In Dialogue with the Present: Read an Interview of Designer Ying Gao

Mirrors collection menswear and womenswear

All Mirrors Collection. Photography by Malina Corpadean.

interview by Lola Titilayo

What happens when couture meets code? Montréal-based fashion designer Ying Gao is recognized for consistently pushing the boundaries of fashion through her exploration of fabric manipulation, interactivity, and technology. The use of unconventional materials to make wearable art is prominent in her work, as evidenced in her All Mirrors 2024 collection, made of soft mirrors and 18-karat gold finishing. In 2023, her In Camera collection experimented with reactivity in fashion design by coming to life when photographed. Even as early as 2017, she made waves with interactive fingerprint technology that only recognizes strangers in her Possible Tomorrows collection. The infusion of technology in her work adds a sense of movement and interaction that captivates audiences, and each collection has a special story to tell.

From fashion design to lecturing at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Ying Gao has had an incredibly extensive career already. She also served as head of the fashion, jewelry, and accessories design program at HEAD Genève from 2013 to 2015 and has presented her creative work in over 100 exhibitions around the world with 16 official collections.

LOLA TITILAYO: You’ve developed a unique practice at the intersection of fashion, technology, and philosophy. Could you share how your journey began; where you come from, and how your experiences and background have influenced your fascination with design and innovation?

YING GAO: My path has always been shaped by displacement, between countries, languages, and systems of thought. I grew up between Switzerland and China, between different structures and imagination, in places where order mattered as much as invention. When I discovered fashion, I didn’t see it as an industry, but as a medium for reflection—a way to question materiality and identity. Technology entered naturally, not as a tool of progress but as a means to disturb perception. Montréal, where I live and work now, offers the right distance from the fashion capitals and the freedom to think differently. Here, experimentation is not only tolerated; it is expected.

TITILAYO: Let’s dive into your new work, Charlotte and Everybody Else [2025]. This collection explores faces that don’t exist in the real world, yet seem real enough to deceive recognition systems. What draws you to this boundary between the real and the artificial?

GAO: This work began with a simple question: What if we could create a face that belongs to no one, yet seems entirely plausible? A face that could trick not only a machine, but our own empathy. We live surrounded by systems that authenticate, verify, and categorize. Charlotte and Everybody Else is a reversal of that process; it fabricates illusion until illusion becomes credible. What attracts me is the tension between intimacy and fiction. These faces are ghosts of data, assembled by an algorithm, yet they awaken something human. They are both mirror and mask. I am interested in that brief moment of uncertainty, when recognition collapses, when the image stops being someone and becomes everyone.

Collection exploring facial recognition systems

Charlotte and Everybody Else. Photography byVincent René Lortie

TITILAYO: This piece is both a critique and a product of algorithmic potential; is technology an ally to you? An adversary, or something in between?

GAO: Technology is neither an ally nor an adversary. It is a medium, a mirror of our collective anxieties and desires. I treat it as a collaborator that resists simplification. It amplifies fragility, exposes our need for control, and sometimes reveals the absurdity of our own systems. When it fails, it becomes poetic. I am interested in this instability, where the machine is not simply an extension of human intention, but an autonomous presence capable of contradiction and failures.

TITILAYO: Fashion often revolves around the idea of creativity and self-expression, while algorithms are more rigid. How do you reconcile these opposing impulses in your work?

GAO: I don’t see them as opposites. Both fashion and algorithms rely on structure, rules, and patterns. What differs is intention. In my work, I let the algorithm introduce resistance into the creative process. It becomes a partner that generates complexity rather than predictability. The garment, in turn, negotiates between intuition and logic. The result is rather a tension.

TITILAYO: Can you talk about the specific technologies used in this project? For example, how do the faces ripple in response to the authentication system?

GAO: The project combines an identification protocol with a responsive surface system. Actuators and translucent composites translate digital uncertainty into physical movement. When the authentication process detects an anomaly, the signal triggers a subtle ripple across the facial surface, a gesture both mechanical and algorithmic. The movement is minimal, but it reveals the system’s doubt, materializing the space between data and uncertainty. The faces do not imitate life; they render visible the fragility of verification itself.

TITILAYO: In your 2024 collection, All Mirrors, you reference Umberto Eco’s idea that “mirrors provide both an impression of virtuality and an impression of reality.” How did you interpret that duality in your work?

GAO: A mirror is always ambiguous; it confirms presence while creating distance. In All Mirrors, I wanted to design garments that behave like mirrors: reflective but porous, tangible yet elusive. They don’t simply return an image; they question it. What you see is never exactly what is there. For me, that duality echoes the way we navigate identity today, oscillating between visibility and erasure, reality and simulation.

 
Mirrors collection menswear

All Mirrors Collection. Photography by Malina Corpadean.

 

TITILAYO: Still on your All Mirrors collection, how do you balance texture, motion, and functionality in your designs?

GAO: These elements form an “ensemble” rather than a hierarchy. Texture is what seduces, motion introduces time, functionality brings everything back to the body. I work with materials that retain a memory of movement, such as soft robotics, as well as reflective and flexible composites. The challenge is to create garments that remain unstable; tactile yet unpredictable.

TITILAYO: To what extent does being based in Montréal shape your perspective on design and technology in your work?

GAO: Being based in Montréal matters deeply. It is not a neutral location; it’s a city between languages, between speeds. I live and think in French, then in English, and in Chinese. This gives a different rhythm to the way I approach design. The French language carries nuance and delay. To me, it resists immediacy. That affects how I build a project, how I let an idea unfold. Montréal is a bilingual city, but for me, it remains profoundly francophone in its sensibility: curious, critical, open, and slightly detached from global acceleration. It’s not a city of excess; it’s a city of negotiation, of hybrid systems. That context allows me to work in the pauses and the intervals. It keeps me alert, and perhaps a little out of step, which I value.

TITILAYO: You’re also a professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal. How has teaching influenced your creative practice, and what subjects do you focus on with your students?

GAO: Teaching keeps me in dialogue with the present. My students move through an excess of images and information, yet they search for meaning within it. Watching how they make sense of this noise forces me to question my own pace. It’s a reciprocal process; their way of seeing redefines mine, and that exchange keeps the work intellectually alive. I teach fashion design in a broad sense, less about trend or style, more about influence and context. We talk about literature, film, and politics as much as about garments, because fashion is always a reflection of its time, its fears, and its desires. What I try to transmit is curiosity and a certain freedom of thought. I want them to see beyond their screens, to connect form with meaning. Teaching reminds me that fashion design should be a social act before it becomes an aesthetic one.

TITILAYO: Do the students inform or challenge your creative process?

GAO: Absolutely. My students question a lot of things, influences, function, intention, meaning. Their curiosity obliges me to revisit my own assumptions. They bring a freshness and urgency that prevents the work from becoming complacent. Their intuition often points to what matters most: how a garment can provoke reflection rather than please.

TITILAYO: What do you envision the future of fashion and technology to look like?

GAO: I imagine a future that is less about spectacle and more about consciousness. Technology will continue to evolve, but the true innovation will come from our ability to use it with restraint. Fashion will not disappear; it will transform into a form of awareness. I see garments as quiet interfaces, capable of remembering, hesitating. The most radical gesture might be simplicity, the ability of a piece to reveal its intelligence without showing it.

In camera collection piece

In Camera collection. Photography by Maude Arsenault

2526 collection, tech wear

2526 collection. Photography by Maude Arsenault

Rich In Your Ways: An Interview of Polite Society Designer Surmai Jain

 

Surmai Jain founder of Polite Society

 


interview by Parrie Chhajed


In the bustling streets of Bandra, nestled in a quiet corner, sits Polite Society Shop No.1. With an innovative approach to sustainable design, the label doesn’t just sell clothes; it facilitates an honest and respectful dialogue between its customers and the environment. Surmai Jain, founder and creative director, spent her formative years living between India, New York, and Armenia. This uniquely diverse life experience afforded her an aesthetic sensibility that is both coyly dramatic and delicately balanced. In just five years, she has built a brand whose concerted approach to responsible sourcing and scaling has bolstered her creative outcomes and earned her a loyal and steadily growing clientele.

PARRIE CHHAJED: I’d love to start with the story behind the name Polite Society. Where did it come from?

SURMAI JAIN: When I was naming the brand, I had my name, Surmai Jain, as an option. But I wanted it to feel more like a community, more like a society. While conducting research, the name 'Polite Society’ came to mind. It’s an old literary term referring to people with really good manners and a high standard of wealth. I thought it would be ironic for us to take that because money isn’t all that makes you rich. We have a tagline that says, “You can be rich in your ways,” which sums it all up.

CHHAJED: Your approach to modernity and individuality is very unique. What is the guiding philosophy behind the brand?

JAIN: I started from Rajasthan, went to Armenia, later Bombay, and then to New York. By the time I was twenty-five years old, when I started the label, I felt like I had already seen so many cultures and met so many different people who inspired me through life. Each place has made a very different impact on me, and it has shaped my understanding of the world. All of that helps me design for everyone: a woman, a man, or whoever. When we’re closing in on a design, I imagine myself or someone else wearing it. Do they feel good wearing it?

CHHAJED: How have your experiences in Mumbai, New York, and Armenia—places with wildly different perspectives on fashion—shaped your design sensibility?

JAIN: Fashion practices are different all over. In India, art is synonymous with what artisans are doing. It’s all about their legacies and heritage. In New York, it’s about individuality and self-expression. So, I take a little bit of everything. I also grew up painting and designing, and over time, I found my method of expression.

CHHAJED: Do you feel the way those traits translate specifically in your designs?

JAIN: I go through phases. Right now, I’m feeling more connected to my roots. Maybe it’s just being thirty-two. For this collection, and then the next one, we took inspiration from Rajasthan and used more techniques like Leheriya. Initially, I felt more like a modern designer, but as you search for more inspiration, it comes from your own stories. When you go deeper, being from a certain place makes those things feel valuable. Tomorrow, it could be something else. I might travel to some place and find inspiration there. We did handwork this time, and that’s been incredible. We did a banana leather appliqué with studs. Which is exciting because we are taking the handloom as a base, but doing it differently. 

Banana Leather Keychains

CHHAJED: I think that’s what translating our culture into the language of modernity is all about at the end of the day. Your career path took you from painting to graphic design, and ultimately, to fashion. Do those varying disciplines inform one another? 

JAIN: A hundred percent. It’s all because of that. For example, if you look at the space. We took a lot of time designing it and attending to the smallest details. When you do graphics, you see the same thing in a different light. So, whether you’re designing clothes or a space, you have to have your aesthetics and philosophy in place. Because I learned graphics as a medium, I did our initial branding myself. It was important to make my own universe first and then bring people in and expand it. Right now, we are doing a little rebrand, so I went to someone else and asked for help, but I wasn’t able to outsource in the beginning.

With painting, one of the key pieces that we started with was a few shirts that had illustrations on them. Those were hand-done by me. So initially,  there was a lot of work that I would do myself to set the tone.

CHHAJED: What are the key elements of Polite Society’s design language?

JAIN: One major thing that I like to do is blend the highs and the lows. It’s interesting to create an odd contrast that looks beautiful with elements like finished and unfinished hems. Or in the store, you can see how the glass meets the concrete. One of the earlier key pieces we had at the store was a half-and-half pant that started as a pair of trousers and then transitioned to denim. I like to play with contrast and then balance the femininity with a little bit of masculinity. If we design a dress, I like to add an element to make it a little masculine. It always has to be balanced.

CHHAJED: Can you talk about the brand’s approach to sustainability and if there have been any hurdles that you’ve faced in pursuit of it?

JAIN:  Many companies don’t talk about it, but sometimes you have a bad lot. Once, we sent our denim for a wash, and it came back spoiled. What do you do with it? It hurts because of the work that has already been put in. So, we used that fabric and made corsets. That piece is completely made from deadstock that we couldn’t use. Everyone loved it, and we even considered trying to wash our denim like this.

AAdditionally we've tried some new accessories. These key chains are made from banana leather. Because why not? I met someone who was doing that, and I think it’s better than using animal products.

CHHAJED: What are some of the other non-fashion influences that shape your work in general?

JAIN: Music culture influences me because I grew up listening to a lot of R&B. Often, when you’re designing, you think, If she wore it, that would be nice. For me, it’s always powerful women who are in music and owning it. You can see that being translated into the designs. It wasn’t just about being objectified. It was the overall aura and personality.

CHHAJED: Are there any musicians whose work you’ve translated in any of your collections?

JAIN: Georgia Smith. During one of the earlier collections, I would listen to her the whole time. There are now these women like Sabrina, but back when I was in school, we had Rihanna. I feel like no matter what, the world always comes back to her. 

CHHAJED: Polite Society has a unique niche. How do you approach marketing and building your audience?

JAIN: I just try to stay true to myself. A lot is going on in the industry, and everyone’s just trying to make space for themselves. As designers in this competitive space, if you let that get to you, it will not go well for your mental health. Early on, I felt like I could connect with my consumers. We had experiences that fortified the idea that if I had a store tomorrow, they would show up. We did pop-ups in our studio in Marol, and people were willing to come all the way there to try on pieces. When we saw them try it on and immediately get convinced, that’s when we knew we were doing something right. Those small moments shaped it all.

Being in touch with the consumer has helped. We don’t work in isolation. We opened a studio so people could come in and talk. I always ask, “Which one do you like? What do you not like? What would you want?” People are pretty honest. We have also been working with cool singers and artists from the start, like Kavya Trehan and Liza Mishra, who’ve grown alongside us and fostered a sense of community. They still want to wear Polite.

For the marketing aspect, you need clarity of vision. You need to know where you want to go and make choices on how to grow.

CHHAJED: Sticking to your brand value is difficult in such a saturated world. What have been some of the biggest challenges of running an independent label in India?

JAIN: One massive challenge is producing things. In this space, you either know how to get it done or figure it out doing your own. It’s not organized; you can’t just say, “I want this done this way” and expect someone to do it for you. It comes through experience and team building. As you grow, people’s expectations increase daily. We want to meet those expectations, but it takes a lot of effort. While it’s challenging to grow, maintaining what you’ve done at a smaller scale is equally important.

I learned pattern making because I had to. Otherwise, I would just be imagining random things. You should be able to tell someone, even if not to the letter, how you want it constructed. If you can’t let go and communicate that to someone else, it’s over.

And also the team. I tend to have designers who aren’t afraid to try things, do trials, and drape it themselves. It’s not just about drawing on a piece of paper; it’s a lot of hands-on work.

 
 

CHHAJED: What does the future hold for Polite Society?

JAIN: We’re just trying to take it where it can go. We want to start with India properly and place ourselves in the major cities. Polite Society does have online purchases, but I know that our audience likes to try things on before they buy. I’m traveling and working simultaneously, but these are the steps required for placing yourself on the map. And I also love meeting other creators. I’m traveling to London for work soon. I haven’t done this since New York, which was a while ago, so now, of course, I want to do things outside; outside of studios, and the city, and get ourselves as far out there.

CHHAJED: What piece of advice would you give to aspiring designers who want to have their own space in the industry?

JAIN: Be true to yourself. Your brand vision has to come from within. If you’re looking up to other designers, don’t look to copy or recreate it. You don’t want that. You just want to be you. Business-wise, everything has to make you money. Designers often forget this because they think some angel is going to come and things will suddenly work out commercially.

If you’re building a business, then you have to get your numbers right. Are you making sure that this is something you can replicate at least ten times to make some money? Is it something that can sustain in the industry, or is it just uplifting? 

A Conversation with Amanda McGowan and Mattie Rivkah Barringer of Women's History Museum


text by Karly Quadros

It was February 2024, and one model at the Women’s History Museum show couldn’t stop falling over. Determined, she trundled down the runway only to trip once again. The culprits were obvious: two enormous, cumbersome brown boxing gloves attached to the toes of classic stilettos. “Take them off!” cried members of the audience, a mixture of fashion insiders and queer iconoclasts. Still, the model made it to the end and hoisted the gloves in her hand, triumphant. K.O.

Unlike most New York footwear, the shoes of Women’s History Museum are not designed with functionality as a priority. In a city where pedestrians reign supreme and comfort is a must, the shoes of fashion label/art duo/vintage store curators Amanda McGowan and Mattie Rivkah Barringer are here to tell a story. Whether they’re white wedding heels bedazzled with a clatter of bones and colorful pills or gold boxing slippers rendered into precarious platforms by two wooden pillars, the shoes of Women’s History Museum exist in the sweet spot between strength and softness, power and precarity, barbarity and beauty.

Vintage remains an essential reference point for the duo. They maintain a carefully curated secondhand designer shop on Canal Street, sort of a modern-day SEX, stocked with everything from ‘80s Vivienne Westwood and ‘90s Gaultier to Edwardian furs and linens. In a similar style to early Alexander McQueen, Barringer and McGowan mine fashion references of the past – Victorian riding boots, rocking horse platforms, 70s crocodile skin clogs – for highly stylized fashion performances that entice as much as they reject traditional categories of beauty. The result is something that feels entirely 2025 in all its shredded, everything-out-in-the-open glory. Throughout Women History Museum’s nine staged collections, they return to similar references: animal prints and pelts; competitive sports, particularly boxing; and New York City, with the coins and shattered glass that cover the sidewalks. The clothes bare skin and barb it too.

Shoes, in many ways, remain the ultimate fetish object. They’re exalted, often the most expensive part of an outfit, yet they spend most of the day in contact with the filthy sidewalk. They’re civilizing, often constricting, and conceal the foot, which remains almost as hidden from public life as the body’s most nether regions. Shoes have often been used to control women as with painful and restrictive footbinding practices, yet their erotic potential is undeniable, as with the long, sensuous lines created in the body with a clear plastic pleaser. It’s no wonder that they served as the basis for Women’s History Museum’s latest show at Company Gallery, on display until June 21. Autre caught up with Barringer and McGowan to talk stilettos, surrealism, and the seriously sinister parts of living – and walking – in New York City.


KARLY QUADROS: Can you tell me about the inception of the show?

AMANDA MCGOWAN: We started working with Taylor Trabulus at Company many years ago.  Not very long after we started, she wanted to do a pop-up shop with us.

We were gonna maybe do an art show with her in the city at some other gallery, but there was drama and it didn't work out. Then she got promoted at Gavin Brown where she was working at the time, and basically she out of nowhere gave us this big art show opportunity there in 2018. After Gavin Brown ended [in 2020], she went to Company Gallery and we did another solo show there, and then they signed us on as artists. We've been working with them since Covid, like 2021. 

This show was actually their idea. It was their idea to do an overview of all the shoes that we've done over the past five years because we actually didn't realize how many we have done. There’s a lot and they're all different. Some have been seen in an art context. Some were in fashion shows. But in a way, they work as standalone art objects, so it made sense to show them in that way. 

The displays that we created for the show, those platforms, were actually wall works that we did for the show at Company in 2021. We made all these prints on paper and then we did these collages imitating ads because that show in 2021 was about recreating an abandoned mall space. The panels were to mimic advertising or storefront environments.

QUADROS: The shoe is such a deceptively simple concept, but there’s a lot that emerges when you see them all next to each other like that. At Autre, our last issue just went to press and the theme was ‘desire.’ We actually had Mia Khalifa on the cover wearing your paw shoe.

MCGOWAN: I saw that! We were talking recently – speaking of desire – about how there is such a sexual element to shoes, a sensuality.

QUADROS: They’re the ultimate fetish object.

MCGOWAN: They are. There’s something about seeing the shoe alone too, not on a foot, which is its own fetish.

QUADROS: Can you talk a little bit about how fetish and sexuality play into your design practice here in the show and elsewhere?

MCGOWAN: I feel like clothes have such a relationship to those topics because there’s such a rapport with the human form, with the body. I feel like it’s one of the reasons it’s not considered an art form because it has this feminine and bodily quality to it that makes it segmented away from formal art world consideration for most people.

MATTIE RIVKAH BARRINGER: There’s just so much loaded with fashion mentally for people. Women are expected to be sexually available or sexually pleasing in a patriarchal society, and clothing is such an interesting way to interfere in those types of codes and signals and take ownership over being specimenized in this way as a woman. 

MCGOWAN: Inherently, clothing and shoes are binding the body. There is this kind of BDSM quality to clothing, and shoes specifically – there’s something about a heel controlling the foot, constricting it, the animal claw within the shoe. There’s something very animalic about human feet – this kind of unruly, weird part of the body – and aestheticizing and controlling it with this beautiful shoe. 

We use a lot of animalic references in the shoes as well. There’s something about female sexuality and animal prints, animal symbology that I feel is somehow connected. Specifically in the fashion industry and in art history, the connection between the animal and the sexual and the woman is so saturated in the imagery. It also, I think, has been interpreted in contemporary feminism perhaps as a degrading comparison. We’re interested in that comparison because I feel like there can be a degrading aspect of it, but then there’s also this other countercurrent where it is kind of positive: I think of Jungian psychology, the positive anima where you’re in this positive relationship acknowledging the animal side of yourself as a human animal. Something about that to us is interesting or empowering to think about. 

And yet, at the same time, we’re trying to point out the possibly negative ways that humans can be animals towards each other in a very cruel world. There’s a lot of very dualistic things about the whole animal reference that is interesting to us in our work.

QUADROS: It’s interesting because fashion is one of the major things that separates humans from animals. We adorn our bodies; animals do not. There’s something maybe post-human about it – does that resonate with you?

BARRINGER:  I feel like throughout time, women and animals have been exploited and used in a lot of ways. So there's also that connection where there's something inherently feminine perhaps about animals too.

MCGOWAN: Everybody does participate in adorning themselves whether or not they consider themselves interested in fashion. It's an activity that is distinctly human.

