies from a hardware store. He spent the morning at his apartment shaping the heels of the boots and treating the leather to his liking. In midst our conversation, the showroom’s owner has come over to examine the new addition, now placed on a shelf next to belts, jewelry and wallets made of dyed fish skin. “Don’t touch my shit”, Recht mumbles, followed by a burst of laughter – one of many examples of his witty and satirical character.

Its Recht’s second day in showing what is, despite making clothing for nearly 15 years, actually his first complete menswear collection to date. Recht’s journey into creating garments began in Melbourne, where he studied in the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, graduating with a Bachelor Degree in Fashion Design in 2002. He began his career by hand sewing one or two made to measure garments in a week. “Designing actually always seemed very difficult, complicated and confusing… I think in the beginning I, being the new-kid-foreigner, did it as more of a way to try and fit in”, he says.

 Recently, however, he has been rather recognized for a wide array of work unrelated to clothing, “non-products”, as he calls them. For the past 5 years or so, he had relatively little studio time to himself, spending a majority of time working with or running other labels. “It is a commitment to work with or for other people – you have to get into their heads, think like them, create like them”, he says. Due to the time constraints, he found himself working with smaller projects that weren’t as time consuming to produce.

This, combined with the actual need for whatever things he would have use for at a given time, brought about the concept of non-products. Constant travelling and utilizing various spaces for a studio created the need for a portable table, so he designed one out of cardboard that could be packed into the size of a small suitcase and pieced together for a large cutting table. He wanted a belt that he didn’t need to take off at the airport, so he made one without a buckle. Whether or not his umbrella with a brassknuckle handle served other purposes than fighting the rain is uncertain, but Recth did end up battling in court over its legality, and won.

Another reason for designing non-clothing products was that Recht’s working knowledge had become somewhat of a burden for him. “It meant I couldn’t just improvise and make something; I would pre-design and map the entire garment out in my head, the order of every stitch and snip, and this was claustrophobic and unenjoyable”, he explains. Without realizing it, he had distanced himself from his own clothing, working on that of others and various products. However, as enough time had passed, he’d come a full circle and had, in a way, forgotten about clothing in order to approach it in a different way. That, and he also needed new clothes for himself.

Aesthetically, Recht’s garments certainly stick out from the mass given the raw materials and dramatic silhouettes. Take for example a leather coat in which the back is cut fairly straight, but the large lapels of the jacket stick strongly forward, especially if the wearer’s hands are in the pockets. Perhaps the most extravagant piece is “Icarus, post crash” – a jacket made out of 21 taxidermed blackbird skins, feathers still intact, on a reindeer skin base, and a piece of headwear matching to it.
 

 

Recht says the new collection is different from anything he has ever done before, but he still recognizes himself in it. This time around, his design approach and working methods were entirely new. “I wanted to let the collection happen in my hands instead of on paper… To listen to my hands, and let the fabric tell me what to do”. He chose not to involve any sketching in the design process, and came up with a special technique to develop the collection; making a half-scale mannequin and draping fabrics directly onto the form. “Making it in half scale really reduced the amount of detail that you would otherwise put in because you have only so much space.”

“I wanted to let the collection happen in my hands instead of on paper… To listen to my hands, and let the fabric tell me what to do”

Additionally, he came up with what he calls a macroscope – a camera shooting the mannequin and garment, projecting a full scale image of it onto a wall. Once he had come up with a pattern for a garment, it was transferred onto paper, scanned, scaled to full size, and then cut directly onto the material with a laser cutter. The garment was then re-draped in full size, edited and re-scanned. This unique process proved to be very efficient and precise. “What you have as an end result is very little use and wastage of paper, much less time tracing and cutting, and much more time to work and think with your hands on the actual material”, Recht adds.

Another unique element in the collection is brought on by the materials, of which nearly all are of Icelandic origin, and in some way developed by Recht. The only material imported, due to not being available locally, is wool-angora jersey, used for only a couple of pieces. Recht spends a great amount of time working with local producers, developing unique ingredients for his work. “I work very closely with a tannery in the north of Iceland, creating new materials out of raw skins.” All the leathers – horse, reindeer, shark, bird and even fish – make up a large part of the garments and accessories in the collection.