BARRINGER: In its more negative permutations, the actual industry and making of clothing has a cruelty that we could attribute to like the animalistic behavior of just devouring and consumption.

QUADROS: Some of the shoes – for instance the ones with the bent and broken hooves – recall the sculptures of Meret Oppenheim. I also think of the cloven toe of Margiela tabis, which I’ve seen elicit really strong reactions from people who aren’t invested in fashion. Can you talk a little bit about your exploration of abjection, the uncanny, and yuckiness in your work?

MCGOWAN:  There's such a fine line between femininity being beautiful and being abject.  Within the patriarchal reality spectacle, if a woman has too much makeup and you can tell that she's wearing makeup, it's grotesque, but if she's wearing the type of makeup that really makes her look natural or youthful, then she's beautifully feminine.

We’re very interested in this historical time travel – what the codes were at one time that are different from now and how different depictions and ideals of femininity throughout time contradict the ones we have now.

BARRINGER: Also living in New York City is so abject. We’re very close to abjection all the time. There’s something very medieval about being in New York City. When I’m making something that I think is beautiful, it makes sense to have something abject as part of it in a weird way because it feels like that’s the world that I’m in. It feels more true.

QUADROS: Do you guys have any gross or crazy New York stories?

MCGOWAN: My God, where do I begin? The first show that we did that was a big production last February, somebody punched Mattie in the face on the subway, literally going to see the venue.

QUADROS: Oh my God, I’m so sorry.

MCGOWAN: I feel like New York City has gotten so crazy. It’s like an open air institution.

BARRINGER: I’m surprised that I haven’t seen a dead body yet in New York. I feel like the area we’re in feels so charged from a past time. Looking into New York history, that area used to be like the financial district. It was a port because it’s right on the water, and there was crazy stuff happening there throughout time. You can feel that history.

QUADROS: I feel like that’s certainly reflected in New York fashion right now. Your clothes feel really interested in the messiness or the intensity of the city.

MCGOWAN: I think it feels more, like you’re saying, like the reality. We’re in a time where you’re very confronted with reality. There is a need for fantasy as well, which we try to do, but we also need to acknowledge the reality at the same time.

BARRINGER: Fantasy needs to be mitigated with something that feels more honest to us.

QUADROS: New York is so known for its extremely functional shoes – power suits and sneakers, squishy foamy Crocs. They have to be functional since it’s a city ruled by pedestrians. Meanwhile the shoes in the show are distinctly less functional: towering wooden platforms, Victorian-style shin braces. What do you think of when you think of New York footwear? How do your own designs work with or against that?

MCGOWAN: Mattie has always worn platforms since I’ve known her for the past fifteen years.

BARRINGER: I find platforms easy to walk in, but I just have always wanted to be taller. I’m five foot three, so I always wanted to be tall.

MCGOWAN: She always wears Vivienne Westwood rocking horse shoes, which for me, I probably wouldn’t be able to walk around the city in them, but for her, they’re comfortable. 

BARRINGER: I like being above street level when I can ‘cause it feels very beautiful. I feel cleaner somehow.

QUADROS: My dear friend who lived here for a long time told me when I moved here, don’t wear open-toed shoes unless it’s a platform because a rat will run over your feet.

BARRINGER: (laughs) A hundred percent. My husband, he’s from Singapore, so he likes wearing open-toed shoes, and he only wears flats. He’s the only New Yorker that I’ve ever seen who wears sandals on the ground.

MCGOWAN: I do think there’s an obsession. For me, I wouldn’t wear heels all the time in New York. We’re interested in the fantasy of what shoes could be. If I could make a shoe that I could wear every day, not in a practical way, what would it look like? That’s how they also become an art object because they’re not really functional things. These ones have a bit of a defensive quality, like they have a weapon built in basically.

BARRINGER: We felt so enveloped in the New York atmosphere. We were really looking at the buildings and the statues. This post-human thing where you are becoming the city, the metal and the hard building materials felt like something that we were really talking about with the clothes we were doing in the last year.

QUADROS: In many ways, it’s the exact opposite of the ballet flat, which has recently come back.

MCGOWAN: And it’s not comfortable either. I used to wear ballet flats all the time when I was younger, and my feet always hurt.

BARRINGER: There’s no support.

MCGOWAN: I’m always frustrated with shoe options. My whole life, I’m always dissatisfied with what’s available and what is functional but attractive. Even though there’s a lot of shoes, a lot of them are not great in different ways.

QUADROS: What have you settled on now?

MCGOWAN: I wear Marithé Francois Girbaud vintage shoes because there’s something about the split soles, the rubber shoe, it laces up the front. It’s a supportive ankle situation. Something about the way that those shoes are made are so comfortable to me but they’re also attractive. Like they don’t look like grandma.

The boys in New York City will stop me all the time and be like, “Bro, your shoes are so sick.” And I’m just like, “They’re just comfortable.”

QUADROS: When you’re sourcing now, where are you looking in terms of beauty and inspiration?

MCGOWAN: It’s almost like we’re thinking about archaeology or something. Our practice of souring materials and vintage can feel quite archaeological and specific, looking for, I don’t know, maybe a narrative or an untold story. I think for our next collection we’re thinking about archaeology as this search for self and identity through clothing and also thinking of these as artifacts or monumental objects.

I don’t think we’re going to do an actual fashion show. We’re going to do a lookbook in tandem with an art exhibition, so we’re also thinking of clothing that’s going to stand on its own and not really have to be in movement.

BARRINGER: We always think of ourselves as weird time travelers from a time that didn’t exist. Like historical futurism.

QUADROS: The Fifth Element. Spaceships, but also the pyramids.

BARRINGER: Exactly. There’s so much history and so many stories, people’s individuality that we don’t know about throughout time.

QUADROS: So you’re not doing New York Fashion Week then?

MCGOWAN: We are not this year. We might release a lookbook around Fashion Week, but we’re not doing a show until next year. We’re burnt out. We’re very interested in doing more shows in the future. We really want to take time to do a show in Paris in the future. So we just need to regroup and take time. 

Fashion moves so fast, and it’s not always realistic to create things at that level when you’re self-funded. It’s just us and our interns. It’s not like we have a giant team. For us, this has been the most rigorous fashion schedule that we’ve shown on. It’s been three shows within the space of a year.

And doing runway is a lot. It doesn’t look like it’s as much work as doing an art show or an exhibition, but it’s actually so much harder in comparison when you don’t have endless resources to pour into it. It’s one of the hardest types of creation because there’s not only the functionality of the garment, there’s the live element. It’s basically working for six months on something that’s gonna be seen for twenty minutes. You have to have so many relationships and people involved. In New York especially it’s hard to find venues. It’s a whole thing.

QUADROS: Fashion Week is in a weird place right now too. Your show in particular had a lot of buzz, a lot of really positive responses that what you’re doing is something unique.

MCGOWAN: Thank you. And we don’t wanna abandon New York. I think a lot of our inspiration and identity is very linked to this place, but it’s an experiment that we want to show in Paris. We’re also interested in French fashion history and that lineage. So it feels like a personal goal.

Image courtesy of Company Gallery

Crumb Hearts: Sonya Sombreuil in Conversation with Dan Nadel

Sonya Sombrueil of Come Tees and writer Dan Nadel talk Robert Crumb, Eric Kroll, and watching the dirty old man go from artist to muse.

Image credit: Eric Kroll

interview by Karly Quadros

For a certain kind of weirdo, R. Crumb is a god. The grandfather of underground comix, his work teems with a highly specific dirty-little-bugger-ness that hit just as 1960s San Francisco counterculture was getting into full swing. He defined a sickly funny visual language that inspired the likes of ‘90s alt comic anti-heroes like Daniel Clowes and Jamie Hewlett as well as painters like Louise Bonnet and Nicole Eisenman. In his cartoons, Crumb depicts himself as a combination of ornery, neurotic, and randy, chasing down (or fleeing in terror from) Catholic schoolgirls with chubby thighs and languorous hippie chicks with their asses hanging out of their bell bottoms. His fetishes are unmistakable; a Crumb girl exists in a category all her own. 

His other character creations share similar cult status. Mr. Natural, a guru with a Santa Claus beard and a priapic nose, was a great dispenser of ‘60s absurdist wisdom, while his relentlessly bootlegged Keep on Truckin’ cartoon fetches prices in the hundreds if you manage to find a vintage t-shirt carrying its image. Perhaps nothing captures Crumb’s signature cocktail of sleazy satire like his comic strip Fritz the Cat about an unrepentantly hedonistic hipster tabby cat. An X-rated film adaptation of the comic strip from cult animator Ralph Bakshi was released in 1972; Crumb was so worked up over creative differences with the filmmakers that he immediately killed off the beloved Fritz, dispatched by a scorned ex-girlfriend who stabbed him in the back of the head with an ice pick.

In recent years, the art world has grown to embrace Crumb’s work a little more. A 1994 documentary by Terry Zweigoff on Crumb brought his work to a larger audience, and he’s now represented by David Zwirner. Crumb’s notebooks, full of obscene jokes and intrusive thoughts, sell for around a million dollars each. On display is his adamant lack of self-censorship but also a technically dense, exuberantly gestural personal style.

Sonya Sombreuil, artist and founder of the LA streetwear brand Come Tees, has found a muse in R. Crumb, inspiring a limited collection of t-shirts, panties, and long sleeves emblazoned with Crumb’s artwork. The collection’s campaign is shot by legendary fetish photographer Eric Kroll who, in addition to his landmark “Sex Objects” series has also shot Robert Mapplethorpe, Grace Jones, Madonna, Kenneth Anger, and Andy Warhol. Sombreuil was joined by Dan Nadel whose biography, Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life, is out April 15. The two discussed Crumb, fetish, photography, and flesh.

KARLY QUADROS: When did you first encounter Robert Crumb’s work?

SONYA SOMBREUIL: My parents had a TV in their bedroom and underneath their TV there was a dubbed tape that just said CRUMB in big red block letters. As a little kid I was like, oh, that must be for kids. And my dad was like, “Nope, don’t watch that yet.” I grew up immersed in ‘60s, ‘70s counterculture ephemera. So I encountered it really early, and my dad would always get me Crumb for Christmas.

DAN NADEL:  I first found the work because I was at a comic book convention when I was like twelve or thirteen. The dealer asked what I was into and I said “Maus,” so he handed me American Splendor, which had this great Crumb cover and Crumb stories inside. Those were written by Harvey Pekar. They're these amazing tales of working class Cleveland and record collecting and just like quotidian life, and those drawings just totally knocked me out. A year later in a used bookstore, I found a copy of Head Comix. I was with my dad, and he bought it for me. I don't even think he looked inside. That rearranged my head.

It also felt completely normal for some reason. It was very familiar. I knew it was my own little world, but it was completely familiar to me.

SOMBREUIL: It’s funny that he has this corrupting influence.

NADEL: It’s educational, Sonya. How dare you? [laughs]

SOMBREUIL: For me it was! I guess I’m lucky.

NADEL: It’s true.  For a lot of us – I mean, for me – he was part of a gateway to all other art. A real inspiration in that way. It opens up a lot of other interesting doors.

SOMBREUIL: Before I got the subject matter, I knew it was for me.

NADEL: It’s weird when you find things there for you. I felt the same feeling when, like fifteen years later, I first ran across Christopher Forgues and Paper Rad and Fort Thunder. It was like, oh yeah, this was made just for me. It’s a curious thing.

QUADROS: There’s a recognition there. For me, Crumb is the ultimate avatar of the outsider, a helm that was then taken up by the likes of Daniel Clowes and Charles Burns. In the 20th century, there was some edge to the people who embraced or satirized their neurotic preoccupations, but these days it seems like our whole world is ruled by repressed and intrusive thoughts run amok. Is there a danger in identifying too closely with being an outsider?

SOMBREUIL:  No. Crumb’s work, and why it's so important now, is the Charlie Brown phenomenon. Charlie Brown is the anomaly in his universe, but we're all Charlie Brown. And I feel the same way about Crumb's work. It's the recesses of your psyche. That was his content. He portrayed himself as this disgusting, irascible person, but he wasn't lauding those ideas. He was just revealing them. 

I think what's interesting about now is that there's a lot of people feeling offended. But actually, I think that the stigmas that are important to our society are ones that Crumb upheld in this work. And I think some of those stigmas have deteriorated in kind of a messed up way that I'm not sure we've seen the end of. People talk about the idea of decency or something – like obviously his work is indecent, but that's the point.

NADEL:  That's the point. It makes me think of Steve Albini, another avatar of edgelordiness. Before he died, he talked about how he regretted being so edgelordy, that he didn't quite realize that the stuff could be taken the wrong way. But at the same time, he remained this highly moral character with a really strong set of values. And what's so interesting about someone like Crumb is that, yeah, he gave vent to all this misogyny and racism. He also critiqued it, and it was also extremely clear where he stood.

It's still a blinking red warning sign at work. Even though it feels like it's too late for the warnings in some ways, his sense of awareness still feels very important even if we're completely swept up in it, like a tidal wave, swept up in the nastiness. But I think it's still really important. 

The thing about guys like Clowes and or someone like Julie Doucet or Robert, Aline [Kominsky-Crumb, Robert Crumb’s wife who is also a cartoonist], is that no matter where we are, that feeling of being outside is always accompanied by a really deep sense of self-reflection and, in many cases, deep self-loathing that is paired with a real meditative attempt to look inside and understand what it's all about. That, I think, is also a crucial difference between edgelord kinda work because they're really trying to understand. They're not just trying to fuck with you.

Image credit: Eric Kroll

SOMBREUIL: I’ve been talking about Crumb as a kind of wounded healer. He has these emotional and psychological wounds that he’s vociferous about, and in his own family, [you see] the effect that those wounds could have if they are accompanied by a different set of actions other than artmaking. But paradoxically, he’s healing the society that produces those kinds of wounds. When we shun that kind of work or say it’s a problem, you lose the potential impact of looking at yourself and looking at the world you live in.

NADEL: A s Robert would say, you have to deal with it. He always says “I’m both Mr. Natural and Flakey Foont.” He's the wise man and the fool. As he's gotten older, I think there is this instinct to heal. I think there always was this… wanting to understand and making work that would exercise these demons as much as show them. 

SOMBREUIL:  I heard this expression recently that someone said. They said this is a perverted attempt at healing. And a very literal attempt.

QUADROS: It makes me think a little bit about punk as a subculture. There’s this perverted sense of both reflecting and healing the ills of society. Crumb’s work especially was very integral to developing the aesthetics of punk and zine culture, underground comix.

NADEL: That was one of the fun things about writing this, realizing that influence didn't stop at hippiedom and it didn't stop in comics. One of the things that got me wanting to do it in the first place was knowing that the late Mike Kelley was a huge fan. Punk magazine was in part inspired by Crumb and then made fun of him, in this great judo move. Then people like Mike Kelley or Jim Shaw would take it up and put it through a conceptual blender. 

It just continues to have so many lives right up to the surprise that Sonya was so into it. The surprise that someone outside of my purview would be at all into it and so game was so much fun. It was such a great surprise because you never really know with him. I know that he's not forgotten because there's so much hubbub around the book, but you never know who's reading and who out there that's making art is into his work.

QUADROS: When you were making Come Tees, Sonya, were those some of the aesthetics you were drawing from when you were first beginning that label?

SOMBREUIL: Definitely. He is a looming figure in my personal cosmology.

I realize he’s that for a lot of artists. It’s like being into Jimi Hendrix when you’re into music. But it definitely feels very personal to me, like it’s possible to have a personal relationship with an icon. I tried being various forms of a Crumb girl for Halloween many years in a row. I tried putting cross hatching on my face. Come Tees, especially early Come Tees, had a lot of those qualities, cross hatched figures and speech bubbles, very conventional comic imagery.

NADEL: Did you ever make comics?

SOMBREUIL: I need an artist grant so that I can write my comic. Oh yeah, the least moneyed genre of all time.

NADEL: Maybe it would be worse if you were a poet, but otherwise… [laughs]

SOMBREUIL: In a way I’m a cultural dilettante. Compared to people who are into comic books, I don’t know almost anything. I know Art Spiegelman, the greats, but I’m into them profoundly. I really love the genre that is not fantasy. Did you say the word is prosaic?

NADEL: Nonfiction?

SOMBREUIL: Quotidian.

NADEL: You and me both.

QUADROS: Since you mentioned being a Crumb girl for Halloween, maybe you can talk a bit about the editorial and how you went about trying to capture the essence of the Crumb girl.

SOMBREUIL:  I have been obsessed with Eric Kroll for a few years. I had an amazing epiphany when I actually met him. I thought that I was obsessed with his archive that he posts all the time. But then I realized I was just obsessed with his constant posting, which is similar [to the editorial], totally mundane. No one in my generation could ever post like that. [laughs] It's amazing. He's so funny. I realized that I had misunderstood my interest in him. 

Many years ago, I reached out to him without knowing almost anything about him. I reached out to him to see if he would shoot for me, and he said, “I don't see how I fit into your world.” I was like, maybe we could meet up and talk about it. And he was like, meet me at this diner. But then I realized it was in Tucson. [laughs]

NADEL: Seriously? It was in Tucson?

SOMBREUIL: That’s where he lives! We all flew there.

NADEL: I always assumed he lived in LA.

SOMBREUIL: I did too. But no, he lives in Tucson.

NADEL: You flew there? Where?

SOMBREUIL: We stayed in a hotel. He offered to put us up, but there’s literally no standing room.  His house was incredible. I had no idea that he had shot the cover of the Zweigoff documentary. He was just like, “Oh yeah, they hated how much I charged them for my Crumb photo.” And I was like, “Oh what was your Crumb photo?” [laughs]

NADEL: That’s incredible.

SOMBREUIL: And then I just have intimate knowledge of what a Crumb girl is.

I had a couple friends who were down, who I knew were like in the archetype. It was an amazing thing because they're artists too. There was this really cool flip where Crumb and Kroll are actually our muses, these two artists who fetishize women.

Everyone knew what the assignment was. We all feel like we gained like a best friend. He just wanted to shoot things on his iPhone. He ended up making all these extravagant requests for different cameras, and I rounded up all of it and then he was like, “I hate these machines!” So he just shot everything with his phone.

NADEL: It’s such an interesting thing, that flip, because I showed Robert the Kroll photos. I explained because he’s still so… Crumb, that he couldn’t get his head around the idea that some young – meaning under the age of 50 – some young artists, particularly young female artists, would be even the slightest bit interested in him. Which, at a certain point, he should get over since young artists of all genders have been interested in him for about sixty years. But I showed him those pictures and he was like, “Oh my God, they really got it. They really understand what it is.”

And he’s self-aware enough to understand that what you got wasn’t just appealing to his kinks, but what you got was a particular way of thinking about the body and of embracing one’s body. I think he even used the term ‘body positivity.’ I was like, “Where did you learn that?” [laughs]

To make somebody like Kroll or Crumb your muses is such a great reversal because it flips the power. And it also lets them relax in a funny sort of way. It’s okay, now somebody else can make the art. There are other people in the game, and that’s good. It’s a good thing that it’s neither slavish imitation nor highfalutin, conceptual stuff. It’s just this other strain. For somebody like Crumb, who’s always been very generous about that, it’s refreshing and cool, especially in this mode, to see your treatment of the graphics. The things you picked were so left field and so interesting. 

It’s just great to have another set of eyes, another mind on this stuff that isn’t usually getting to play with it. Despite how much we love Kroll and Crumb, it’s remained within a fairly circumscribed set of people or a certain aesthetic for decades. It’s so cool to see it broken out of that mode. Nobody else would’ve chosen those images or nobody else would’ve designed things the way you designed them. They’re just completely making it fresh again.

SOMBREUIL:  I rewatched the documentary when you had first contacted me, and I was really moved by it because I felt first of all: the archetype of the outsider, that's still my inner monologue. I resonate with it so much. It's not an adolescent thing. It's eternal. And there's a lot of agony in that. 

It's funny, as a female viewer of his comics, because those comics had his idealized female form and it was like, “Hair? Unimportant. Face? Unimportant. Race? Unimportant. All that matters is they have big muscular thighs.” It felt like it gave me permission. Its soul breaks from the incredibly oppressive standards that are forced upon women. Both angles of it were healing for me. 

I thought a lot about the ways that Kroll and Crumb are the same and the way they're different. The women that they represent, the women in their worlds are almost always playing along on some level. When you think of Aline as a character, she's intelligent and she's bawdy and she is neurotic, and he portrays her so lovingly. It's an important feature in his work. 

NADEL:  I started on the journey of this book seven years ago. I was at an art opening actually. I was at a dinner and I was seated next to this woman named Sarah Lazin, and we got to talking. It turned out that she had moved to San Francisco in the late sixties and went to work for Rolling Stone magazine. She was part of this crew of female editorial workers who banded together in that time to to work together against these, you can imagine, ultimate macho rock assholes of the universe at that time. She's a badass. And she told me, “Crumb gave me permission to feel okay about my body.” And that kind of gave me a way in. Because I then interviewed a lot of women from that era, many of whom said the same thing, that his drawings were the first time that they felt okay about the way they looked.

There's a flip side to that, which can be a little bit like what my friend Naomi texted me the other day. She was joking, but it was partly real. She was like, “Did Crumb used to love bomb?’” There's a little bit of “I understand your body, no one else.”

But if you didn't know him, and you were Sarah, let's say, and it's the era of Twiggy and Peggy Lipton, I think that vision of women was really liberating. Obviously there was a lot about it that was also not so good. But nothing is. We all want things to be black or white, and it's all a big gray. 

SOMBREUIL: But I think the whole point is that women are treated sadistically, and that it’s sympathetic towards them. Like in the same comic I was walking about, he talks about the “sadistic women’s shoe industry.” And he says something like the tragic aspect is that these women have been the subject of ridicule their whole lives and have a negative self-image. It’s so compassionate.

And obviously there’s straight up obscenity, but that’s where humor is involved. Nothing is funny to everybody, and humor depends a little bit on taboos. There’s the funny, fucked up part of it, and then there’s the part of it that I think is incredibly sensitive.

NADEL: I agree. It’s interesting though because, of course, there’s another part of him. There’s a great interview from ‘68 or ‘69 where the interview goes, “You don’t really feel this way about women, do you?” It was about one of the Snatch comics. He says, “Sometimes I hate women.” There is that, that you have to contend with, but it’s part of the package. I guess what I’m saying is that some of it, you can’t even excuse. It’s just gnarly. But it’s part of the greater body of work.

Image credit: Eric Kroll

SOMBREUIL: You can’t defend it, and I don’t identify with all of it, but I think that the greater effect of it on a person, or at last on myself, was that it’s about objectification itself as a phenomenon. And a lot of it is about how women objectify men.

NADEL: It’s not something that has been written about much actually. It should be more. There’s much more nuance in all that work than he would lead you to believe. He’s often his own worst advocate in that sense.

SOMBREUIL: I think he has said that he doesn’t know where a lot of it comes from.

NADEL: That's right.

SOMBREUIL: It’s like this funny fairytale we have about drugs, that you take them once and you have ego death and then you’re just connected to the collective unconscious. That’s, to me, a funny way of talking about him, but it’s like he connected somewhere to something that’s very dark and twisted and resonant, and he has not taken full responsibility for it in a way that I relate to as an artist.

NADEL: That’s really interesting. There’s no explaining it. Bob Dylan said he didn’t know where the songs came from either. I think it’s the same with Robert. He connected into this larger consciousness, and he stayed with it for a very long time.

He’s still with it. He showed me a comic he’s working on. It’s all about paranoia, and it’s right on the money. It’s so specific to him, but he has this ability to be talking right at the reader, saying things that seem like they’re just the product of his own very particular imagination until you realize he’s talking about all of us, and that we all have this baseline paranoia, or a baseline set of visual cues or languages that we share. Somehow he both keyed into that and then iterated it so that it became his own. It’s highly unusual. You’re right, he doesn’t fully take responsibility for it, and maybe that’s good. Otherwise he’d be a whole other kind of artist. He can’t explain it. He refuses to.

SOMBREUIL: For someone who produced things that piss so many people off, for him to not accept full authorship of it is probably not the best PR.

NADEL: No. Terrible. [laughs]

SOMBREUIL:  But I think what he's saying is very truthful, which is that like he doesn't know where it comes from, and what he is responsible for is his technical ability to relay it. As corny as it is, it's like the artist as a mystic.

QUADROS: In some ways, it makes me think of the word ‘fetish’ and its origins as something religious or mystical, a ‘fetish object.’ It’s not just your kinks, but an object that gains higher meaning, a grander meaning than the sum of its parts. His obsession with it has imbued more inside of it. Not that he’s the first artist to make art about his fetishes, of course.

NADEL: But what he’s doing that’s different is that it’s in comics, so it’s not obscured. It’s so direct because it’s on paper and in a stack of things that you find in the basement or on a tape. The difference between it and, let’s say, Picasso or de Kooning or John Currin making art about their fetishes is that there’s no separation between you and the thing. You don’t have to go anywhere to experience it. The thing that you’re holding is the thing. It becomes a much more direct relationship.

SOMBREUIL: I never thought about that. Like the personability of privacy. It’s like a porno.

NADEL: Totally because you can lay in bed and read it. That was one of the great pleasures of comics in general growing up. It was my own thing. You watch a movie, somebody can walk in. You’re in an art museum or an art gallery, somebody’s going to be on their phone or whatever. But holding that thing… I think that’s one of the reasons why people feel that Crumb is theirs in a way that people don’t normally feel about other artists.

SOMBREUIL: His innovation is another flip, which is that the object of desire is often totally repugnant. You think about a John Currin, and it’s unrelenting. It’s quite sinister.

NADEL: I love those. Not all of them, but I love some of them a lot because they’re so thorough and twisted.

SOMBREUIL: Yeah, but to me the misogyny is much more evident there than in a Crumb comic where everything about it is obscene. Somehow that makes it a little bit easier to understand what he’s talking about. The nuance of it.

NADEL: Painting can be so nuanced, but it exists in a particular structure whereas comics have space to stretch out. And even though it’s maybe a more limited pictorial language with fewer tools – it’s just ink on paper – I think it does allow for a certain amount more nuance, especially in those areas.

[phone chimes]

SOMBREUIL: Would the ‘70s ever have happened if there was an iPhone? Definitely not.

NADEL: No, no. Too much technology in the way.

SOMBREUIL: Kroll was really engrossed in his phone. We were like, “Please use the camera, please.” And he was just like, “That’s not how this works.” But the more I look at the iPhone pics, the more I’m like, they’re incredible.

NADEL: What does he do all day? Does he have an archive?

SOMBREUIL:  He lives in the most incredible temple to erotica and photography in general. There's barely room to snake through all the different rooms. One room is just an island of files where you have to narrowly walk around. It's a relatively small house, but there's photos plastering the ceiling, the bathroom wall. Everything and anything you open up is just filled with photos. He OD'ed on beauty. He just loves photos and women. 

He loves women's clothes. I was thinking about him and Crumb because they both seem to really love dressing women. Crumb informed my personal style so much. I was like, “Yes, this is a flattering way for me to dress.”

When we were hanging out with Kroll, I was like, “Do you think you're just in women's clothes?” And he was like, “I've definitely thought about it.” He has like 10,000 bathing suits. We kept joking about it because he had only so much energy for shooting the photos – at a certain point he was like, “This is boring. I'm gonna take a nap,” – and then the next day he took us thrift shopping, and he had so much energy. He loved taking us shopping.

He’s incredible. Really good company and lovely and not a pervert. You feel comfortable around him. That’s part of his effect.  You feel like you could very easily take off your clothes, but it doesn't actually feel sexy at all. But I think immediately we were all really comfortable with him. But his house is incredible. It's a little bit of a tragedy because I'm not sure that it will ever be adequately archived. He’s a historian of erotica.

In the end, right before we left, he was like, “I have to show you some of the photos. This photographer's really important.” This guy would just go up to women in Washington Square Park and take photos of their hair. He had a hair fetish. I think it was like in the ‘60s. They're all black and white photos, just of someone's bun or someone’s hair as they’re moving by. I think people hated that and yelled at him. I don't think it was common to be photographed then. But they're important because they're anomalous. They're not in any other genre of erotica.

NADEL: I love the idea of those hair pictures. That’s so interesting.

SOMBREUIL: They’re really magical and really weird. They’re somehow about… shyness, like really profound inhibition. Because that’s as far as he could go: snapping a picture of a stranger’s hair.

NADEL: It makes me think of Christina Ramberg. She’s a Chicago painter in the ‘60s and ‘70s who specialized in refashioning women’s bodies but also really focused on hair. There’s also an Italian painter named Dominic Gnoli who did unbelievable paintings of hair. It’s a very particular thing to zoom in on, like with Crumb and shoes. If somebody’s deep into it enough, it’s a whole world basically. It opens up a whole universe of artmaking.

I was talking with Robert about a guy here in New York named J.B. Rund who we’ve all come in contact with in some way because he was an early champion of Eric Stanton. In the ‘70s, he was really responsible for bringing back a lot of the forgotten erotica before Taschen got involved.

It’s not as if there’s much writing about this stuff outside of these particularly obsessed people. And once they’re gone all the information in their heads is gone too. I think about that a lot. It’s not history that’s found its way even into cultural archives. It’s really sixty levels below the subculture. They’re gonna take the information about, like, what guy on 43rd Street sold what magazine to who. All that’s gonna go.

SOMBREUIL: I think there’s a laziness now about these kinds of histories because of the Internet.

Kroll is a national treasure. I think we all were wondering what we were in for, like this could be strange. He’s mercurial and cranky, but he’s also really lovely and sweet. He clearly really loves women.

There’s a lot of these kinds of histories that I wish were recorded. It was a really fun shoot because we got to go from taking photos to just sitting around for an hour while he’s going through boxes and boxes of photos, telling us the stories of everything. It’s interesting because being into erotica puts you super deeply in the margins. He showed us this book of his called the New York Years. It’s photos of Nam June Paik and all his artist friends. Like he wasn’t some obscure, random pornographer.

NADEL: He was around.

SOMBREUIL: I think it’s different now. I don’t think he would be sidelined as much. But that’s also what’s great about the whole precept of underground comics. It’s for the initiate. Even if it’s an enormous audience like with Crumb.

NADEL: It’s for the initiate, but it doesn’t take a password to get in. It’s accessible.

SOMBREUIL: I talk about this because my work is mostly on t-shirts, but you can’t get more democratic than a comic book.

NADEL: And a t-shirt.

SOMBREUIL: My t-shirts are not so democratic, unfortunately.

NADEL: You gotta make a living. That’s why you’re not making comics!

Y-3 Debut Their SS25 Campaign Featuring Petra Collins and Moni Haworth

Petra Collins and Moni Haworth collaborate on the new Y-3 Refresh Campaign

interview by Karly Quadros
photographs by Moni Haworth

Moni Haworth and Petra Collins have always focused on the liminal spaces of American suburbs: teenage dreams confined to bedrooms, silhouettes pressed against Venetian blinds, cut-and-paste condos spiraling down culs-de-sacs like soap in a drain. The two longtime collaborators have teamed up once again for the campaign of another collaboration, Yohji Yamamoto and Adidas’ Y-3 Spring/Summer 2025 collection. From the simultaneously sporty and delicate Regu Mary Jane to Petra’s doppelgängers, duality takes centerstage. Autre caught up with Moni Haworth to talk about crafting the dreamy world of Y-3’s new collection.

Image credit: Moni Haworth

KARLY QUADROS: What was the starting point/inspiration for the campaign?

MONI HAWORTH: Y-3 wanted to build on the strange world Petra and I have played with for years, featuring Petra as various versions of herself. We wanted a kind of ‘nowhere but everywhere’ backdrop in a way mirroring the pieces, which from a distance appear classic but on closer inspection reveal many unexpected details.

Image credit: Moni Haworth

Image credit: Moni Haworth

QUADROS: You and Petra have been working together for so long. What’s the secret to an enduring collaboration?

HAWORTH: Voice notes. (laughs) We have a constant stream of communication from the most mundane details of our day to huge debates on AI, the end of the world, etc., all via voice notes, back and forth.

QUADROS: The great ballet flat comeback was not on my bingo card for 2025, and I’ll be honest, I still am resisting that trend. But the ballet sneaker like the Regu Mary Jane or other styles like Simone Rocha’s ballet tracker feel more resonant — instead of girlish and formal they’re lithe and aerodynamic. What’s so alluring about these contemporary hybrid styles?

HAWORTH: Yes, hah, I love ‘ballet sneaker’ trending. We were super excited to shoot the Regu Mary Jane. It fit so well into the hybrid world we wanted to set this in … a kind of future/past chemistry!

Image credit: Moni Haworth

QUADROS: Can you talk a little bit about the short film that you made for the campaign? What were you trying to explore? Did it bring up anything unexpected for you?

HAWORTH: The idea of two versions of Petra coming together via me was the concept we wanted to explore. Petra often sends me the craziest voice notes of dreams she’s had. We wanted to dip into that feeling when you’re not so sure you’re remembering a dream or an actual experience, the hazy speculation and the weirdness of sharing a dream. The unexpected thing was the hawk perched on a pole right in front of us and being able to capture it taking off in front of Petra. That was perfect!

Image credit: Moni Haworth

Banks Violette Interviewed by Neville Wakefield On The Occasion Of His Commission by Hedi Slimane for CELINE

CELINE Art Project: Banks Violette

Text and interview by Neville Wakefield

Every era has its defining figures, and in the condensed New York artworld of the early aughts, Banks Violette was  foremost amongst them. Of the many currents running through that scene, Violette’s was the darkest and most  stringent. Broken drum-sets, skeletal architectures and vacated stages splintered by shards of white, fluorescent light and set to the subsonic undertow of death metal’s societal angst captured the zeitgeist of an era’s precarious  balance of nihilism and celebration. Drawing from music, art, theater and fashion, Violette’s art took the form of  a barograph, trace recording the pressure that was the slow implosion of everything around it - pressure the artist eventually succumbed to, withdrawing from the world he’d helped define. 

Drawn to the incandescent energy of that moment, Hedi Slimane was both documentarian and participant in this  seminal New York moment. His stark black and white images of the artists perfectly captured the taught masculinity and absolute abandon of his artist peers. In july of 2007, he curated a group show titled “Sweet Bird of Youth”, at Arndt & Partner in Berlin, featuring the works  of artists Dash Snow, Slater Bradley, Mathew Cerletty, Dan Colen, Gardar eide Einarsson, Terence Koh, Douglas Kolk,  Nate Lowman, Ryan Mcginley, Matt Saunders, Steven Shearer, Paul P., and Banks Violette. Later that year, “Young  American” at the Foam Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam, paid photographic tribute to the same generation of artists.  

After the best part of a decade sequestered in upstate New York, Violette has begun a cautious re-engagement with  the world he left behind. With the indelible legacy of that early period more relevant than ever, Violette’s work  is reappearing in galleries, museums and now in the context of Slimane’s re-imagining of the CELINE flagship stores. The synergy between artist and designer has been longstanding. “The thing that I've always admired about Hedi is that even when the approach is deconstructed, there isn’t any critical remove or detachment. there’s  a genuine sincerity to his investment in the things he admires. as a result, he can transform something that is  permanently framed as ironic into its opposite.”  

The chandelier structures created for the stores are classic Violette. The repeated modular forms take the minimalist frameworks of Dan Flavin or Sol Le Witt and pushes them into a deconstructed state of theatrical  collapse. Viiolette likens them to a figure who has stumbled and fallen. they are an image of overdose, equal parts  narcotic collapse and narcan revival. “I relate to sculpture as this thing that extends itself into the space of a  body so it’s of necessity anthropomorphized – and so autobiographically I was like yeah I know all about that…” The  resulting sculptures perfectly capture the emotional tenor of the times: “It’s as if Aristotle was raised in a warzone  which he probably was, and the poetics of post-traumatic stress disorder meet the aesthetics of boredom.” Add to that fashion and retail, and the meeting is unlike any other. 

NEVILLE WAKEFIELD: I was going to start with the early 2000s, and I realized I can't really remember much, but it would be cool to recall that moment a little bit, even if it's fragmentary, and to talk about how you recollect that scene being shaped. It was certainly an interesting time in which there were multiple conversations between purity and impurity and all these things that art had in some way tried to keep out, whether it's music or fashion. It seemed to be that the floodgate had been opened. And I certainly remember that because I participated in it with the book [Fashion: Photography of the Nineties, 1998], and was thinking about how genres were bending, which all seems now very obvious and straightforward (laughs). 

BANKS VIOLETTE: That's a great way to synopsize it. I really remember very early trying to make a case for why I thought that the music that I was interested in, the performers and the musicians, and the cultural outfit that they were generating was worthwhile. And that it was like, “Oh, I'm not trying to appropriate something. I'm just trying to point a direction towards something that I think is really, really interesting.” And having just an immense amount of resistance towards that as an idea, which, as a sort of cumulative consequence of a number of other people working in a similar kind of fashion, it stopped being an issue relatively quickly. But there was like the beginning of an argument and then the end of an argument.

NW: I remember Dave Hickey talking to me about his interest in the operatic as being an impure art form. And I was wondering whether, in this conversation between purity and impurity and genre, you saw the music that you were listening to at the time, which was probably largely death metal and black metal, as a pure form that you were introducing? Obviously, it is socially impure, and contaminated in all sorts of ways. But as a musical idiom.

BV: I thought they were better creators than I was. (Laughs) Honestly, if you're making something, and it's framed as art, inherently a substantial portion of it is a fiction. You're engaging through the mechanism of it existing as a fiction. You're suspending disbelief, you're engaging in saying this thing has the potential for meaning. And looking at the people who are active as black metal musicians or something like that, they were just better at it than I was. And it was also conditioned generationally. I was a kid in the eighties and liked PMRC and this kind of, “Oh my God, your record collection, if you listen to it backward, it all, you know, invokes it or it'll cause you to commit suicide either way.” The idea that the most gutter-level incarnation of a culture had the potential within it to do this horrendous thing.

NW: It's an architecture borne of fiction. 

BV: It's a vector for faith.

NW: And were you interested in the dramatics of it? And I'm thinking of Lords of Chaos, church burnings, stage antics and that kind of stuff. Was that theatricalization of sound something that you felt fed into the work that you were doing?

BV: The horrible instances or eruptions of criminality were sort of like confirmations of the efficacy of a particular method of communicating. I didn't know a better way of confirming that, holy, shit, this thing is really, really effective, other than like, wow, it resulted in this horrendous real-world thing. And I still kind of struggle for what would be an equivalent affirmation that this thing is effective other than something horrible happening. There's the affirmative quality of the disastrous (laughs). There is something specific to that in those instances, like black metal or church burning, arson, all those kinds of things– horrible as they are, they're affirmative instances of the disastrous, the disastrous being an affirmative gesture.

NW: It makes me also think about this other idea, which seems to have been lost since then, of amateurism and the idea that you could be a successful failure. I remember there was a great [Raymond] Pettibon piece, which had this quote: “Professionalism is a hate crime.”

BV: I think people were deeply attracted to that idea. Not that people weren't careerists, because they certainly were. People obviously wanted to make a living, but within their sort of limited understanding a living would be. But it wasn't like, “Oh yeah, I’m gonna have three cars and a house in the Hamptons because I'm an artist.” 

NW: How did Hedi Slimane come into all this?

BV: One of my favorite interviews from when I was much younger was an interview that I did with him for this Australian fashion magazine. One of the best conversations I ever had. So I'd always gotten along with him.

NW: It's come full circle because he was certainly documenting and to some extent participating in that moment. I'm curious as to how you see the bridge between then and now.

BV: I keep on coming back to this idea that it's an act of devotion. Going back to the affirmative through the disastrous, how do you literalize the devotion? Well, someone's gotta die for you to be truly devoted to something. 

NW: There's no devotion without death.

BV: The commemorative, the allegiance, all these kinds of registers only exist if they coalesce around a tragic instance. That is the thing that coheres the whole around itself. 

NW: There's also an interesting sort of connection there between entropy, collapse, decay, and artists such as [Robert] Smithson, for instance, and Romanticism and Caspar David Friedrich and The Sea of Ice or the Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. I know that there was a work that you made for the show at Barbara Gladstone that directly referenced The Sea of Ice. Do you think about the absent figure as being romantic? We had a conversation about the figure being present in all work in some way.

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818, Oil on canvas, 94.8 cm × 74.8 cm (37.3 in × 29.4 in), Kunsthalle Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

BV: I think so. Romanticism is such a loaded kind of idea. As soon as you start talking about an inherent romantic relationship with a landscape, you start getting into blood and soil. There's an inherent ugliness to those things, no matter how much they're coated as “oh, it's romantic, it's beautiful.” Or with Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, that pictorial convention of positioning the viewer behind somebody who's viewing something. It's like you're creating, in the clumsiest manner possible, the equivalent of a dissociative fugue. So those things are already historically connected to trauma. Pictorially, as a formal device, they're related to trauma. There is a bad thing at the center of all these things.

NW: The traumatic origins or the role of trauma in that dissociation is really interesting. Coming back to the body, thinking about the chandeliers and this idea of a collapsed or absent body, the body – whether it's an empty stage that is inviting or proposing a body or a chandelier – seems to always be there in the sculpture.

BV: It's not that it's a purely anthropomorphized kind of thing. It's not like, “Oh, look at this thing and see a body and see it sort of stagger through space.” The two things I kept on staring at or thinking about a lot were [Martin] Kippenberger’s Street Lamp for Drunks and then [Alberto] Giacometti’s Woman With Her Throat Cut. One thing that's sort of this violent crime scene that's coextensive with real space. It's not on a plinth, it's in your space, and it's a horrible violation, even though it's goofy and biomorphic. And the other one is this thing that presupposes a body and presupposes a condition of the body. It's a streetlamp, but it's not anthropomorphic. It doesn't exist without an understanding of being a drunk in a space. What that feels like and how gravity affects you and all these kinds of things. Long story short, the chandeliers ended up being the Narcaned equivalent of the Kippenberger things. It was sort of like, how would you do that if you were nodding out on heroin? 

Martin Kippenberger’s Street Lamp for Drunks in situ. Bundeskunsthalle

NW: Can you talk a bit about the material language? Because it has both stayed the same and evolved a bit, I think. Obviously, white fluorescent light has been throughout it. Graphite's been throughout it and metal in various forms. Has it changed, and how does it feel going back to that language after a period where you weren't engaged in it?

BV: The CELINE pieces specifically, I would've preferred to have them as fluorescent lights. But they're being phased out, and they're illegal in a lot of areas because they incorporate mercury. So these are sort of like stand-ins for fluorescent tubes. They have the same quality of light, and they have the same sprawled-out wiring and things like that, but they're not quite the same. There's something so specific about the institutional quality of fluorescent tubes. What other lighting element has this kind of idea of institutional alienation and phenomenological ugliness of this big glass cylinder and the implied threat of high voltage running through this thing with this low hum?

NW: I'm interested in exploring this idea of threat or menace as well. I remember having very visceral responses to your work as being deeply threatening in some sense, whether it was in the literal sense of actual fire and, and it possibly blowing my face up and shit like that… 

BV: …Poor craftsmanship. (Laughs)

NW: Or, more metaphorical, perhaps, in these Narcaned sculptures. There is still the potential for danger or menace in there somehow.