On some occasions, he has even found ideas in failed experiments, picking up scraps from the tannery and saying “I want this effect!” Similarly, he works with a knit producer who handles Icelandic wool utilized for the knitwear. “In the beginning, 10 years ago, I would have an idea, and force some fabric into achieving it. But I learned over time that the fabric would never do what it wasn’t supposed to do, so there was little use in trying to beat it into submission. So I started to develop the ideas incorporating the garment and material together.”

The result is a collection that is completely intuitive and free, but at the same time very dimensional and constructed. While drapery is a key part of his design process, Recht is careful to differentiate his garments from certain trends. “In my view there is a current ubiquitous and lazy approach to men’s wear masquerading as drapery, which seems to be a vague formula of hanging a length of raw fabric around the neck, adding sleeves that are too long and too tight, and sticking a hook on it – bam, avant garde men’s wear. Where is the thought, wit or humour in that?”

Written by Arto M.

Mariavittoria Sargentini prepares her presentation, appending the new in’es’terno (translated: in’ex’terior) articles to the foundation of her collections with calculated precision. The offerings solemnly suspended in a series of flowing wave paths along the spine of an abstracted iron sculpture, which Sargentini had designed herself. It is an austere presentation that embodies the spirit of the designer and her work.

The exhibition unveiled her latest evolvement of the advancing research systems produced under the MarvieLab umbrella. Wherein the individual projects are a conscious departure from the systemic order of the fashion industry with a focus on manifesting her study of interaction between one’s own body shape and the articles themselves. Her goal is to create a personal habitat within the negative space proffered by the garments. The result of this process is a streamlined silhouette with a minimalist aesthetic.

With the introduction of in’es’terno, we see fully reversible jackets, offered in closed seam construction of distinct fabric and color combinations that grant the end user a vast array of unique representations. The fabrics range from substantial to airy. My personal favorite of the fabrics being a beautifully textured weighty wool/linen shell that molds to the body like clay. Here we see Mariavittoria’s very different philosophy expressed. Case in point: the new slim version of the S pants and jacket, which imprint the shape of the wearer’s body and capture wrinkles in the joint areas upon disrobing. The garment’s design is approached with careful consideration of the human form, which allows it to acquiesce to the individual’s anatomical realities and bend to the will of the wearer. The pieces effectively conform to the many facets of the wearer, such that it is no longer exclusive in identity, but subordinated to the nature of self that is the individual.

The concept of a contained environment is clearly seen in its practical application, when approaching the patterns of the J2 project from a 2 dimensional perspective. Here we see rectangular shapes of varying dimensions, conceived as containers for the human body. This idea of a garment perceived as a natural habitat for the body has been explored with great efficacy in the S+M+L system. Where volume is varied within the various components, allowing for ample options of indexed silhouettes within a rigidly regimented set of parameters that are dictated by the concept. Where again, the clothing is to be approached with the perspective of a flat form, which she refers to as “shapematerial”. This is in opposition to the common perception of clothing as a covering that merely frames the body. Her work is an exhaustive study of the interaction between the 2 and 3 dimensional perspectives: between “shape material” and anatomy. The body finds its mode of dressing and ultimately allows the articles to find its own personality, thus raising the garments relationship with the wearer to a new level.

Sargentini is one who is bringing design to a level that is truly ahead of her time. She challenges the status quo to analyze what fashion is and what it can be. Playfully expounding upon interplay between cohesive modular systems. Pioneering the notion of transseasonal collections and unrelenting in her pursuit to realize a concept many would deem over-thought, in a world that may find her refined work over-simplified. She is a designer of intellect who seeks to elevate clothing conceptually and in her pursuit to that end, has effectively managed to devise and develop her own canon of proportion. It is a rigorous undertaking with one simple goal in mind for the end user. Comfort.

See more pictures of the collection on the scoute.blog.

Written by David Choi
Photos courtesy of Karios and Marvielab

Luca Laurini, the designer behind Label Under Construction, has spent a number of years making intricately constructed clothes. But at some point this was not enough. What he wanted to do was make the clothes speak. The idea behind his new project, Signals, was to share messages with his audience.