BV: [Richard] Serra is sort of like the famous instance of that, where you're like, “Oh my God, I'm next to this thing that is so precarious: The weight, mass, and the physicality, it’s an unavoidable aspect of the piece, right? But there are some sculptures that just have that, like the Calder stabiles. It's a really specific quality that some sculptures that I'm attracted to and have always been attracted to just have. And it's something I respond to. 

NW: Is that manifest in different ways in the chandeliers, do you think? 

BV: I think so. These are in capital R retail spaces. These are in clothing stores. It's like being indifferent to a choking victim at a fancy dinner (laughs). There's this collapsed, violated form in this space that's coextensive with somebody with credit much better than mine shopping, and dressing up their body and performing this, and here's this violated version of that dress up in the same space. 

NW: I was looking at the images and thinking about it in terms of homelessness.

BV: Yeah. The one for Madison Avenue was initially a collapsed form, and it's Madison Avenue in New York City with these giant plate glass windows, and it's got Balenciaga right across the street from it. There’s 3/8s of an inch of glass separating the sidewalk from this thing that initially would've been collapsed and sort of sprawled out. And the first time I got to see that sort of sight, I walked up at like 11 o'clock at night when everything was closed and just saw the lights flooding out. It's pretty much like watching somebody huddle up in the Balenciaga’s doorway at 11 o'clock on a cold night in Manhattan. There is something supremely disorienting about that. 

CELINE Art Project: Banks Violette

NW: I’m curious as to how the move from Brooklyn back to Ithaca, your hometown, and how that change of landscape has affected you.

BV: I'm sympathetic with what Hedi does. He clearly responds to things that people make, like manufactured culture. I get way more from a teenager on a subway who's decorated their backpack than from staring at a bunch of trees, and I'm around a lot of trees now. There isn't the hoarding in front of the building, and it's covered with three layers of wheat-pasted posters, and here's a teenager who's decorated their shoes, or that somebody is blocking out a parking space in front of a construction site, so they took a traffic cone, a two-by-four, a Miller Light can, and made this awesome sculpture. Just all the ephemera that people generate. Instead, these days, I stare at trees. I don't get a lot from them.

NW: And what about drugs? How they've changed or shaped your vision.

BV: Water is great. I really, really like water. I really love coffee. 

NW: Probably not much water past your lips for about a decade, I'd think.

BV: Yeah. Water was this thing that you used to cook up heroin in a spoon (laughs). That was really the sum total of it. Now, fentanyl is such a common thing. People are aware of Narcan kits. It’s weird. It's tragic that it's gotten to the point where people are this conversant with what these things look like. And now that I'm sober and watching that happen and being like, oh shit. I saw a bumper sticker a little while ago that was amazing, legitimately, but it was also really deeply dark: “My Child Narcanned Your Honors Student.” Which was amazing, but also, holy shit. Like 10 years ago, every single part of that would've made zero sense. It would've kind of made sense to me, and now it's like, wow, I've shifted places with the world and heroin jokes are on the back of people's pickup trucks.  

NW: Is drawing still part of your practice? I always loved the drawings and the objecthood that they had, the layering of the graphite and the presence of the hand, and the feeling that they were this accretion of not just material, but sentiment built up into the surface of the paper. Is that something you're still practicing?

BV: Yeah, there's a group show at this young gallery in Chinatown called Francis Irv that's opening on January 21st. I'm actually finishing a drawing for that. It's similar to those earlier ones, black and white, like an X-ray of horses. It's this weird sort of thing with a sort of negative space. It doesn't have heavy scabs of graphite on it. But it does this weird sort of, for lack of a better description, op art with the kind of push-pull kind of thing. It does something kind of bizarre, I think. But yeah, it's something I still do. I kind of resent it because people are like, “Oh yeah, make a drawing,” and you're like, “Yeah, that’s 12 hours a day for a month, it's not the easy thing that it looks like.” It's much harder to do when I'm 50. But it’s something I'm still interested in, as long as it's connected to an exciting opportunity. There's a reason for it other than like, oh, let's just generate more artwork. 

NW: I think what drew me to them, apart from the subject matter, was the sort of manifest struggle between light and darkness, between shading and possibility and all this kind of stuff. Light is obviously a big element in your work, but darkness is as well. Do you see them as opposing forces?

BV: I don't see them as opposing, I see them as contiguous parts of the same argument, or same sentence, or same sentiment or however you wanna describe it. Just the way the sculpture transacts itself in terms of literal concerns like weight, physicality, and mass. Those are sculptural concerns. The drawings were always supposed to have that as well. They were supposed to be coextensive, they were supposed to be sculptures. They're supposed to have mass to them, gravity, weight, and all those things that are like capital F Formal sculptural concerns. But as a way to narrativize something, maybe the sculpture is more abstracted, or maybe the drawing is more abstracted. I always imagine all these things like just curating a show, but you just happen to be manufacturing all the things that you're curating together in a room. 

NW: I always thought about them in terms of erosion and transference. I really like that the graphite was literally being eroded, but then there was this kind of psychological act of transference going on through that erosion.

BV: I like that as a description a lot. There's also that interesting kind of tension that existed between the refined draftsmanship that went into realizing the image itself. Looked at from one angle, this matte graphite surface blended in with this finely rendered thing, and then looked at from another with raking light, and it's this big scab of violent activity on top of this thing. It was just this skin. It was really process-oriented and looked like you knew how this thing was made, and it was about physicality and all these things that had nothing to do with this refined rendered thing. The fact that they could sort of exist in that same space and coexist in that same space without one over the other. Again, that's another concern that I think equally applies to the sculptures.

NW: I always felt the tension between delicacy and brutalism or violence was a very strong thread. 

BV: Ideally, the drawings were kind of like the microcosmic version of what I was trying to accomplish with an installation or a sculpture. Like, if you want to know what's going on with the whole room, just look at the little square piece of paper or the little rectangle. 

NW: What does the day look like these days? 

BV: I wake up at like 3:00 AM and work in the morning just 'cause it's super quiet. So I wake up, do work, usually sort of working on drawings or, you know, recently I've been making foam core models for all the CELINE projects. And then, you know, I have the rest of the day to do whatever I need to do at home, help my wife out and walk dogs. I fly fish a lot. I can get away from people and go stand in very cold water and avoid other human beings. And it's really great. It's not very exciting and I love it.

Banks Violette for CELINE Art Project will on view in CELINE stores through January.

I See Music As A Refuge: An Interview of Marina Herlop

 

top by Gabriel For Sach

 


interview by Caroline Whiteley
photography by Celine Paradis
styling by Maia González

Catalan musician Marina Herlop’s fourth album Nekkuja starts with a bang. On its opening track “Busa,” deep synths pierce through a bouquet of harp strings, choral arrangements and giggling voices. “I always want to include this surprise factor,” she says. “It’s like when you go on a trip, you always need something unexpected to happen, you need to go on a little adventure.” When speaking of the record, Marina often invokes metaphors, comparing the process of making music to architecture, gardening or even playing video games. While her melodies are mysterious and playful, combining elements of devotional and folk music with contemporary electronics, her lyrics are nonsensical, a deliberate choice to allow for the music to speak for itself (Nekkuja is a word she made up). “I don't want to talk about my life, I want to make music that feels aesthetically interesting,” she says. The artist, who counts Björk among her fans, is nonchalant about her recent success. “I know that this has come and this might go at some point, because people might get tired of it or because there's another project that feels hotter at the moment. But the effort I’ve put into music, that growth, never goes away.” We spoke to Marina Herlop about the spiritual nature of creating art, music as a refuge, and trusting her instincts. 

CAROLINE WHITELEY: Marina, firstly, I want to thank you for making this album, because it’s so energetic and fierce. Listening to Nekkuja, I felt this sense of catharsis, and it really helped me process difficult emotions.

MARINA HERLOP: I’m so happy that you said that, because it has been a very challenging year for me too. I'm sure a lot of people in the crowd and in their homes are going through some tough moments too. They say music heals and while I never started doing music for that, I'm realizing that this happens. 

WHITELEY: When you come up with these unexpected musical moments that are present throughout the record, are they also unexpected to you in the process of composing them?

HERLOP: Most of the time, it's a combination of sounds that I find interesting. But, for me, it's very important that there's this surprise factor. If music is too predictable, and the listening process is too pleasant, too soft, then it can be boring. It's like when you go on a trip, you always need something to happen, like your car ran out of gas, you need to go on a little adventure. Otherwise, it's just this relaxing trip, and you're going to probably enjoy it more if it has some difficulty or some challenge. As a music maker, you are your own listener, so you are looking for that while you make the music.

WHITELEY: You’ve talked about how you don't necessarily feel attached to lyrics in your music because the music itself has an inherent meaning. 

HERLOP: If I'm interested in the story, I might read a book or poem or something. For me, the musical component is way more relevant, it’s always at the front. That doesn't mean I never listen to music with lyrics, but I see [my own] music as a refuge, or some art that is self-sufficient. It doesn't need our human dramas and stories to exist. 

Whereas other art forms like painting or films, they’re drawn from our stories and our personal experiences in a very direct and explicit way, music doesn't need to do that. I don't want to talk about my life, I want to make music that feels aesthetically interesting. As I'm feeling a certain way, or going through certain stuff, that might reflect on it, but that's not my goal at all.

top by Piero D’Angelo

WHITELEY: I sense a rejection of tying a specific concept or inspiration to a project like an album from you. Can you talk about where that stems from? 

HERLOP: For me, the relation between music and an image or a concept is very vague. Like, when I close my eyes and listen to music, I don't see anything. Even my dreams are not very visual. My music is not descriptive. I have never experienced music that way. In classical music, there are two traditions that are very well-known. There’s pure music and descriptive music. You can find music that is talking about stuff like a river or a carnival, or animals or whatever, and there's music that is just like Bach or Chopin. It's just a sonata, it’s not meant to mean anything. I'm more interested in pure music, because sound is totally self-sufficient. So, even though this album has some sounds from nature, they’re not there to express any particular sentiment.

WHITELEY: I like the loose concept of the garden because it implies the physical, time-based limitations you have, which are the same in composing a piece of music as they are in tending to a plant.

HERLOP: I'm realizing that on my third album, Pripyat, my ambition was quite big, and the detailing was huge, so that's why it was a very torturous process, whereas with Nekkuja I had more of a plan. You could also compare it to a building. The bigger you want the building to be, the more constraints and rules and indications you need, and the more precise the blueprint needs to be. Because if you don’t have this, it's going to be a pure mess. I reduced the amount of elements and organized them better so that the process would be more bearable. It's like, if you don't have a plan, you can write a poem, but you won't be able to write a novel.

WHITELEY: To me, some of your melodies have this almost animalistic quality, like this interplay between predator and prey. 

HERLOP: This game is present in nature so much. Our brains also work this way, because we are animals. 

WHITELEY: You’ve described your music as an offering to the gods. Are you a spiritual person? 

HERLOP: Maybe I'm a bit contradictory. On the one hand, I'm quite a rational person, and I'm very analytical. I wouldn't say that I'm a very religious person, but through music—studying it quite profoundly and feeling devoted to it—I’ve understood that we are insignificant and that our craft and nature are vastly superior to us as individuals. When I say that the album is an offering to the gods, I mean that it’s like an inner deal.

You want to give it to people and you want people to listen to it, but the applause, or the criticism that you're going to receive is another dimension. It has nothing to do with the act of making music and making the best out of it. You put in all your effort, and when you're done it’s like, “Okay, this might not be perfect, but this is the best I was able to do. And I'm happy with it, because it feels honest.” Of course, you are a person with some level of vanity, and you want people to enjoy your work, to be accepted by your friends and family. But for me, this work is honest and I know the angle from where it was made, so I'm at peace. I’m grateful for all the appreciation that might come and people have received it very well. So I'm happy for that.

WHITELEY: It’s a good attitude to have because it’s so easy to get caught up with the expectations of others and the comparison of others.

HERLOP: I think it's because I'm not super young, I'm thirty-one. I wasn't having any success for a long time, so I sort of understood that [being successful and being creatively satisfied] it's two different roads. 

If you focus on the internal side of it, it already pays off in a way. If you put a lot of energy and effort into music, music is going to give it back to you. The gratification of learning how to play an instrument, the pleasure that you get when you play an instrument, the dopamine that you get when you finish a song. This is very rewarding.

Now, there's a hype and it's getting some attention from outside. This feels huge because I had nothing before. I know that people might get tired of it or find another project that feels hotter in the moment. But the effort I’ve put into music, that growth, never goes away. When I was a teacher to my piano students, I used to tell them don't drop it, because it only gets better. If you have fun now, in three years time, you're gonna have ten times more fun. 

WHITELEY: That kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier, where people find strength in your music to overcome difficult times and remember that whatever moment they are in right now will not be forever. There will be another time, and I think that your music connects to that very well.

HERLOP: Totally, and now I’m getting ready, because the tour is coming to an end and my lifestyle will change a lot. I will go from being in the airport all the time, meeting people, and feeling like a rock star, to being at home on my own and trying to gain my focus back to make music. 

trousers by Piero D’Angelo

Deconstructing Genesis: An Interview of Wynnie Mynerva

top and earrings: Heaven by Marc Jacobs


interview by Jesus Nebreda Galindez
creative direction by Alec Charlip
photography by Andrés Jaña
styling by Abby Bencie
makeup by Marco Castro
hair by Luisa Popović
production by BORN Artists

The question of original sin has no relevance in Lima-based artist Wynnie Mynerva’s Book of Genesis. For their inaugural American solo exhibition curated by Bernardo Mosqueira, the artist will be presenting The Original Riot, opening tomorrow (June 29) at the New Museum with a site-specific installation that constitutes the largest painting ever to be presented by the institution, as well as a sculptural element that was surgically removed from the artist’s own body. The readaptation of both mythology and anatomy is central to Mynerva’s quintessentially plastic life and practice; one that finds itself in a constant state of radical change. Painting and performance are a fluent oscillation of being as demonstrated in their 2021 exhibition Closing to Open at Ginsberg Gallery in Madrid when the artist had their vagina sutured three quarters of the way shut, allowing only for the flow of their bodily fluids to function as necessary. The corporeal roles of masculine and feminine are constantly being subverted and abstracted in works that bleed, scratch, beguile, and thrust their way through the patriarchal canon with an air of wanton ecstasy. The binary creation myth was recently addressed in Mynerva’s first UK solo exhibition Bone of My Bones Flesh of My Flesh at Gathering London earlier this year, introducing many for the first time to the role of Lilith in Judaic and Mesopotamian folklore as Adam’s first wife who was created from the same clay (equal in nature) as her husband. Her pitiable fate varies from one myth to the next, but the creation of a second wife (Eve) from his rib remains consistent. The artist’s decision to remove Adam’s body from their own for The Original Riot demonstrates the power to readapt our personal realities at will. It is a reflection of the agency that we unwittingly deny ourselves when we allow allegory to shape our internalized perspectives. The following interview was conducted in Spanish and is presented here in its original form, followed by its English translation.

JESUS NEBREDA GALINDEZ: Quiero empezar con cómo te convertiste en artista. ¿Hubo un punto de inflexión en tu vida que te llevó a elegir este camino?

WYNNIE MYNERVA: Creo que la inclinación por hacer arte solo fluyó. Siempre he sido una persona con necesidad inventiva e inquieta. Algo que fue determinante y por la cual me acerqué al arte, fue la sensación de no sentirme dentro de mi cuerpo. Recuerdo desde niña verme como “otro ser” que me miraba desde lejos, esa sensación aún me persigue y se ha convertido en un espacio, y dentro de ese espacio estoy ejecutando diferentes simulaciones y constantemente deconstruyéndome en  imágenes. Es por eso que mi trabajo toca temas íntimos pero también universales, la existencia, el disfrute, el dolor, el cuerpo, la carne, la sexualidad. El arte está plagado de pequeños milagros porque no existe una forma fija de creación, y esa idea me seduce.

GALINDEZ: Los tonos rosas, rojos, marrones y piel de melocotón dominan su trabajo anterior. ¿Puedes hablar sobre tu paleta de colores y cómo llegaste a su desarrollo?

MYNERVA: El color para un pintor es como una bocanada de aire, puede medir la temperatura que atraviesan las emociones y la atmosfera de su tiempo. Trabajo en rojos, marrones y rosas, pero también he vuelto a utilizar el negro que lo había casi había desaparecido de mi obra, siento en general una sensación de retornar a tonos más oscuros. Luego que por sorpresa dentro de la pandemia mis colores estallarán en luz por pasar tanto tiempo observando todo desde lo digital y las redes sociales. 

GALINDEZ: ¿Cómo se siente estar exhibiendo su trabajo en el New Museum? ¿Crees que sigue siendo relevante el hablar de centro y periferia dentro de la escena artística? ¿O por el contrario, la era de internet ha roto para siempre estas históricas barreras geográficas?

MYNERVA: Estoy un poco nerviose. Definitivamente. Especialmente trabajando por primera vez con un museo y uno tan importante como es el New Museum en Nueva York. Siento que es una acumulación de placer y trabajo por mis convicciones lo que hizo que yo esté aquí ahora. Pienso que es relevante no solo que estoy aquí, sino con quiénes estoy, y con esto quiero responder a tu pregunta sobre centro y periferia. Es importante a quiénes he nombrado en mis proyectos y quiénes me han llevado a pensar de esta manera y no de otra. Siento que es fundamental aún hacer referencia a los sistemas sociales, políticos y económicos que nos condensan. La era del internet no ha roto estas barreras, ha generado una sensación placebo para aliviar la impresión de desigualdad en la escena artística. 

GALINDEZ: Estarás montando la pintura más grande que el museo ha presentado en su historia. ¿Por qué la escala de esta pieza fue tan importante para ti?

MYNERVA: El espacio de exhibición es para mí como un escenario. Las pinturas se convierten en el paisaje, y me interesa abarcarlo todo con la escala, los espectadores dan inicio a la función con sus cuerpos. La pintura es el marco arquitectónico que ofrezco al público. Es la propia obra que induce al cuerpo a recorrerla. La escala te envuelve y está diseñada de forma específica, no es trasladable, por tanto es una experiencia singular. La pintura deja de ser un objeto coleccionable para convertirse en geografía.

GALINDEZ: Tu maravillosa exposición Bone of My Bones, Flesh of my Flesh en el Gathering de Londres abordaba no solo la historia de Adán y Eva sino que se adentraba en territorios mucho más desconocidos, hablamos del mito de Lilith. Tu nueva obra, The Original Riot—dios me encanta el título—reinterpreta y se sumerge en esta inquietante alegoría. ¿Puedes contarnos cómo fue el proceso de quitarte una costilla y por qué cobra tanta significación en esta obra?

MYNERVA: Me enteré de la oportunidad de exhibir en el New Museum en medio de la preparación de Bone of My Bones, Flesh of My Flesh en Londres, y supe que este sería el espacio para desenlace de este proyecto: la extracción de mi costilla de Adán. Ha sido un proceso largo y estoy tratando de mantener un buen equilibrio, que un proyecto no se mueva demasiado rápido o demasiado lento, pensar como en el cine, que el tiempo es un elemento, y el tiempo de recuperación de mi cuerpo también tiene belleza.

En The Original Riot hay más de una historia revuelta. Parto de la mitología del génesis de Adán y Eva, Eva creada a partir de la costilla de Adán para servirle. Antes que Eva existió otra figura femenina de nombre Lilith que desafiaría a Adán y se negaría a reproducirse, por lo cual Dios la castigaría convirtiendo su vagina en  una llama azul eterna y la expulsaría del paraíso hacia el infierno. En The Original Riot que es la segunda entrega de mi versión de esta historia, las dos primeras figuras femeninas se conocen y pactan una alianza. Como prueba de esa alianza, Eva se quita la costilla de Adán y se la entrega a Lilith. Esta costilla estará presente en la exhibición a modo de reliquia, que es la presencia materializada de un hecho sagrado. La extracción de mi propia costilla y su uso para esta exhibición es brindar mi cuerpo como parte de esta revuelta. Sacar el cuerpo del otro de mi propio cuerpo.

 

dress: Loewe
bangles: Dinosaur Designs

 

GALINDEZ: Siento curiosidad por la íntima relación entre tu cuerpo y tu arte. Esta no es la primera vez que realiza modificaciones en su cuerpo como parte de su práctica. Cuando se trata de tu cuerpo y tu práctica, ¿dónde comienza uno y termina el otro?

MYNERVA: Puedo visualizarme como una persona que ha aprendido a vivir con un cuerpo herido, en una sociedad agitada. Siempre regreso desde el arte a buscar esas señales, no como turista de mis propias experiencias, ni para nombrar mis desastres personales, sino buscando  herramientas que tengan la capacidad de sanar. Pienso que trabajar en el cuerpo de hoy es trabajar en el cuerpo del futuro. Y es así como veo mis proyectos, conectando a través de lo real, la materialidad y su red de significados en la historia del arte y la humanidad. El arte tiene sentido si incide en la vida y es aplicable para una transformación social. Mi vida y mi trabajo tienen una dinámica fluida.

GALINDEZ: Tu obra está cargada de corporeidad y es cierto que los rituales del cuerpo hablan de una manera intrínseca y sin engaños de nuestras herencias culturales y sistemas sociales heredados. ¿Qué es para ti la moda? ¿Crees que es una forma de disfrazarse, o quizás ser la forma más alta y representativa de representación personal?

MYNERVA: La moda es juego encantador, pero también es una cárcel. A mí me gusta la moda del desafío, aquello que es difícil de usar, el taconazo, las plataformas y hacer malabares con los pies. Hay algo masoquista en usar corset apretado y látex en verano. Verme falsa y producida. Hay que divertirse pienso o si no se convierte en un conjunto de reglas elitistas, se puede sufrir mucho en las cárceles de las marcas y el buen vestir. Como siempre, lo correcto se apodera del placer, y salen a las calles los policías de la moda. Yo en la moda no tengo más compromiso a levantar miradas, me encanta.

GALINDEZ: ¿Cómo te sientes representada por los medios? ¿Algo qué alegar que haya sido malinterpretado?

MYNERVA: Siempre soy una persona completamente diferente presentándome. Todos estamos en constante cambio, una transición hasta la hora de la muerte. Pero luego también estoy empujando de forma abstracta mi cuerpo hacia afuera y mi entorno, de forma imperfecta y defectuosa. Muchas veces se ha entendido mi obra solo como provocadora, y la verdad solo se me ocurren soluciones radicales para cambios radicales.

GALINDEZ: En ese caso, ¿dónde vamos a ver a Wynnie Mynerva en el futuro?

MYNERVA: Me encantaría lanzar una productora de porno, ¿te imaginas? 

top and earrings: Heaven by Marc Jacobs
skirt and leg piece: Sarah Aphrodite
bangles: Dinosaur Designs
shoes: stylist’s own

JESUS NEBREDA GALINDEZ: I want to start with how you became an artist? Was there a tipping point in your life that led to you choosing this path?

MYNERVA: I think the urge to make art just flowed. I have always been a person with an inventive and restless need. The determining thing that drew me to art was the sensation of not feeling inside my body. I remember since I was a child seeing myself as "another being" who was looking at me from afar. That feeling still haunts me. It has become a space within which I am running different simulations and constantly deconstructing myself into images. That is why my work touches on the intimate, but also other universal themes: existence, enjoyment, pain, the body, flesh, sexuality. Art is full of small miracles because there is no fixed form of creation, and that idea seduces me.

GALINDEZ: Pinks, reds, browns, and peachy flesh tones dominate your previous work. Can you talk about your color palette and how you came about its development?

MYNERVA: Color for a painter is like a gust of air. It can measure the temperature of their emotions and the atmosphere of their time. I work in reds, browns and pinks, but I have also gone back to using the black that had almost disappeared from my work. In general, I feel a sensation of returning to darker tones. Then, by surprise, in the pandemic, my colors burst into light because I was spending so much time observing everything from digital and social networks.

GALINDEZ: How does it feel to present your work at the New Museum? Is it still relevant to talk about the art scene as having a center and a periphery, or on the contrary, has the internet finally broken the constraints of geographical significance?

MYNERVA: I'm a little nervous. Definitely. Especially working with a museum for the first time and one as important as the New Museum in New York. I feel that it is an accumulation of pleasure and work for my convictions that has brought me here now. I think it is relevant not only that I am here, but who I am here with, and with this I want to answer your question about center and periphery. It is important to those who I have named in my projects and who have led me to think this way and not another. I feel that it is still fundamental to acknowledge the social, political and economic systems that condense us. The internet age has not broken these barriers, it has generated a placebo sensation to alleviate the impression of inequality in the art scene.

 

dress and shoes: Loewe
bangles: Dinosaur Designs

 

GALINDEZ: You will be mounting the largest painting that the museum has ever presented in its history. Why was the scale of this piece so important to you?

MYNERVA: The exhibition space is like a stage for me. The paintings become the landscape, and I am interested in encompassing everything with the scale. The spectators start the performance with their bodies. Painting is the architectural framework that I offer to the public. It is the work itself that induces the body to go through it. The scale surrounds you and is specifically designed, it is not portable, therefore it is a unique experience. It ceases to be a collectible object in order to become geography.

GALINDEZ: Your wonderful exhibition Bone of My Bones, Flesh of my Flesh at Gathering in London addressed not only the story of Adam and Eve but also delved into much more unknown territory, the myth of Lilith. Your new work, The Original Riot—God, I love the title—reinterprets and plunges into this disturbing allegory. Can you tell us about the process of removing a rib and why it has such significance in this work?

MYNERVA: I heard about the opportunity to exhibit at the New Museum in the midst of preparing Bone of My Bones, Flesh of My Flesh in London, and knew that this would be the space for the dénouement of this project: the removal of my Adam's rib. It has been a long process, and I am trying to maintain a good balance so that the project does not move too quickly or too slowly, to think like in the cinema, that time is an element, and my body’s time of recovery also holds beauty.

In The Original Riot, there is more than one scrambled story. I start with the mythology from Genesis of Adam and Eve, when Eve was created from Adam's rib to serve him. Before Eve, there was another female figure named Lilith who would defy Adam and refuse to reproduce, for which God punished her by turning her vagina into an eternal blue flame and expelling her from paradise to hell. In The Original Riot, which is the second installment of my version of this story, the first two female figures meet and agree to an alliance. As proof of that alliance, Eve removes Adam's rib and gives it to Lilith. This rib will be present in the exhibition as a relic, which is the materialized presence of a sacred fact. The removal of my own rib and its use for this exhibition is to offer my body as part of this revolt. It’s a removal of the other's body from my own body.

GALINDEZ: I’m curious about the intimate relationship between your body and your art. This isn’t the first time that you’ve made modifications to your body as a part of your practice. When it comes to your body and your practice, where does one start and the other end?

MYNERVA: I can visualize myself as a person who has learned to live with a wounded body in a troubled society. I always return from art to look for those signs, not as a tourist of my own experiences, nor to name my personal disasters, but looking for tools that have the ability to heal. I think that working on the body of today is working on the body of the future. And this is how I see my projects, connecting through reality, materiality and its network of meanings in the history of art and humanity. Art makes sense if it affects life and is applicable for a social transformation. My life and my work have a fluid dynamic.

 

top and skirt: Acne Studios

 

GALINDEZ: Your work is charged with corporeality and the way that our bodily rituals relate to our respective cultural heritages and social systems. Can you talk about the role of fashion and the body? Do you think it is a form of disguise, or might it be the highest and most representative form of personal representation?

MYNERVA: Fashion is a charming game, but it is also a prison. I like fashion’s challenges, things that are difficult to wear, like heels, platforms, and juggling with your feet. There's something masochistic about wearing a tight corset and latex in the summer. To see me fake and produced. You have to have fun, or else it becomes a set of elitist rules. You can suffer a lot in the prisons of brands and good dressing. As always, the right thing takes over pleasure, and the fashion police take to the streets. In fashion, I have no commitment to draw eyes. I love it.

GALINDEZ: Would you say there are any misconceptions about you as a person or about your art that you feel the need to correct, or do you feel properly represented by the media thus far?

MYNERVA: I'm always introducing myself as a completely different person. We are all in constant change, a transition until the hour of death. But then, I am also abstractly pushing my body and my environment outward, imperfectly and defectively. My work has often been understood only as provocative, and the truth is that I can only come up with radical solutions for radical changes.

GALINDEZ: In that case, where are we going to see Wynnie Mynerva in the future?

MYNERVA: I would love to launch a porn production company. Can you imagine?

Wynnie Mynerva: The Original Riot is on view through September 17 @ New Museum 235 Bowery, New York

Finding New Babylon: A Conversation with Actor Benny O. Arthur

sweater by Dries Van Noten
jeans by Y/Project
belt by Saint Laurent


interview by Camille Ange Pailler
photography by Riccardo Meroni
styling by Ina Witzel
talent Benny O. Arthur @ Martensgarten 
hair & makeup by Simona Parrella
production by Pier Guccione Prata @ Residenza Production
light assistance by Leonardo Galeotti
styling assistance by Typhaine Porta 


CAMILLE ANGE PAILLER: When did you discover your love of acting, and what inspired you to pursue it as a career?

BENNY O. ARTHUR: You know, I’ve always had a love for storytelling. I was a very observant kid and would always watch people at school, or on the train, and try to imitate them and their mannerisms. I also used to love playing with my sister’s dolls. I would create characters and stories with them that I would perform for my family. There was a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction when I created and played out these storylines, because in my head, it was as though I had just made a movie. I also have to credit my mom for this, I guess we can call it motherly intuition, because without any connection or access to that field, she signed me up for local theater programs when I was in third grade. She didn’t grow up watching a ton of movies or going to the theater, but somehow she just knew. I was fourteen when I took part in my first professional theater production at the Deutsche Opera Berlin. It was super exciting seeing how what had started in my bedroom with my sister’s toys suddenly happened in real life on such a large scale. When I graduated from high school, I realized that an acting career was something that I seriously wanted and could pursue. But yeah, I think maybe I’ve always kind of known.

PAILLER: What has been your most memorable role or project so far, and why?

ARTHUR: I’ve been fortunate to have worked on some really cool projects, but so far, I’d have to say that the series Django, which premiered on Sky earlier this year, has to be the most memorable. I had never really envisioned myself being in a Western, let alone playing a cowboy because I had only ever really encountered this genre through a white perspective that left out stories of cowboys of color. What really drew me to this story was this new perspective and the potential for stories from these kinds of individuals that were very much present in that era. It was such a privilege to get to work with an incredibly talented cast from all over Europe. Being in the midst of Matthias Schoenaerts, Nicholas Pinnock, Lisa Vicari, and Noomi Rapace, and just being able to learn from each one of them by watching them work is something I am really grateful for.

 

blouse, belt & jeans by Saint Laurent

 

dress by De Pino
leather pants & shoes by Saint Laurent

blouse, belt & leather pants by Saint Laurent

PAILLER: Tell me about Django and your role as Kevin.

ARTHUR: Django was a really special project. The series is a reimagining of Sergio Corbucci’s classic Spaghetti Western character. The series tries to show more perspectives of different people in that period—the minorities, and the world they created for themselves after the American Civil War. I played the role of Kevin Ellis, son of John Ellis, who is the visionary founder of an idealistic city called New Babylon. It’s a community that welcomes all outcasts and people of different races and creeds as equals. When we meet Kevin, he is his father’s number one advocate. He believes uncompromisingly in his vision. Our parents are often like superheroes to us when we’re kids, and it’s only as we get older that we recognize their humanity and their flaws. As John’s youngest son, Kevin has a youthful and hopeful worldview, which eventually brings him into conflict with the harsh realities of the Wild West. The idealistic image he has of his father begins to crumble as he comes to terms with the fact that even our heroes harbor darkness.

PAILLER: What do you enjoy most about being an actor?

ARTHUR: There is so much out there in the world, it can be quite daunting to think that you only get to live one life. You can find yourself doubting your decisions and questioning if the path that you’re on is the right one, or if there’s something that you’re missing out on. But as an actor, your life kind of revolves around letting yourself face and live through the realities, emotions, and experiences of so many different lives, different jobs, different time periods, perspectives, mentalities, and cultures. It’s one of the most enriching jobs out there because you learn to see not just through your own eyes, but also through those that may be in complete contradiction to your own.

jeans by Y/Project

jeans & denim jacket by Y/Project

PAILLER: Were there any particular actors that inspired you during your childhood?

ARTHUR: I don’t know if as a child I really looked to the actors very much. But as I have gotten older and gained more perspective for the craft, I have really come to love and appreciate the work of actors like Mahershala Ali, Viola Davis, Albrecht Schuch, and Félix Maritaud, to name a few. I also always get super inspired and excited about the new young talent that emerges like in Lukas Dhont’s Close.

 

pants & shoes by Situationist

 

PAILLER: Can you share any upcoming projects or roles you are currently working on or have lined up?

ARTHUR: I’m really excited about a feature film titled Wake Up, which we shot on the Canary Islands last year and is set to come out sometime later this year, as well as another Sky original Series with an incredible German cast. Definitely keep a lookout!

coat by Saint Laurent

Nocturnal Pilgrimage: An Interview of Designer Luca Magliano

 
 

interview by Janna Shaw
photographs by Pavel Golik

I once dreamt of Luca Magliano. I had no idea what he looked like; he appeared veiled but in no way sinister. In one of Magliano’s earlier video presentations, a poem is recited, a sonnet with lines dedicated to each garment displayed.

“Out of Saint Teresa of Avila’s Chanel coat I stole one dollar to gift to my golden Wagner jacket.” After this display of romance, I wandered about my own closet, singing praises sweetly and theatrically to my own favorite pieces. Something poignant to this act. 

Luca Magliano’s self-titled fashion brand is described as “Quintessentially Italian” and “An Emotional Anthropology”. Since its establishment in 2016, the brand’s collections have unfolded as a personal reflection of the vast imagination of Magliano, who derives inspiration from the works of artists and filmmakers such as Luchino Visconti, as well as his own emotions, encounters, curiosities, and experiences. We spoke with the emerging designer about his FW 22/23 collection and his celebration of solitude and melancholia. We speak about his love for Italy and my love for Italians, we discuss sleep and what follows it. We don’t talk much about clothes. We decide to let those speak for themselves. 

JANNA SHAW: I'd like to start this off right by jumping straight into your zodiac sign. What is it and what does it say about you?

LUCA MAGLIANO: Capricorn, a goat with the tail of a fish, equally attracted by altitude and abyss. Totally me.

SHAW: Your current F/W 22 collection was staged with beds: dark, lonely, quiet. It seems you derive inspiration from the subconscious state. Has the course of your life thus far been fairly solitary and shadowy, or is this a newfound stage of life that you’re exploring?

MAGLIANO: Melancholy has been a good half of my nature since forever, now I feel some kind of urge to celebrate it. These last years I have experienced a very precise kind of loneliness that could be contained only in a sort of perpetual nocturnal pilgrimage. That’s something I wanted to talk about in this show, because I think it’s something that affects many people. Someone said that the clothes in this show have a sort of curative action on those who wear them, as to protect them from a curse. I think this is very true. Design has to do with method, Magliano’s method is analogical.

 
 

SHAW: Do you have a bedtime routine? What about morning?

MAGLIANO: I love the moment when I go to bed and I hate to wake up in the morning. Every awakening is long and traumatic, while falling asleep is sweet and immediate. The first thing that I do in the morning is light up a cigarette, I know it’s gross. At night in bed, I usually read, sometimes a lot, sometimes a few words. I force myself not to look at the time because it stresses me out. If falling asleep becomes hard because there is something that scares me about the day after, I listen to audio books: someone reading to you is the most beautiful thing.

SHAW: When I mention ‘fantasy,’ where do your thoughts first go?

MAGLIANO: Sex.

SHAW: You are very proud of your Italian heritage, and find great inspiration from Italy (specifically your hometown of Bologna) for your collections. I dated an Italian from neighboring Modena. Best lover of my life and the greatest taste in food. What parts of being Italian really resonate with you? Does this shift with time? What is your favorite Italian dish?

MAGLIANO: When I was younger I would have done anything not to belong where I was. Part of that feeling came from curiosity for sure, but part of it was because I was in a big hurry to flee from unfinished business. My love for Italy has matured over time, and simultaneously with my love for myself, for my family, and its roots. The thing that I love the most about being Italian is the sense of exaggeration which is the quintessence of the anti-bourgeois ethos. My favorite Italian dish is cinema. Of course food is good but cinema is better. In Bologna every summer there is this incredible open air cinema that gives great classics and beautiful new d’essay releases, and it’s free for everyone. It’s always packed. While I’m writing this, I’m grieving the loss of the most brilliant Italian actress ever, Monica Vitti.

SHAW: What books and artworks are you currently diving into? Feel free to include any other things that have been sparking your delight as well.

MAGLIANO: Near to The Wild Heart and Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector, The Faggots And Their Friend Between The Revolution by Larry Mitchell. An essay by the Bolognese intellectual and activist Helena Velena called “Dal Cybercex Al Transgender”.

SHAW: What are you like in love? Dare I ask how you are in heartache?

MAGLIANO: Joyfully spiteful in the first case, silently edgy in the latter.

 
 

SHAW: Shapes or fabrics?

MAGLIANO: There is no shape without fabric, so I would say the latter. But nudity is the best because it does not involve any of those heavy burdens.

SHAW: Pragmatism or romance?

MAGLIANO: Either, as long as it is heroic and driven by bravery.

SHAW: Favorite flower?

MAGLIANO: Poppy.

SHAW: What is the last thing you were gifted?

MAGLIANO: A little bag made out of can tabs.

SHAW: What was your last handwritten note?

MAGLIANO: “Ricorda di chiedere scusa a Rafa” (Remember to apologize to Rafa).

SHAW: May I be so bold as to request a line of poetry? It can be your own, or a line that sticks in your mind.

MAGLIANO: I choose this one by Sandro Penna, an extraordinary poet and gay hero:

Io vivere vorrei addormentato

entro il dolce rumore della vita.

( I would like to live asleep

within the sweet noise of life. )

Unique To The Unison: An Interview Of Entrepreneur & Taboo Founder Kenny Eshinlokun

 

Photograph by Agustín Farías

 

In the fall of 2020, Kenny Eshinlokun launched her creative agency, Taboo, to create world class projects that transcend audiences and industry borders. After working for a decade in the marketing and music industries, she saw the need for artists to build meaningful, long-term partnerships with brands that truly care about their creative endeavors. Through Taboo, she has built a global cohort of creatives and brands that are committed to giving back to their communities and building relationships that are rooted in genuinely shared visions. Autre caught up with the Eshinlokun to talk about the inspiration for starting her own agency, the meaning of true inclusivity, and the future of Taboo.

AUTRE: What was the creative scene like for you growing up in London—how did you connect to the subculture? 

KENNY ESHINLOKUN: My background in London lay heavily in the music industry. The industry is really hard to break into but once you’re in, you’re pretty much in, and I quickly found the industry super small. My connection to subculture and my career had always been separate when I was young, I had a lot of friends who studied fashion and knew a few people working at Supreme and Lazy Oaf during their rise, which was really interesting to watch. 

Generally, street style was always extremely special in London and encompassed influences from all over the world, which also meant influences from many subcultures, like grime, the rave kids, skaters, punks, b-boys. I myself used to dance, which was a scene that had so many layers, and I loved being a part of this bubble the most. Dancers are the funniest, most energetic and craziest people you'll ever meet. It's a scene that really made me understand what community and second family was and really drove my connection to music through movement.

AUTRE: What kind of music did you listen to growing up? 

ESHINLOKUN: As a kid I listened to a lot of R&B, hip hop, and pop music sprinkled with the tiniest bit of emo, punk rock, and as I got into my teenage years I discovered classical, house, and techno music. Mainly because singing along to Destiny’s Child whilst studying for my exams was too distracting, so I needed music without too many lyrics.

AUTRE: What made you want to start your own agency? 

ESHINLOKUN: I mainly started because I couldn't find a job in the role that I wanted and a good friend of mine, Peter, who had started several companies himself, encouraged me to go for it. I wanted to create a space for people in the industry who looked like me and cater for an audience that was more inclusive.

AUTRE: What is Taboo? Can you describe the agency and what its core objectives are? 

ESHINLOKUN: Taboo is a brand-partnerships company that has a soul, I guess. We try to add meaning to everything we do and pride ourselves on the relationships we keep with not only our artists, but also the individual's who work for each of the brands with which we partner. We want to create bespoke, authentic partnerships that go a little further and give back to the community in some way, small or big. We want to provide opportunities for musicians to express themselves and share who they are. We want to encourage brands to see artists as more than just a face, and for musicians to see the brand as more than just a dollar sign. We want to create long-lasting partnerships that turn into strong relationships.

AUTRE: What does true inclusivity mean to you—is there something the media or people are missing in their message of bringing disparate communities together? 

ESHINLOKUN: Inclusivity means making things accessible for everyone, regardless of whether they’re in the audience or not. You never know who might be a part of your audience, so accounting for everyone is true inclusivity to me.

AUTRE: In an age of multiple virus variants and lockdowns, can you talk a little bit about the challenges of bringing a community together during a time of social distancing? 

ESHINLOKUN: It’s been very hard, since at Taboo we love a good party ,and have tried to bring together many parts of our community to celebrate and enjoy each other's company, but lockdown really hinders this.

AUTRE: What does subculture mean in a time when everything is on Instagram and TikTok—can a subculture thrive in a digitized, globalized world? 

ESHINLOKUN: Subcultures to me can not truly exist in a digital sphere and thus the most amazing thing is to experience them in real life…

AUTRE: What does the word ally mean to you—how do we develop meaningful allyships in an age of wild division? 

ESHINLOKUN: An Ally is someone who has your back when no one is looking.

AUTRE: What kind of brands or partnerships are you looking for—is there a magic word that they usually say where you know that they are the right partner? 

ESHINLOKUN: Partnerships that leave an imprint of unison, something that really feels like both parties sprinkled some of themselves and it couldn't be replicated by anyone else as it's completely unique to the unison.

AUTRE: Where do we go from here—what are your grand plans for Taboo? 

ESHINLOKUN: I want to do more clothing/fashion collaborations. In general, those are the most interesting for me and hopefully Taboo as a brand can also develop some collab rotations of its own.

AUTRE: As a leader in the community, do you have advice for those who want to take charge and help amplify voices? 

ESHINLOKUN: Make sure you know why you are speaking up, as when people try to put you down, you'll be able to brush it off because you know, at the very least, you truly believe in what you are saying.

Follow Taboo on Instagram to learn more.

Temporal Vertigo: An Interview Of Nicolas G. Miller

 

Everett Sloane in Yohji Yamamoto S/S 2000
photograph courtesy ofstudio photography

 

interview by Isabelle Albuquerque
photographs by ofstudio photography

If you look up close and if you have an exceptional memory for Old Hollywood character actors, you will clearly make out the distinctive face of Everett Sloane with his signature wide-set eyes and crooked nose. Known primarily for his roles in The Twilight Zone, The Andy Griffith Show, and Citizen Kane, the actor, songwriter, and theatre director took his life by way of barbiturate overdose in 1965 at the age of 55. Here, he is immortalized and miniaturized by artist Nicolas G. Miller in the form of a bronze statuette. He appears to move with a brisk, yet cool stride walking down an imaginary runway wearing Yohji Yamamoto S/S 2000. In the following interview, Isabelle Albuquerque sits down with Miller to discuss the temporality of fashion, the process of sculpting in bronze, and the act of breathing life into the deceased.