For any man of culture, be it an artist or an intellectual, sharing cultural wealth is an instinct. We all have a desire if not to be validated in our worldview, then at least to be understood. This is why writers write and artists paint. Often, it is simply an overwhelming yearning to say something and, preferably, to be heard. But while the writer has words and the painter has images, a fashion designer is put at a disadvantage by his medium. To reflect one’s world via fabric and scissors is no easy task, but one that a mind as obsessed with design as Laurini’s was more than happy to undertake.

“The deepest concept in making this project was my desire to send out subliminal signals,” said Laurini. “These signals are linked to the intrinsic significance of each word, whether it’s an acronym, aphorism or a poem. Concepts like corrosion, laceration, the opposites, have an important significance, linked to us, to our society, and to our daily lives.”

Laurini is not one to take shortcuts in design, so merely writing slogans on clothes was out of the question, and even though English is becoming the Esperanto of the modern world, it is not common enough. Besides semiotics, the other problem that Laurini had to solve was the use of limited space, that of the garment. The solution was to use the Morse code – universal and short. “Morse code interested me a lot, firstly for the historical reason. It was the first universally accepted way of shortening communication,” said Laurini. The duality of the code, the external, visual component, and the internal, one that creates meaning, also attracted him, “It is fascinating that this code, graphically, just based on dot and line, can translate meaning in a minimalist way. For rendering language into a piece of fabric or a garment, not only its meaning is important, but also the graphic element that provides the meaning.”

But the real task for Laurini was to combine the language and the clothes into a whole, to inextricably intertwine them. In essence, the language becomes the language of clothes. Therefore, for example, he took Nietzsche’s aphorism from Thus Spake Zarathustra, about the eternal cycle of creation and destruction and cut it with the laser into the lining of the jacket made from old recycled fabric. Another aphorism, by Jonathan Swift, “Vision is the art of seeing things invisible” is incorporated into the jacquard pattern of the identical color town that only becomes visible under ultraviolet light.

Other methods Laurini used give words their physicality. They incorporate the language as a system of signs for naming the things with the things themselves. Accordingly, the words “Continuous Wave” are manifested by knitting the acronym “CW” using a wave knit pattern on a stole and a scarf. The combination of the words “Laser Embroidery” and their acronym are cut by a laser into a dress shirt, and the letters of the word “Corrosion” are recreated on a sweater by disintegrating the natural part of the yarn with acid, while leaving the synthetic part intact. Lastly, the concept of decay is reflected in the technique of laser laceration. It is used to emphasize the way fabric wears off at certain points if a garment is worn too long. The words “laser laceration” are incised by laser along the collar and cuffs of a dress shirt to give it a worn-in look.

The messages are broken down into four categories – acronym, poetry, aphorism, and words. “Acronyms, used today to shorten anything, are, in themselves, carriers of messages. The aphorisms, which are more explicit, like those of Nietzsche, Peale and Swift are very important from a philosophical point of view, and finally the poem by Merini lends a touch of poetry so often lacking in real life,” said Laurini. There are also four ways the code is incorporated into the garments – by knitting, cutting with a laser, using UV-sensitive yarn and corroding the fabric with acid. Each garment will come with a folder that recreates all the messages in a grid. This is Laurini’s most painstakingly thought out and crafted project to date and it gives a fresh meaning to the used up phrase “the medium is the message.”

By Eugene Rabkin

Designer Daisuke Nishida’s background isn’t the most conventional sort. As a former athlete and medical instructor, Nishida grew interested in anatomy and kinetics, sparking the desire to create garments using the human body’s form and movement as the basis for design. His label, Devoa, has been shown in Paris since 2009.

Background

“I was born in a place called Sasebo-shi in Nagasaki, which is in the south of Japan. It’s famous for having had a long historical contact with the West when the rest of Japan was cut off from international relations. There is not much there now except for shipyards and a large army presence. My professional background is largely related to sports and physical fitness, I was both an amateur wrestler and a medical instructor. I wrestled free-style in the 58kg class and won 3rd place in the Japan Junior Olympics and was placed 5th inthe “National Constitution” competition. When wrestling on a regular basis, I soon got very interested in health, fitness and anatomy. My studies in Kinetics and Anatomy – the way the human body is constructed and moves – eventually led me to become a medical instructor and advisor in the fitness field. It is the knowledge gained during this time that I use to construct clothes, which follow closely the form and function of body joints and muscle movement.”