Isabelle Albuquerque: How did art first come into your life?

Nicolas G. Miller: My first memorable experiences with art were of the work of my maternal great-grandfather, Orville J. Hanchey. He was a painter, educator, and all-around bon vivant. When I was very young, I was lucky enough to visit Orville at his home. He was already quite old when I visited and had retired from his post as Professor of Art at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. He lived in a small house that was stuffed with his paintings and all manner of marvelous objects. Orville's paintings are delicately rendered watercolors of flower arrangements. There were two that hung in my childhood home. I recall staring at them often and wondering how he was able to make the petals of lilies look so beautifully diaphanous. And, to be honest, I still don’t know how he did it!

ALBUQUERQUE: Oh how beautiful. Thinking of the petals of his lilies makes me think also of the draping of the Yohji pants in your sculpture Everett Sloane in Yohji Yamamoto S/S 2000. I’m obsessed with how they fall. How the fuck did you do that?

MILLER: Thank you very much, Isabelle! The trickiest thing about sculpting my statuette was the clothing. The majority of examples I’ve seen of sculpted clothing are from classical art. In other words, it is all tunics. Not pants, lugged sandals, button-up shirts or high heels. I knew in this piece, since it was Yohji, the pants would be the main attraction. I aimed to keep the viewer entranced as their gaze glides along the surface of the sculpture. There is a technique developed in the 1990s by the automobile designer Chris Bangle when he worked for BMW called “flame surfacing”. The idea was to use compound curves to mimic the form of flames on the exterior of sports cars. The 2003 BMW Z4 stands as a good example. When a flame-surfaced automobile drives by at night, pools of light form along the compound curves creating a pleasing visual effect similar to watching a log burn in a fireplace. I was hoping to achieve this effect, but at the scale and speed of sculpture, particularly the Yohji pants.

ALBUQUERQUE: Of course, you flame-surfaced them. Ha! When did fashion first begin to emerge in your art?

MILLER: That is a very interesting question. I am a sculptor and sculpture is generally preoccupied with questions of space (scale, proportion, site, etc). Fashion, on the other hand, seems bound up with questions of time (seasonal releases, the cyclical recurrence of styles, etc). I have always been drawn to works of art that attempt to present contradictory terms. Fashion entered into my sculptural vocabulary as a way of asking questions about time and temporality within sculpture.

ALBUQUERQUE: Yes, exactly. And the way you connect to particular seasons and collections in fashion allows the work to both act as a time travel object and also have a discrete connection to a specific moment in time. Speaking of a specific moment in time—what are you wearing right now?

MILLER: I am at home and am wearing a black cotton sweatshirt. On the sweatshirt is a white screen print of an image of downtown Los Angeles. Two impossibly large palm trees are superimposed on top of the cityscape, and just above the palm trees are the words "Los Angeles, California." It is the sort of sweatshirt you buy as a souvenir on Hollywood Blvd., which is precisely where I bought it. Below that I am wearing black polyester athletic shorts manufactured by Kappa and designed for Napoli SSC, a professional soccer team based in Naples, Italy. It is the kind of outfit I put on without thinking too much.

ALBUQUERQUE: Ah! Yes! Superimposed palm trees forever.  I love Hollywood Blvd and visit its souvenir shops often. Jon and I used to make posters for our music shows on top of old signed glamour shots from unknown actors. There is so much longing and loss in those images. What made you decide to work with actors who are no longer living in clothes made decades after their deaths?

MILLER: This piece is one in a series of sculptures of old Hollywood actors dressed in new clothes. Each of the actors were well known in the first half of the twentieth century. In their sculpted form they will all be wearing runway looks from the year 2000. It is important to me that the clothes were designed after the actors had passed away. This structure has an internal logic that reminds me of the logic of fashion, wherein two disparate moments are brought in close proximity to one another. I hope the impossibility of these combinations gives the viewer a sense of temporal vertigo. Vertigo is frequently associated with a sensation of spatial imbalance. It is often described as "the world around you spinning." Recently, I have the sense that the world around me is spinning, but through time rather than space.

ALBUQUERQUE: Yes. I know exactly what you mean. How does bronze hold time for you? 

MILLER: As with so many materials the more I look into bronze the less clearly it signifies. On its surface bronze is meant to imply permanence. Yet the history of bronze sculpture in Europe is one of constant change and impermanence. Large, bronze public statues were erected to symbolize new world orders, but were often melted down to make weapons to fight wars. Despite the common sense that bronze implies permanence, it is far more plastic than one would first think. 

In the act of making this piece at a foundry I was struck by a sense of eternal return. In the lost-wax process of producing a bronze sculpture, first the sculptor makes a maquette. The maquette is then destroyed in the process of making a silicone mold. Then the silicone mold is used to produce a wax version of the maquette. This wax version is encased in an investment mold (a hard concrete-like substance). Then the wax is melted out and bronze is poured into the investment mold. Finally the investment mold is destroyed in order to reveal the bronze. At each step of the process, the objects created in the previous step are destroyed. This gives the final product the effect of permanence, which reminds me of the logic of seasons and the return of styles in fashion. 

I imagine the final resting place for my statuettes to be a domestic setting. Perhaps atop a mantel. Another common object that sits on a mantel is a clock. As time passes, the outfits sculpted into the bronze statuettes, and perhaps the actors too, will go in and out of fashion, not dissimilar to the way that the hands on a clock go round and round.

ALBUQUERQUE: Wow. Yes. I love thinking about the impermanence of bronze and the lost wax casting process. Even in the name of the process we have the word, lost. With the last few years in lockdown, I think we’ve all been thinking about lost time and life. The hands on the clock going round and round for real. How do you breathe time and life into people who are no longer with us? Since these actors were alive before scanning technology, do you work from photographs/film stills/collective memory?

MILLER: I sculpt in a 3D software called ZBrush. This software was developed to give the feeling of sculpting in digital clay. I learned a technique for sculpting portraits in ZBrush from a digital sculptor who worked at Industrial Light & Magic. When it came time to choose a subject, all of the other students in his course selected contemporary Hollywood actors. At first I thought this was simply in keeping with the general culture of "digital art," but there is a much more practical element to it. In order to sculpt a portrait properly in ZBrush, you need a great number of reference images. Preferably images taken from many angles.

At first, I thought I would sculpt one of the Fayum portraits from the 1st century AD. The Fayum Portraits were painted on wood and buried with upper class mummies from Roman Egypt. The depictions are truly haunting. Since the paintings were intended to be buried with their subjects, neither the painter nor the sitter imagined a future where the pictures would be seen by posterity. This idea of an image without a future feels so foreign to me. I quickly realized that sculpting from these images was too difficult and that the Fayum portraits are probably best left as paintings. 

I then began working with old Hollywood actors. I make large collections of promotional photographs and film stills of each actor before I begin sculpting. What I realized when I started to manipulate the digital clay is how very different a face can look when shot under different lighting and with an assortment of camera lenses. My statuettes end up as montages of the faces of bygone actors—many moments condensed into one.

 

Everett Sloane in Yohji Yamamoto S/S 2000
photograph courtesy ofstudio photography

 

ALBUQUERQUE: Yes! You can really feel that in the work. Is there significance in the sculpture’s smaller-than-life scale?

MILLER: The scale is of utmost importance to me! In France, during the Art Deco period, there was a preponderance of small figurative sculptures—also known as statuettes. Many bronze foundries opened in order to keep up with the demand from the rising bourgeois class for bronze art. These statuettes were anywhere from sixteen to twenty-two inches and intended for domestic display. The economic structure of companies such as Susse Frères or LN Paris JL is very interesting to me. They both had foundries in the countryside and exhibition spaces in the city. Both foundries supported a large network of figurative sculptors by commissioning maquettes that they would sell in editions. 

This moment was also ripe with promises of grand technological advancement. There was growing optimism around electroplating, which claimed to provide a thin seamless layer of precious metal atop any sculpted form. The fantasy was that it would remove much of the need for human labor from the process of making a fine metal sculpture. When I came across this moment in the history of European sculpture I was deeply struck by the similarities to our time, in particular the promises of 3D technologies and their applications in sculpture.

Susse Frères would produce beautiful catalogs for customers filled with photographs of their statuettes. I am making advertisements for posters and magazines of my statuettes as a way of drawing out similarities between the moment of Art Deco statuettes and my own work. I also want to allude to the possibilities for sculpture in a model like Susse Frères.

ALBUQUERQUE: Very cool. Now that you have released the little man into the wild, what are you working on next?

MILLER: Lupe Vélez in Hussein Chalayan S/S 2000.

ALBUQUERQUE: AHHHHHHH Cannot wait for her.

Space Talk: An Interview Of Retrofuturist Designer Candice Molayem

 
sculpture: Kelly Lamb Moon, Star, Sun, You, 2015 corten steel, stainless steel, marble 74 x 34 in.

sculpture:
Kelly Lamb
Moon, Star, Sun, You, 2015
corten steel, stainless steel, marble
74 x 34 in.

 

text by Bree Castillo
photographs by Dana Boulos


A serendipitous trip through Europe was the inevitable catalyst for Candice Molayem to begin her ascent into design with her evergreen clothing line, Animal Crackers. Since its conception in July of 2020 with the intention of inspiring empowerment for her audience through wearable art, Molayem has been creating her circum-vitae of ethically-crafted garments full of futurist visions that harken eras past, sharp tailoring, and avant-garde silhouettes. Molayem transcends the norms of the traditional fashion calendar and the constant urge for the new, emphasizing on season-less collections that are made to endure and be worn year-round.

With her informal education as a seasoned, vintage designer, tattoo artist, painter, and stylist, Animal Crackers is a synthesis of all her past selves. Each collection uncovers different facets and layers to Molayem’s identity, each as true and as beautiful as the next. Her latest and sophomore capsule collection, Space Talk is inspired by her inherent need to escape reality even if just for a moment. Sewn into every piece is a breath of retrofuturism, giving life to shape, color, and full dimensionality. On May 20th-23rd, Animal Crackers will be showcasing their latest designs in their long-anticipated pop-up in West Hollywood. 

CASTILLO: How did you first discover your affinity for fashion and design? 

MOLAYEM: How did I find it? It was something I always had. My mother always tells me that. As far as I can remember I have loved clothes, fashion, and color. It is something I have always been obsessed with. Creating has always come naturally to me. My mom is an artist. Growing up, she worked from the guest house. I grew up around it. Anything creative was really encouraged, and it came naturally to me. I have never done any school or classes. I explored so many mediums. Right now we are doing a pop-up and I'm styling wigs and sculpting. I have never done that before, but I am figuring it out. 

CASTILLO: How did Animal Crackers come to be? 

MOLAYEM: I'm a huge fan of Pierre Cardin and was absolutely mesmerized by his boutique in Paris during a trip there in 2019. His muse and director of haute couture, Maryse Gaspard, happened to be in the store at the time, and she was easily the most fabulous woman I've met in my life. We ended up chatting and she assumed I was a designer. When I mentioned I wasn't, she insisted I become one. Although I had heard it from friends and family countless times over the years, it felt different coming from her. It was the nudge from the universe I needed, and Animal Crackers was born.

 
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CASTILLO: I am curious to know what your creative process is like? 

MOLAYEM: It is changing because now I am working on my third collection. So, now I have a collection to build off of and to expand. When I start designing, I am trying to create who I want to be next. How do I want to feel when I wear this? What is the energy of this next collection? All along I am collecting references and vintage, and it just all comes together in that way. Who do I want to be when I put this shirt on? 

CASTILLO: What can you tell me about your latest capsule collection Space Talk? 

MOLAYEM: I have always been very obsessed with retrofuturism and looking forward. This collection was conceived while—like everyone else—I was stuck at home, and I just really wanted to leave this world for a minute. I am an escape artist. 

CASTILLO: How do you go about taking totems from the past and ‘futurizing’ them? 

MOLAYEM: The vintage I am inspired by isn’t really practical. Making it wearable is the future, being able to wear your art. When creating the pieces, I put them on and wear them for five days in a row. In the process, I might notice that something doesn’t adhere to a modern lifestyle, In which case, I make changes to make it comfortable for long-term wear.

CASTILLO: I am constantly amazed by the way you lay fabrics to create these avant-garde silhouettes. Where do you draw from when creating your strong shapes? 

MOLAYEM: I believe clothing should have movement and I'm obsessed with shape. I look to vintage pieces and update them in ways that feel right for me. A friend has even used the word "shapes" as an adjective to describe me.

 
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CASTILLO: Creating sustainable fashion is crucial. How are you doing your part with creating environmentaly-friendly designs? 

MOLAYEM: I take so much pride in first of all creating these pieces fifteen minutes away from my house. I don’t consider the place that sews our clothing a factory. The owners I work with directly are husband and wife. I feel so good about where these pieces are getting made and supporting our local economy. The people I work with really care. My pattern maker is just downtown as well. Now, I have some new contractors on bags and belts and they are all downtown. They don’t have minimums or very high minimums, which allows us to create less excess. I don’t need to create more and have all this leftover. We are sourcing our fabrics from one of my favorite vendors, a little mom-and-pop mill in Barcelona. I also include dead-stock fabric in every collection. And although there’s not a ton of it, I love finding ways to use and reuse the leftover material from past collections.

One thing about the fashion industry that drives me crazy—and I think it drives a lot of people crazy—is how often we have new. The fashion calendar doesn’t make sense to me; I don’t understand it. I can’t follow it. It’s too fast for me. I think there has been a lot of conversation about this, and people are waking up to how messed up it is.  

CASTILLO: What do you keep in mind when creating your garments that transcend gender norms? 

MOLAYEM: I design clothing for people and don't have a gender in mind when creating. I love to blend the feminine and masculine. I’ve received great feedback on my pieces from people of all genders, and look forward to having more gender representation in my line and being able to expand my size offerings.

CASTILLO: How do you feel talking about fashion when the world is where it is right now? 

MOLAYEM: Having less of a reason to dress up has only fueled my desire to dress up more. I believe in the transformative power of clothing and love the way the right outfit can be used to channel a mood. It's an important vehicle of self-expression that has really saved my sanity in these times. I am from a Persian-immigrant family and it completely informs the approach to my work. I am committed to amplifying diverse voices and showing faces that have traditionally been shut out of the fashion world. I was not aware of any designers in my community growing up and I am honored to be that representation for a younger generation.

 
sculpture: Kelly Lamb Geo Prism (prototype)

sculpture:
Kelly Lamb
Geo Prism (prototype)

 

Photographs by Dana Boulos | @danaboulos
Interview by Bree Castillo | @bumblebr3e
Model Obianibeli Esu | @etherealchocolategoddess
Clothing by Animal Crackers | @animalcrackers.clothing
Art and Location: Kelly Lamb Studios | @kellylambstudios
Produced by BJ Panda Bear | @bjpandabear

Keeping It Brief: Emily Labowe and Devendra Banhart In Conversation

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Women’s underpants really didn’t make a name for itself until suffragette Amelia Bloomer created her famous “bloomers” in the 1850s, modeled after the traditional loose trousers worn by women in Turkey. It became a craze, a punk rebellion against the strict, stiff undergarments of the Victorian Age. Bloomer was also the first woman to own, operate and edit a newspaper for women. Cut to the 21st century, Emily Labowe is carrying the torch of Bloomer’s rebellion with a new line of French cut, cotton intimates with delicately embroidered flowers, cacti, and fauna. Made locally, Poppy Undies is a celebration of femininity and mindfulness. As part of the launch, Labowe has also launched a quarterly newspaper. The first issue has contributions from a global coterie of artists and friends, like Langley Fox and Devendra Banhart. In the following conversation, Labowe and Banhart discuss underwear, lockdown, and life in our skivvies.

DEVENDRA BANHART I’m interviewing the wonderful, lovely, talented, amazing, incredible in every way, billion-threat, Emily Labowe, the CEO and founder and creative director of Poppy Undies, that launched two days ago. We do know each other, but I don’t know the answers to these questions. If Poppy Undies were a film, what would it be?

EMILY LABOWE Labowe That’s a really good question. I put together a thing called “brief scenes”—ha ha, so funny—of my favorite movies that have really great underwear scenes in them. I would probably say Bridget Jones’s Diary, or Empire Records’s underwear scene is pretty amazing, when Liv Tyler takes off her skirt in her boss’s office. Pretty wonderful.

BANHART Where do you think your entrepreneurial and handmade goods making origins come from?

LABOWE I think my mom. She taught me how to embroider four years ago, during Passover, on a matzo cover, and it was so fun. As a kid too, I was always knitting or crocheting with her, or crafting. I don’t know about the entrepreneurial part, but I was selling cookies and Pocky in high school, because that was the cool thing to do. People would bring Costco desserts and sell them in duffle bags because it was public school; we didn’t have fun food. And I was like, I want to make friends, so I baked stuff and sold it, and I made a couple friends.

BANHART And you made a couple bucks!

LABOWE And friends, more importantly.

BANHART Okay, so friends are more important than bucks. How was Poppy Undies born?

LABOWE There a fair amount of niche brands that embroider jean jackets, or shirts, and I felt that intimates was a really interesting item of clothing to have embroidery on because you either wear underwear that makes you feel sexy, or you wear it for someone else, and you have a little special secret thing on your underwear.

BANHART Totally. There’s a very obvious hierarchy in clothing lines, and I think intimates are really undervalued and underappreciated in that hierarchy. It’s the most personal item of clothing you can wear, and in the same way that architecture affects the way you think—you know, you’re in a particular room, you design it a particular way, it really does affect the way you think. I think the actual cut of something that is touching you in the most intimate place, and the feel of it, the look of it, does affect how you actually feel.

LABOWE Totally, and confidence and comfort is so important. 

BANHART Why a poppy, and how did you settle on that name?

LABOWE Two different thoughts. It’s very classic: California–poppy flowers. I love poppies, and the name Poppy is important to me because it’s what I used to call my grandpa.

BANHART I love that. Very, very sweet. Let’s talk about the art newspaper that’s also part of the launch; it’s also going to be an ongoing part of Poppy. The theme of it, in terms of the short stories, the poems, the models shown alone, the negative space in the layout, seems to be one of isolation and remoteness, yet the entire mission statement of Poppy is about self-love and celebrating femininity—something that seems harder to do and more important than ever to strive for in this time of confinement. Can you speak on that?

LABOWE I think retrospectively, the experience of quarantine really influenced the line and the paper just in terms of—personally for me, I feel like I aged like five years during this time in good ways, and bad ways too. I just changed a lot, and feel a newfound sense of confidence and self-esteem, and that is really what the backbone of the line is, is promoting self-love and acceptance. In terms of you getting a sense of isolation, that’s not entirely purposeful. I wanted to create a sense of community with the line, so that’s why putting a bunch of friends together and collaborating on something adds to the whole world of the brand.

BANHART And I guess that is how we all feel, kind of alone together. Everyone has their own page, and the spacing is done in a way that everybody’s piece is honored and it’s not cluttered in any way, but we’re all part of the same newspaper.

LABOWE Exactly, yeah.

BANHART You worked with all of your friends. Could you talk about some of them?

LABOWE You have a drawing on page fifteen, and on the same page my friend Javier Ramos, who’s a chef in LA, wrote a recipe for the paper, and then my friend Jeff who laid out the paper, printed these recipe cards, it’s kind of like a postcard, but the back is a handwritten recipe. Ali Mitton did all the photography, which is from the campaign, and then I have a couple friends’ essays in there, and my friend Renee Parkhurst who’s an artist, sent me some paintings, and Langley Fox sent me a drawing. There’s a bunch of cool stuff in there. 

BANHART There’s also like a little definition of a few words.

LABOWE Oh yeah, on the gutter of each page are poems from our friend Emily Knecht who wrote vocabulary words that play into the theme of heartbreak and love, and the experience of COVID. 

BANHART I guess the other thing is soon—I’ll be doing twenty drawn-on versions. 

LABOWE Devendra is going to do a couple limited edition drawings directly on some of the pages, and that will be on the website soon.

BANHART You know that I am a practicing Buddhist, in the Vajrayana tradition, but in Zen, which is very dear to me, there’s a tradition called koans. A koan is a question that a teacher will ask a disciple and they will mull it over for quite some time. There’s actually an answer to them, and it’s kind of a test.

LABOWE But you’re not supposed to answer right away?

BANHART I guess some people probably do and maybe get it right. 

LABOWE So there’s a correct answer?

BANHART Yeah, there is actually a correct answer, but traditionally people will mull it over some time. So, I’m putting you in the real hot seat here and asking you to answer koans.

LABOWE Are you going to make a (imitates buzzer noise) if I’m wrong?

BANHART I’m going to electrocute you. Here’s the first onLabowe what is your original face before you were born?

LABOWE You.

BANHART The letter, or y-o-u?

LABOWE Y-o-u.

BANHART Nice. When you can do nothing, what can you do? 

LABOWE Everything.

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BANHART What is the color of wind? 

LABOWE Light.

BANHART Do you think that when we have a child, it will inspire you to make Poppy for kids?

LABOWE Yeah, they’re not on the website yet, but I have onesies that I’ve embroidered. I’ve been giving them just to friends right now, but I definitely want to do that on a bigger scale. I’ve just kind of been testing it out with friends who have new babies. 

BANHART As far as I know, there are some new items in the works, like mesh underwear?

LABOWE Yeah. I actually sold out of everything already, so the next drop will be the beginning of January, and there will be unisex boxers and mesh underwear as well.

BANHART And will the designs be different?

LABOWE Yes. I’ll restock what I have; that will stay the same, like the essential stuff, but the new pieces will have new designs. 

OLIVER KUPPER I guess I’ll jump in with a few questions. How has it been living and working during the pandemic?  

LABOWE I live alone, and quarantine was a very weird time because in the beginning, I wasn’t even seeing my family. It was intensely lonely, going through a hard emotional time as well, which I think influenced a lot of the paper, but I have a newfound sense of strength. And I was able to pour myself into this, which was great, so I stayed busy. Pretty much on my own, though.

BANHART I would say it’s almost like we’re just arriving at a time of adapting to the reality of how long this is all going to last. 

LABOWE Especially now that we’re back in lockdown.

BANHART Back in lockdown, and it’s such a huge shift that none of us have ever experienced in our entire existence. It’s taken all this time, for me at least, to feel like I really have to get used to this. I’m not going to be touring. I’m not going to be doing the things I used to do. We’re going to be socializing. There is this extra tremendous wave of collective mourning that is such a part of everyday life now. Mourning is so huge for the amount of people that are dying every day, and then all those people’s families that are mourning—they’re losing their loved ones every day, and obviously how different the lives are of first responders from us, which we’re kind of having to deal with ourselves in a new way, where many first responders have not had that opportunity. They are dealing with this pandemic every moment. And I’ve lost friends to this pandemic. It’s really, really strange because even mourning the loss of my friend Hal Willner feels like it’s on hiatus. I couldn’t go to a funeral. I can’t talk or traditionally mourn. It’s important to remember that whatever I’m going through is certainly being magnified by this tremendous collective mourning and suffering. It’s important to try and look at it as an opportunity for growth.

KUPPER It’s interesting. Also, a lot of us are not wearing any clothes, either.

LABOWE Right, totally. I’ve been wearing boxers and underwear. It’s that or sweatpants now that it’s a bit colder, but I feel like it’s quite relevant. The loungewear business is booming, which is cool.

BANHART I’m just in my corduroy thong, as usual.

KUPPER Any plans for edible Poppies?

LABOWE Wow. You just sparked a really great idea. Shit. I wish I could’ve done that in time for Valentine’s Day. But hey, maybe I will. What do you make it out of? There are those candies that are on strings, but also I’m imagining—remember Fruit by the Foot? If you make that for Valentine’s Day, vould you eat it off of yourself if you don’t have a partner? I’ll let you know. I’ll try it.

KUPPER My last question—do you have any tips for feeling sane during this time.

LABOWE That’s a good, good question. For me, I had a somewhat sense of it before because my usual job is so random, and I don’t have a schedule. It’s like having a routine to get you through the week, so you have your coffee, and then you go for your walk, which I should do more often. Having a routine is the number one way for me to feel sane, I think. And going to the beach, which I haven’t done in a while, and I love going to the beach when it’s cold, but I was doing that very, very frequently from March until it got a bit chilly. 

BANHART My advice is to hold space for your sadness. Hold space for your sorrow, and expand your support system. 

LABOWE For sure. Even if it’s just a phone call or Zoom with a friend. You’ll feel so much better after.

Click here to explore Poppy Undies. Purchase a limited edition of Poppy Paper with original drawings by Devendra Banhart.

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Art Of The Divine: A Conversation Between Rikkí Wright & Kilo Kish

Film still from A Song About Love by Rikkí Wright

Film still from A Song About Love by Rikkí Wright

Rikkí Wright and Kilo Kish are two of the eight artists exhibiting in this year’s edition of Womxn in Windows, a socially distant group show that clearly presaged the conditions of our current moment in its first edition last year. Visitors are invited to walk along the storefronts of Chung King Road in Chinatown and watch short films through each window with scores that can be accessed via QR code. Founded and curated by Zehra Ahmed, this year’s artists were invited to exhibit work that examines the intertwined relationships between culture, religion, and society. These films remind us how womxn have relied on faith and on each other as well as on a desire for equality, understanding, and the power to make the right choices for ourselves. In both Wright and Kish’s films one observes an intimate relationship with the spiritual, however from highly contrasting perspectives and with completely unique aesthetics. Wright is a photographer who makes films and ceramics, and whose practice includes explorations of gender and faith in the Black community. Her film, A Song About Love is a spiritual reckoning on the different forms of love in this world, from human to divine. It is a moving collage that combines interviews of Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and bell hooks with the soul and gospel stylings of D.J. Rogers and more. Most notable is the way that she delicately stitches these intellectual and emotional anchors with a personal thread of vulnerable, self love that manifests directly in the undressed body of the artist as it moves languidly to the music. Kish is a singer-songwriter and visual artist who makes films and music videos. Her film, Blessed Assurance: a dream that I had, is presented as a multi-room installation that takes on a new life as six individual visual pieces, each framed in their own windows. It’s a captivating mix of recorded video overlaid with punchy, low-fi graphics, and an animated church reminiscent of a two-bit video game that transports the viewer to their own physical and spiritual dimension, somewhere between the space Kish imagines and the sky above. These varied approaches to understanding the relationship between art and the divine are reflective of their very different backgrounds and core disciplines. The following conversation is an in-depth look at the role of the body in self-portraiture, the effects of the pandemic, uprisings and election that have dominated this year, and the value of tapping into your intuition.

KILO KISH: Do you think it’s possible to fully find yourself as an artist, or is it an ever-fleeting thing? 

RIKKI WRIGHT: I think the latter. I came to photography initially, and then filmmaking. It was kind of by way of exploring and trying to understand who I am and where I came from. My mother passed away when I was two years old, and I didn’t grow up having that figure in my life. I think that once I got to a certain age, I was trying to find parts of my feminine self or the parts of womanhood that a mother gives to her child that I was lacking. But, in the midst of trying to look for photos of my mom and my childhood home, I wasn’t able to find a lot because I think the mother is the person that keeps all of these heirlooms together. That’s what brought me to wanting to create images and knowing how to make tangible evidence of something that happened in a way that just proves that that time existed. So, my work really revolves around trying to fill in that gap, around my family, and the Black family, and there are so many conversations and things that I’m trying to understand in my work constantly. It’s just ever-flowing. 

KISH: Yeah. I kind of felt that after watching your piece. It had that nostalgic quality of opening up a scrapbook, like an old scrapbook at your grandma’s house and being like, “Oh, this is Uncle Joe!” And I agree; I don’t know if you ever fully find yourself as an artist, and if you do, you just kind of move on to the next thing that’s exciting for you. If you do find something–and I attribute this more to making albums–it’s like you’re asking questions and trying to find parts of yourself that you want to explore further, and by the time you actually put the album out, you’re already onto the next thing. 

WRIGHT: That’s what’s so amazing about being an artist and having the ability to express yourself in however you do that—being able to have these conversations through your work, or just working through and processing the questions that you have. Toni Morrison talks about that a lot. All of her books start with a question, and she’s pretty much trying to answer that for herself, and strongly going, I make this work for myself first, and whoever comes to it to connect with it and is able to explore that question within the work, that’s an amazing added bonus. 

KISH: Totally. I was thinking about that a lot recently, because I was nervous in general about social media—it just doesn’t leave that space for questions. You’re presenting yourself in a way that is who this person is, but sometimes that’s tough because we are portraying, and we’re using our bodies, and we’re using figures of ourselves to play a role or explore ideas that we don’t know the answer to yet, and I think a lot of times artists get stuck in this spot where they’re like, that’s who you are! No, I was just using my body in a space. 

WRIGHT: Yeah, yeah, I mean that’s my approach in the self portraiture within my work, and also in the film, I present it as: that body is my body, but not me. It’s a form for all of the Black women who are experiencing, or have experienced this stuff with their sexuality or their spirituality, the suppression or oppression of it. So, I’m using my body to speak on behalf of others sometimes, or to create a character that represents something I’m trying to express. Maybe not even an actual person, just a being.  

KISH: Or even an idea, or a question. 

WRIGHT: Yeah, that is interesting. And also with being on Instagram and social media and having to present yourself as an artist. I started out as a photographer. I always see myself as a storyteller, a visual storyteller. I’m a visual learner. I grew up in a very religious household, so most of the music I know that’s not Catholic music is from watching films. That’s when I realized I want to say more with the images that I’m making. I feel like the moving image could add to what I’m actually trying to say, and I tried not to transition into filmmaker. I feel like there was also a resistance in conversations I was having with people trying to hire me for jobs. They were asking, “So, are you a photographer, or are you a filmmaker?” I do a lot of pottery as well, ceramics, so I’m trying to figure out how to merge all selves as an artist. I feel like sometimes, social media doesn’t allow you to do that. 

KISH: I agree. It’s a very daunting space because it’s centered around branding. What do you do? What is your thing? If you find your thing and just keep doing more of that thing, people will like it and share it, and I think when you’re exploring, it’s difficult. You’re like this is my music, but we’re also having this art show that’s going on right now. Do my fans of my music care about my art show? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m sure someone does, but is that this audience? Having gone to art school, and then jumping into the music industry, it’s such a difference. We’re selling a product in the music industry; we’re not ​selling​ art. As much as you want to think about it like, oh this is my art, the people in charge of it do not think of it that way. They’re thinking, okay, there’s nothing fine about this. We’re selling songs, let them be catchy, and that’s that. That’s not my doctrine at all, so it’s very difficult to try and merge the different parts of yourself, and I think now, after doing it for nine or ten years, just making art and trying to support myself off of the things that I make, I learned that I have to accept the output and stop trying to make myself fit into what people expect. 

WRIGHT: I’ve been reading this book by Saidiya Hartman, called ​Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments,​ and it’s about Black women right after the Reconstruction period. Black women moving over from the South to New York and trying to break out of this role of servitude that’s put forth, like Black women can’t do anything but be in the kitchen. But I think it speaks to the fear and anxiety of trying to do all of these things, or trying to incorporate different mediums into my practice, because I’m trying to tell the same message. I just know that I have different modes, or my body wants to do this instead of take a photo, so I feel like that has really empowered me. People are receptive; there’s an audience for each thing that you do. 

KISH: Yeah, totally. How do you know what to work on from day to day? Do you just feel it? 

WRIGHT: In the past eight months–how long have we been in quarantine? I feel like I was trying to stay on this roll of I need to be doing this, or I need to be doing that. Recently, I’ve been shooting a lot more, feeling inspired to connect with other people and shoot, but I also feel like I’ve just been sitting. I’ve been reading a lot. I’ve been trying to wrap my ideas around the one project that I do want to finish. It’s a documentary I’ve been shooting for the past two years with my grandmother in Alabama, telling the story of the American food race and how certain foods came here. It’s about memory as well. My grandmother is going through the early stages of dementia and what we shared growing up was being in the kitchen together. I could call her, and she could tell me a recipe on the drop of a dime, but that is diminishing slowly, and I’m feeling compelled to document this and to have conversations about intergenerational relationships. In the midst of me prepping for that, I’ve been working on so much self work, so much work within my family, having more open conversations, and relationship growth. I’ve been nurturing the relationships I do have. It’s been beautiful that my work brings me to that type of place because it’s all self work as well. I’m going home to Alabama for a month in December, and I’ll be finishing filming with my grandmother and staying on the farm out there. That work feels good, especially for the moment. It’s me connecting with my family, and that’s so important right now during this pandemic. Things are so unknown–the future, this election coming up. 

 
Self-portrait by Rikkí Wright

Self-portrait by Rikkí Wright

 

KISH: Yeah, I just want to get through this election, and I’ve been having similar things, just working on my relationships here and figuring out where I’m at creatively because this is the longest I’ve sat in one spot, but I’d been burnt out and it feels good to be able to slow down and just be like, so why am I doing this again? I feel like it’s so easy to get in those patterns of getting things done, and you’re working on autopilot, and then you’re like, do I actually feel for this work right now? Is this still a question for me? Because sometimes life just answers questions when you’re in the middle of a work process. That whole problem was just answered by me sitting down for two months. I was working on an album, and it was about American themes, and I got bogged down with this entire quarantine. It was so intense, and I was just like, I don’t know if I really want to...I’m already over it. 

WRIGHT: The priorities shifted as well. There’s an importance for certain work to be out right now and to be seen, and certain conversations to be had. Sometimes it’s time to put that on pause and have it for a different space. I’ve really enjoyed connecting with my family because they’ve shifted into a wider awareness—a wider political awareness as well. Connecting more with the stories and lives of people in my family, it’s like, oh, this is happening because of this larger systemic thing that’s going on. That’s why I love experimental filmmaking: because it allows the freedom to be as open as possible and just put whatever you’re feeling out there. I feel like right now, I’m really into having conversations with people in my life and sitting with that idea of reimagining what our future can look like if we look at what’s been going on. 

KISH: I feel like it would need to be an entire reimagining of the United States, just an entire reimagining of the whole way that it runs. The whole quarantine has helped to reconnect me with a lot of social issues and things that are going on within our community. I tend to isolate in general. I stay home, I do a lot of things alone, I like to live in my own world. I don’t watch that much. If everyone’s in love with a show, I generally don’t watch it. Being forced through a really fucked up thing and then jumping into life with everyone else again, it felt crazy in that moment when we were doing all the protests, and volunteering, and doing petitions, and doing all this work. In a way, I felt more connected to people than I have in a really, really long time. 

WRIGHT: For sure, because there was a collective consciousness, and I feel a shift in the strength that it had. I feel like right now, everything has been put out in the open, so people are more receptive to actually having the conversation. Because actually turning away from things is so frowned upon in this moment, and hopefully forever. I’ve been having conversations with some of my very close friends that I’ve never had before, and I’m just like, wow, very interesting to know this is your experience. That also informs the type of work I want to create. Experimental film is not commercial or high commodity, but I feel like that’s resistance as well. I feel connected to the work that has always been fighting for change. That’s why Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Maya Angelou are people that appear in my piece. They have been guides. It’s very important to make sure that I’m addressing that in the things that I create. Not that it’s my responsibility, because it’s been addressed many times over.

KISH: I agree. Just being able to see all the different industries and all these different Black artists saying how they’ve been affected. In your own self-centered version of your life, you feel like you’re the only one that these things are happening to, and I think that’s part of the divisiveness of the whole thing. You’re supposed to feel like you’re alone in it. Having seen everybody with their different versions of the same story, which was really depressing, I was able to realize that everybody has the same idea of what I’m making—not that it’s necessarily my responsibility, but I feel the need to share these different views and perspectives of what Blackness can be, and about what family can be, or what these different parts of connectedness are. I’ve been doing that, but I didn’t realize I was doing it until this whole thing happened. I feel like there’s all kinds of Black girls, and I want to make alternative music, so I’m just going to do that the whole time. When people were like, “You should only make rap music, always”, I was like, “No, I’m going to keep doing this other stuff.” So, I think there’s always been that rebelliousness when people try to put you in a box of what you’re able to achieve. It also comes down to what you were saying before with wanting to do experimental filmmaking, whereas someone might tell you that you should just direct music videos, or something. 

 
Kilo Kish. Photo courtesy of Andrew Arthur

Kilo Kish. Photo courtesy of Andrew Arthur

 

WRIGHT: Exactly. Yeah. And starting in this space of experimental filmmaking, when I am approached for any type of job, people are open and knowing this is what they could possibly get from me based on what they’ve seen, and usually people are only coming to me if they’re open to being on the same page as me, which I’m really grateful for. 

KISH: It’s nice to be strong enough to–and I think it does take mental fortitude and grit to be that vulnerable with the different practices, because your film from the show was super vulnerable. It’s very powerful in that the body itself is so powerful. What you’re willing to share is a statement in itself. I was going to ask you: how do you not talk yourself out of doing things that you know might be scary for you creatively? 

WRIGHT: The way that I grew up, I always had this need to protect myself. I was just out in the world. Whoever could watch me and my sister would, or we were bounced around from different family members, and so there were a lot of different opinions. I was just like, I’m going to go crazy if I have to adhere or just be what you want me to be. I’m just going to do me, and don’t ask permission, ask forgiveness, and do it. I think I kind of lived by that, and it inevitably is a part of the way I come to art. You have that fear, but in my experience, even having that one person, a friend, or somebody from your family give a critique, that helps me in a way. It was worth it for me to just do it. 

KISH: I feel the same way. I feel like the curiosity of what could happen outweighs the fear that you might have about it. I just want to see what happens, even if it doesn’t do well by other people’s standards. What is the role that spirituality plays with you now because you said that you had a very spiritual upbringing, but I wonder, now, after having grown up in the Church and all that, how do you feel about it? 

WRIGHT: Organized religion is not necessarily where I think I can connect spiritually. I have the experience of losing my mother at the age of two, and in 2017 my father passed away on my birthday, so the people who brought me into this physical life are both in a spiritual realm, and I’ve just felt a spiritual connection, a motherly connection, since I was a child. I have always felt like there’s guardian angels, or I definitely feel connected to my ancestors. That’s just something that’s not even by choice. I know that even in some of the work that I create, it feels like somebody needed that to be done. I don’t know if it was my grandma, or who. So, in that sense, I really am big on remembering our ancestors and making sure that I have altars on my mom’s birthday. Images are also huge for me. Sometimes I can just be transformed or taken back to a place, and that feels almost spiritual as well. There’s a scripture, Do this in remembrance of me (1 Corinthians 11:24), and I think about that often. We’d do communion every first Sunday where everybody drinks the wine and takes a little piece of the cracker in remembrance of Christ’s blood and body. It’s kind of intense actually, but we do it so casually. It’s a very honoring ceremony, remembering Christ’s sacrifice, and I think that’s how I approach remembering my ancestors, and remembering the fight of just being here in this country, or just making it; our survival. 

KISH: Yeah, wow. It’s like a weaving of your experiences and your life, and all the little bits that inform your life. I had a strange upbringing where I was the only Black person in my whole school and I was in a gifted program. I was this little Black girl who was moved around all these different classes, and if I think of my younger self, it definitely informs the way that I approach work now. It’s very in my own world, and it’s in my own space. I have friends in fashion, but I’m not a fashion girl. I do music, but I’m not a music girl. I do art, but I’m not an art girl. I’m always this separate thing that’s in the Venn diagram overlapping everything else. I think everybody’s experiences create how they make work, and I guess spiritually, I believe similarly to what you said–there are things guiding and protecting and moving you in the right path, and if you’re able to tap into intuition, or whatever you want to call it, you kind of know: that doesn’t really feel right for me, I don’t know why, but I’m going to sidestep. I always feel that with all the projects that I do, and I think during COVID, I’ve just not really heard that voice as much. I’ve kind of just been sitting down. 

WRIGHT: I think that the uncertainty of the world has an effect where you feel like you don’t have much control, and that’s why sometimes I’m like I have to stop. I have to get off social media, I have to sit with myself and listen to my own thoughts. There’s so much being thrown at us all day long. It’s really a lot, and I really do think that affects being able to hear yourself. I haven’t done this yet, but a lot of my friends have taken social media breaks for a couple of months during the pandemic and are just working on their own thing, and it’s been great. 

Kilo Kish. Photo courtesy of Andrew Arthur

Kilo Kish. Photo courtesy of Andrew Arthur

This year’s exhibition of Womxn in Windows is on view through November 15 in Chinatown Los Angeles on Chung King Road, as well as New York in partnership with the Wallplay Network - 321 Canal Street, Chinatown London in partnership with Protein Studios - 31 New Inn Yard, and Hackney Shanghai in partnership with Bitter - Jing’an District. Additional films can be viewed by Christine Yuan, Everlane Moraes, Ja’Tovia Gary, Kya Lou, Rémie Akl, and Sylvie Weber—artists whose backgrounds span the United States, Brazil, Lebanon, Taiwan, the Dominican Republic and Germany. Follow @womxninwindows, @rikkwright and @kilokish on instagram.

Rebel Debutante: An Interview of Chelsea Mak On Her New Collection Inspired By The Sunlit Sexuality Of Los Angeles

Chelsea Mak is very much a Los Angeles clothing label. It is imbued with the intricate contradictions of a city that is impossible to replicate: diverse and homogeneous, rebellious and formal, old and new money. It’s a city with invasive palm trees and an image invented by outsiders; a glamour perpetrated by movies and popular songs. But only a native Angeleno could dream up a clothing label that plays with these stereotypes. Last week, Chelsea Mak premiered a video, entitled Lost Spirit, for the new SS20 collection at Zebulon in Los Angeles. Inspired by a gorgeously composed song by Paul Dally, and based on the mood of the collection, the video is an idiosyncratic 8mm love letter to a city permanently bathed in a kind of blurring, dissociative sunlight that shines over crystalline swimming pools and wide lane boulevards. We got a chance to ask Chelsea a few questions about her new collection and label. 

 Autre: What was the impetus for starting the Chelsea Mak label?

Chelsea Mak: It was the need for creative expression and having my own voice.  It was honestly also the result of a mental breakdown. I was at a point in my life when I was being pulled into all these different directions professionally and personally that resulted in me hitting the life-reset button hard. I didn't know why at the moment, but there was something 'missing' in my life, and I guess it was this.

Autre: What did you do before fashion?

Mak: I always did fashion!  I had a small stint in fashion PR before doing design, but for the most part I was a designer. I spent the most formative years of my career at Band of Outsiders with Scott Sternberg, who very much shaped who I am as a designer.  I also designed for other LA brands, like Current Elliott, Raquel Allegra and Entireworld before Chelsea Mak.

Autre: Chelsea Mak has really interesting silhouettes in its collections - pattern-wise, how would you define the look of the brand?

Mak: Forgiving and versatile.  So much of womenswear out there is so overtly sexy and form fitting, nipped, tucked and uptight. Or it goes the other way and you're wearing a sack.  The silhouettes speak to the brand’s message, which says you can be elegant/cool, revealing/tasteful, laid back/proper all at the same time.