Learning

“My grandfather was a tailor so I grew up in that environment and was surrounded by the tools and skills of his trade. I never studied fashion design as that world never interested me, but I could learn from my grandfather directly. I have never been into typical mainstream “fashion” and to be honest, I never got inspired by any famous designers. I am more interested in architecture and particularly engineering, and how this relates to human body construction and the fitment of clothes. Fashion is primarily about making people look “attractive” and is a means of self-expression. My interest is more in researching the relationship between the body and fabric. Nowadays it’s mostly certain films and my immediate environment that influence the way the clothes look.”

“My professional background is centered on research of the human body and its movement, so this is paramount in my design process. Working as a medical instructor for 5 years is the foundation from which I can take my design and self expression to the next level. I believe any improvement and advancement should be based on thorough research into tools, techniques, materials, cloth and crucially the form which I work with; the human body.”

Devotion

“The name is a derivation of the Spanish word “devota”, which is similar in meaning to “devotion”. I chose this because our collections come from the heart. Everyone involved in the creative process – pattern makers, sewers and the fabric makers – believe strongly in creating something with meaning and integrity, and are devoted to what they do. We all wear the clothing we create, every day. I started the label because I wanted to find out if it was possible to make clothes in this way and to gather these diverse craftsmen together in the process. I feel that this was my destiny.”

“Everything I create is born out of the fabric I use, which is why i place so much importance on the research and creation of new and unique materials. I am very specific about the particular type of cotton or linen I use. Where it’s from, how it’s grown, is it organic or not, the feel and even the scent a material has. These details are very important to me. I spend a lot of time working with some of the very best factories and mills in Japan. You would be surprised at how many of the most revered international designers actually source their materials here, so I need to be sure that what I use is unique and my own which is also why I rarely carry on using a particular fabric for more than one season. Once I have the fabric, an idea for a design will come to mind inspired by the way the fabric works with the body. This suggests a construction and will eventually result in a pattern. I believe my trademarks are the high quality and originality of my fabrics and a particular construction using double-weight cloth.”

“I enjoy creating and using a diverse range of materials, everything from original and hi-tech to vintage. I suppose cashmere and cotton are my favorites and the most important ones, but I am becoming more interested in working with resins and polyesters to develop brand new materials for the future. These are exciting because there are so many possibilities for their development. I really want to make something that has never been seen.”

“For this latest S/S season I was lucky enough to discover a vintage army material which was developed as an alternative to wool when it was seen as too expensive to use. This is a very rare combination of rayon and linen, which you can actually find in museums over here. I was able to purchase a whole lot and turn it into some limited edition tailored pieces; pants, a jacket and a coat. I also made a new edition of our signature blouson in a one-off natural hemp material. It was un-dyed and as near to the raw, natural state of the material as I could use it. I felt that this gave the piece a natural power and integrity.”

Integrity

“I love Paris for the atmosphere and for the architecture. I find the churches, in particular, very inspirational. The scale of the traditional buildings is very different to Japan. I like St. Eustache, for example, especially when some-one is playing the pipe organ there – an event very different to anything I have experienced in the East. The other thing I have enjoyed about Paris is the direct and honest communication I can have with the buyers. Paris attracts the best buyers from every part of the world and to meet and get their feedback has been a really great experience for me and for the development of the label.”

“I never want to use typical mass production-line techniques and lose the originality and quality. In the past I have ditched a whole batch or project rather than deliver something substandard.”

“I like to keep a tight rein over all aspects of what we create. I have a very hands on approach to what I do and like to work very closely with everyone involved in the label. For this reason it is a small-scale, and a very personal, endeavor and I do not see it increasing to any major extent. Everything is made in Japan and created as much as possible by hand. I am committed to making everything I produce of the very highest quality and using artisans with their own particular skills and specialties. I never want to use typical mass production-line techniques and lose the originality and quality. In the past I have ditched a whole batch or project rather than deliver something substandard.”

Interview by Marc R. / Stealthprojekt
Edited by Arto M.

Photos 5-6 Courtesy of Zekka

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.