 Autre: Can you describe the inspiration or mood behind the new collection?

Mak: I was inspired by a few different things, in no particular order: Los Angeles, Sarah Morris’ film 'Abu Dhabi', the 80s, sex, spirituality, and Joel Chen of JF Chen's Instagram.

Because the brand is based here I really wanted to tie the collection back to LA.  I always get such a sense of Los Angeles when driving through Hancock Park and that sorta led me into an obsession with the community and houses there. 

I also watched this amazing film by Sarah Morris called 'Abu Dhabi' while visiting White Cube gallery in Hong Kong last fall. It's very political and I am in no way inspired by that, but the colors in the film are amazing.  There's a lot of driving through the arid deserts of Abu Dhabi - dusty blues, sand tones, the ocean, and then pops of bright colors from commercialism. That piece very much informed the color palette of the collection.

The 80's — I'm always inspired by the 80's. I like to describe the brand’s muse as if Norma Kamali skipped cotillion and went to a punk show. Then the next day had to have dim sum with her godfather before going to an internship in her 80's power suit.

Sex / Spirituality – Everyone seems to be really into spirituality right now — seeking higher meanings, deeper connectivity, finding self.  Maybe it’s LA, or maybe it’s just me, but this year has involved a lot of diving in and doing work on myself. I feel like I've only scratched the surface.  Spirituality, love, sex, self is all one for me.

Autre: You utilize some really interesting fabrics, where do you go to source the materials for your collections? 

Mak: Most of the collection is made from deadstock silks that I find in the local fabric markets in Shanghai.  No one uses silk taffeta and silk shantung nowadays because it seems so dated and old lady but I'm very drawn to it.

Autre: The video you made for the new collection is fantastic, it’s a paean to Los Angeles but also to Hancock Park - is it the architecture, the beauty, the people?

 Mak: Yes! The architecture. I follow JF Chen's Instagram who is a family friend on Instagram and he's always posting these amazing homes in Hancock Park while he goes on neighborhood strolls. Something stuck to me and inspired me.  Also low key obsessed with the people — I'm not sure it's kosher to say I'm obsessed with the Hassidic Jewish community but I'm just fascinated because it's a community I'm not apart of. It feels secret and mystical.

Autre: You mentioned that each piece in the collection is named after a street in Hancock Park. 

Mak: Yes! Each piece is named after a street in Hancock Park. I always name my styles something funny. Last season all the pieces were named after famous Chinese movie stars from the 80's.  It's whatever I want to tie the collection back to.

Autre: The song in the video is great, was it composed exclusively for the video?

Mak: Yes, 'Lost Spirit' was written and composed by Paul Dally exclusively for the collection.  I discovered Paul Dally through Reverberation Radio earlier this year and listened to his album New American on repeat during the inception of this season.  It's very somber and heart wrenching and spoke to me so much, so that I knew I needed to get in touch with the artist and see if he would do a piece together.  

Autre: How did you and Paul Dally communicate the mood for the video? 

Mak: After a brief intro via DM on Instagram, I emailed Paul with the mood board and described this 'journey' I was feeling for the muse, which was the search for love through spirituality. But in doing so, ultimately surrendering and finding herself.  I wanted the song and the film to feel like an emotional wash more than anything and I was really specific about that.

There was a sense of simpatico right off the bat.  He asked me a bunch of questions in return but before I got a chance to answer them he sent a song over and it really hit the nail on the head. The first song he sent me was a 'go’ and the only big edit we really did was to make it more upbeat for the film so the viewer wouldn’t get too sad.  The original edit is pretty melancholy.

Autre: You are a native Angeleno, how does the city reflect in the label?

Mak: I grew up in San Marino, a stone’s throw from LA proper with landmarks like the Huntington Library and the Norton Simon Museum in my backyard so there’s that sort of Old LA, old world, buttoned up style that you can really feel in Chelsea Mak.

My mom and I were in this mother/daughter organization called National Charity League. It’s funny because while this meant we had “made it” into this part of Pasadena society, we were still one of the two Chinese American families and we were very much outsiders. I remember almost missing my debutante tea because I got too stoned the night before and slept in at my boyfriend’s house.  My parents had sent my best friend (one of the cinematographers of “‘Lost Spirit’) to get me the morning of. I remember her speeding down the 110 freeway to get me to the Biltmore Hotel downtown. It’s not a proud moment but informs this rebel debutante vibe that’s very brand, that and being Chinese.

I’m also always super inspired by how all the kids dress at shows like at the Echoplex or warehouse parties when I used to go to them.  And all the skaters you see on the Eastside, maybe more influential in attitude than anything. So there’s really a lot of LA in a lot of different ways.

Autre: Who are some of your ultimate style icons? 

Oh man, this is hard.  Sometimes I wish I could dress more like a man than a woman — Pablo Picasso, Bernard Sumner in the 80s, all the ladies who lunch.

Autre: What kind of advice would you give to young designers starting out in a rapidly evolving retail economy?

Mak: I think the advice I would give is...be authentic to your vision, stay humble and don't be afraid to ask for help.   No matter how much you think you know or think you can do yourself, there's always someone else with more experience, connections or even just more time.  And when it's your turn don't forget to pay it forward.

Click here to shop Chelsea Mak

Concept 005: An Interview Of Nordstrom Men’s Sam Lobban And Union Los Angeles Founder Chris Gibbs

Founded in 1989, Union’s history first started in New York’s Soho with the gracious ambition of giving a space to young, local designers on their way to recognition. The Los Angeles shop followed a few years later and strived to maintain the same principle born thirty years ago: embracing the creativity of fresh designers within the city while being inspired by trends coming from Japan and the UK. Union Los Angeles has now become one of LA’s prime destinations for men's contemporary fashion and streetwear. Earlier this month, Chris Gibbs, who used to work at the original NYC shop and is now the owner and operator behind Union LA, announced Union’s first ever collaboration with a national retailer: Nordstrom.

Concept 005: Union & Company features over 170 exclusive pieces across clothing, accessories and shoes from a roster of 13 brands curated by Chris Gibbs and Sam Lobban, Nordstrom’s vice president of men’s fashion. We had the opportunity to speak to both of them about their recent collaboration, but mostly about streetwear, its evolution, and its relationship to high fashion.

AUTRE: How did the two of you meet?

SAM LOBBAN: Chris and I were introduced by a mutual friend, and then we would bump into each other in showrooms during Fashion Week market around the world and talk shop. We always seemed to have a similar vibe on product and brands, which I for one found interesting and pretty cool given our very different professional backgrounds.

CHRIS GIBBS: Sam seems to remember us meeting in Tokyo…but I don’t remember that specifically. I just know that over the course of the men’s fashion gauntlet: Tokyo, Paris, Italy, NYC…I would often see Sam in the usual haunts, and over time, recognized that we shared a lot of sensibilities and we formed a friendship.

AUTRE: In collaboration on this concept project, what were some of the first conversations you had about what you wanted this pop-up to look like, and which brands you wanted to include?

SAM LOBBAN: From the start, the Union & Company concept was about giving Chris and the team a platform to tell the Union story to our customers. It was important to us that we convey what Union is all about, but at the same time have its own unique spin as a pop-up concept, hence the thirteen brand, 170-piece exclusive capsule collection featuring all but two brands which Union usually carries. For the additional two - Cactus Plant Flea Market and No Vacancy Inn - both Chris and I are fans of what each brand does, and thought they would add an interesting addition to the concept as a whole.

AUTRE: Were there any particular inspirations that you both found to be the driving force behind this pop-up? Whether it be a different concept store, another city, or even a style of design?

SAM LOBBAN: From my perspective the major inspirations would be the ideas behind Union and what they stand for: great product, an open and inclusive environment and representing a diverse range of brands and ideas across price points. I think it would be fair to say that the campaign and overall aesthetic feels pretty rooted in LA style too!

AUTRE: Are there any brands that you think are ushering in a new wave of streetwear design?

SAM LOBBAN: I think what Cactus Plant Flea Market is doing is super cool, along with the Camp High guys...I like their super interesting take on color, graphic and print placement & technique on jersey, sweat weights and shapes.

AUTRE: Do you think these kinds of pop-ups risk putting cult streetwear at risk of becoming too mainstream?

CHRIS GIBBS: I do think there is a narrative where that can happen… And some brands might succumb to the glitz and glamour of it all by overdoing it. But we (Union) have a thirty-year track record of ‘keeping it real’ and by that I guess I mean playing the long game and never overexposing any one brand or trend. The core of our business has, for some time now been Japanese street wear and three of the four brands we started with over fourteen years ago are still the leading brands in our store (Neighborhood, Wtaps and Visvim). My feeling has always been as long as you keep true to your brand ethos and don’t start doing things and making product that isn’t really true to the brand, then you don’t run the risk of saturation. This project is the perfect example. It’s a two-month pop up with a highly curated edit of brands and styles in only ten doors in the world. That isn’t mainstream.

AUTRE: Do you think streetwear has become less accessible to consumers due to the influx of luxury brands tailoring their aesthetics?

SAM LOBBAN: Personally I think the opposite; aside from the ambiguity of what ‘streetwear’ as a term really means - which seems to be a catchall for anything cool that’s going on in menswear at this point - I’d argue that more customers than ever can and want to buy into streetwear because of the range of price points available. At Nordstrom we have Union tees for $42 to Dior tees for $560, and everything in between.

AUTRE: Do you think streetwear has evolved along with high fashion brands as they have adapted to their collections to appeal to more trend-oriented customers?

CHRIS GIBBS: Sam kind of spoke to the “catchall-ness” of the term streetwear. So this is kind of tough to answer. My job as a curator, for lack of a better term, is to try and sift through everything and bring the best to our customers. Not to sound repetitive but again I would lean on our thirsty+ year history of being Los Angeles’s best kept secret. Correct me if I am wrong, but Autre is a LA-based magazine who has covered many brands we sell, designers we offer, artists we support and this might be the first article about us. And I kind of like that. There is something kind of cool and mysterious about what and how Union exists. Guess I digressed there, sorry. Ok, so the question was has streetwear evolved to be more trendy? Some parts of it have for sure…some of streetwear’s most respected and longstanding brands are now household names, that said, others are still wildly successful, yet still super niche and underground. Streetwear is very pluralistic in that way.

AUTRE: Has the ethos behind streetwear as a cultural concept been diminished by high fashion?

CHRIS GIBBS: I will admit, I do think high fashion brands are doing their best to use the ‘streetwear’ playbook and unlike most streetwear brands, high-fashion brands have multimillion dollar ad campaigns and marketing teams behind them. And I will go a step further and say some are doing a really good job at it. I suppose for me we have always been a niche store and have largely enjoyed support from the customer who really gets it. The guys and girls who want honest, organic and holistic take on fashion. In those people we will always have support and they aren’t as easily lured away as most. There are some high fashion brands that for sure are using streetwear’s new found popularity to keep themselves relevant, while others are working with, not against streetwear in a more collaborative way that I think is healthier.

AUTRE: Do either of you think that there is any single city that consistently ignites global streetwear trends?

SAM LOBBAN: I think by its very nature a number of major cities add their own trends to the global streetwear conversation, rather than any single one. I think there are lines which you could draw back to New York, LA, Tokyo, London and beyond.

AUTRE: Would you consider Los Angeles to be a city of a trend-starters or of trend-followers?

CHRIS GIBBS: What I would say is this, I am a firm believer that streetwear was born in NYC, but at some point during the early ought’s it seemed to migrate west or at the very least become bicoastal. So there is a very strong, very dope LA version of streetwear, which is a community that I think is really dope. The Japanese streetwear that we introduced to the US, for example was really done from LA and that is a huge part of streetwear. And for Union we wouldn’t be here today without the support and patronage of some really dope trend setters in Los Angeles.

AUTRE: How would you describe the fashion aesthetic of this generation?

CHRIS GIBBS: My wet dream. A truly free and democratic mix of all genres and subgenres of fashion - high, low, vintage, contemporary, hippie, cross dressing, you name it.

AUTRE: Do either of you have any trend forecast predictions for the near future of streetwear?

CHRIS GIBBS: As high fashion willingly blurs the lines, the pendulum can swing both ways…streetwear will start using their playbook, but through a younger more innovative lens.

 

The pop-up shops will be available July 11 through September 1 at select Nordstrom stores and Nordstrom.com/NewConcepts.

 

 

 

Brutal Beauty: An Interview of Artist and Muse Michele Lamy On Organizing Rick Owens' First Furniture Exhibition

On a cold, rainy night, the day before the private opening, we huddled in the cab of a moving truck to chat about furniture, music and fashion. It may have been a symbolic coincidence that Michele Lamy was in the driver's seat, clutching on to the huge steering wheel, but maybe it wasn't. It's true – although the furniture line is a true collaboration, Lamy does most of the general contracting and she is organizing the exhibition all on her own. But it’s obvious that she is used to it and loves the process, and Rick is happy to take a back seat. 

Despite her diminutive frame, Lamy’s primal and mystical energy seems enough to muster ample kinetic energy to move hundreds of tons of concrete, alabaster and marble. The way she talks (with a thick, rough French accent), gesticulates, moves her eyes - the way her jewelry and stacked rings move with an orchestral clattering - is hypnotic. It is no wonder that the creative class has flocked to her – like an oasis in an indefinable desert of sameness – for the last couple of decades. It's no wonder why she and Rick have become a centrifugal force in the world of fashion and art.

Lamy is anything but ordinary. In some circles, you may know Lamy because of her relationship to fashion and furniture designer Rick Owens. Indeed, there are many clichés to describe her relationship to her partner: muse, alter ego, better half, right hand woman and so on. But more than anything, Lamy is a vital counterpart - a long lost spiritual and creative twin. That Owens and Lamy found each other in this modern artistic wilderness is kismet in the form of nuclear fusion, but it is not terribly surprising. Before the two were globally recognized, Michele owned a famous restaurant in Los Angeles called Les Deux Café and Owens was honing his craft in a studio across the street. While both Michele and Owens are mercilessly creative - Lamy really took the reigns with the furniture side of their output. Lamy almost exclusively heads all production, which takes her on material buying trips around the world looking for rare skins and fur, wood, bone and marble.

Open now at MOCA's Pacific Design Center outpost, you can experience an immersive exhibition of new furniture pieces designed by Owens, but spearheaded and organized by Lamy. A large alabaster wall, marble benches, camel skin ottomans and an ox bone settee - you can move your fingers across and through all the pieces. The furniture is a perfect, brutalist, and antiestablishment vision for a bombed out future where we must carve out our palaces from the ruins of factories and government headquarters. Complimenting the furniture are works by the late sculptural painter Steven Parrino, whose works capture the same anarchy and vision as the furniture. 

In the following interview, we chat with Michele Lamy about the exhibition, her past as the iconic ringleader at Les Deux Café and what she misses most about the Los Angeles she left behind before leaving for Paris with Rick Owens.

BJ PANDA BEAR: How have you been? I’ve been seeing you pop around and I know you’re working on this upcoming exhibition. How is everything coming along with it?

MICHELE LAMY: So, we are almost done. Just finishing up. I like the process so there is a thing that we’ve built and it’s just outside of Paris. We have this big atelier and then we did a warehouse in Los Angeles. For example, we do a lot of pieces in concrete, which is difficult to move, paying for the weight of the concrete for sending on a plane because we are always late. And then we found this great warehouse that’s on Highland and Romaine. Now we move in to MOCA and there is a little bit of adjustment because it’s still an institution, but it’s cool. We can break stuff, we can repair stuff up there, but for example you cannot drink a cup of tea. I don’t know why - it’s just the rules. When you’ve finished building something, you cannot have tea. I’m sure you can come in with a gun, but you cannot have tea.

BJ PANDA BEAR: That's insane! Where did the origin of the furniture come from? 

LAMY: When we move somewhere, we always do the furniture. We moved so many times. A gallery said it looked like a collection so I took it from there to produce it. It turned into two collections. It turned into gallery showings, we have dealers. We just keep doing it.

BJ PANDA BEAR: You’re always so hands on when we see all the documentation of your work. Have you always been so hands on with every single detail and the luxury.

LAMY: Which luxury?

BJ PANDA BEAR: Like all the images of you picking out slabs of marble and everything.

LAMY: Yeah you know I completely fell in love with doing this. The material, and there is something about the story behind making the pieces. We have a collection where everything is coming from Pakistan. In another collection, we are finding camel fur in the Empty Quarters desert in Abu Dhabi. But everything is produced just outside of Paris. That’s just where we find the right people.

BJ PANDA BEAR: What type of music is inspiring for you? What have you been listening to lately?

LAMY: I’m very into techno, house. I love radio stations, but now they are so lacking. There were so many and they’ve disappeared. I listen here on the internet from France like continuous house music, but I like LSD from A$AP [Rocky], I like his music.

BJ PANDA BEAR: You and A$AP are close, right?

LAMY: Yep. We just did a performance together at Art Basel Miami. It was fantastic. I was so happy. It was in the Design District on a roof. Silencio, a club from Paris, opened it. It was this space and it was a performance with Caecilia Tripp. Where you never see her, but she is there. We were there. It was a nice courtyard in the design district, so the location was good. It was not a hotel, it was more its own space.

BJ PANDA BEAR: When you were laying out and organizing the exhibition, was there a central focus or drive for this particular project?

LAMY: Yeah, There was a special focus. The one thing is the prong. It is represented everywhere even if you don’t see it, because it’s the way that we attach a bench of six meters – by two prongs, there is flow. It is floating. It looks like you need to hammer something, but it is about floating. The paintings are hung on the side. The space was sort of difficult, because it is very high and there’s not so much space on the first floor. Then we made this huge wall in alabaster that is a weeping wall. That piece - you know, I did feel good because coming to LA, I was sort of seeking a home, found the right warehouse, and then we were able to make this space our space. And changing the dynamic of the space, that’s usually what I’ve seen is always a challenge.

BJ PANDA BEAR: You’re used to transforming spaces, right? Your place in Paris doesn’t have a specific living room, or even a specific kitchen.

LAMY: Right right.

BJ PANDA BEAR: It is often said that you are the muse behind the show, but also that you’re kind of spearheading all of it. What are your personal muses and inspirations for design? Do you have a muse yourself?

LAMY: I don’t know what a muse is in that way. When you are with someone and you are doing things together and people say that because it is too difficult to say what exactly it is. I’m sure there is something I am inspired by. I’m old enough that all of these pieces of inspiration are melting into something more personal for me. People I admire is more because they have the guts to do what they’re meant to do and especially now with what just happened in the election, I think people have to be strong and do something they believe in.

BJ PANDA BEAR: Since this is like a comeback to LA for you, have there been any restaurants or places new here that you really love?

LAMY: I came a couple of times to do this exhibition. So I’ve had time to visit many places here. This time around, I live at the Chateau. When I was with Rick, we lived for two years at the Chateau, because we got attacked at the house we lived in. I have some friends and I gave them a tour of Traction Avenue and where there used to be factories are now galleries. I am really, really happy to see that little part of downtown – it is still the same, sort of, like SCI-Arc is still there. It was always good, except Al’s Bar is closed, but American Hotel is still there. They always say there was no one there before. They were there. We weren't so underground, but the prices were different. I always liked Little Tokyo and Koreatown – and Korean baths! My favorite thing, I think they are better here than in Korea. Of course the beach, it is beautiful. I was at the beach for Thanksgiving. There were not many people there – just people skateboarding on Venice Beach.

BJ PANDA BEAR: Can we chat a little about Les Deux Cafe or is that something you’d rather not? Cause I’ve heard so many stories.

LAMY: You know it was fantastic. It has been like twelve years of doing this. It was great, it was a time. Me and Rick were living across the street. Now it’s set to be demolished in a few months. Everything there is going to be demolished because it is going to be a mall. Another mall.

BJ PANDA BEAR: That’s so nuts…

LAMY: You know there has been a story in Another Magazine written by Chris Wallace who was a maître d' at Les Deux Cafe. Then we had this great artist, Konstantin Kakanias, who did these drawings, because at the time people did not have cell phones so it was preferential to taking a picture. And because it was a private place, the drawing was so much better to help tell the stories.

BJ PANDA BEAR: I love hearing the stories.

LAMY: It made it even better. There was no Instagram. Can you believe? It was so long ago. It worked though, we had so many great stories.

BJ PANDA BEAR: They’re so epic. I don’t even know if some of them are real.

LAMY: That was a very great time.

BJ PANDA BEAR: Are you going to be spending more time in Los Angeles? What took you guys so long to come back? Does Rick ever come here?

LAMY: You know before this MOCA story, we never came back. Rick you know, he is not coming for the exhibition. We don’t want to be analyzing all of this, but at the same time it’s a lot of things that are happening so he decided not to come here and let me do all the work alone. I know that next year, we are going to be in Europe a lot. Lots of time in Venice for the Biennale, so it seems like these things are happening and then Rick is going to our show in Milano. But I feel very at home in New York.

BJ PANDA BEAR: In New York, really? I’ve heard stories about Rick not liking New York. Does he ever go there?

LAMY: Yeah he doesn’t come there.

BJ PANDA BEAR: I was going to ask about the crystal and foam you’re planning on working with. How did you guys get involved with that kind of material?

LAMY: One thing to the next. Right now in this show, there is foam. The main thing in this show that changed the old perspective is a big wall of carved alabaster - the weeping wall. That is so heavy. There’s a lot of totems. It’s difficult to explain without seeing it.

BJ PANDA BEAR: Can you talk a little bit about Steven Parrino’s work in the show?

LAMY: It started because we are doing a show at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. It was a Carol Rama show and they asked us to be guests with our furniture. It was this combination because there is something on the wall, and then something on the floor. So then when Phillipe Vergne asked us to do a show, we thought it would be nice to work with somebody, and who is better than Steven Parrino? I know that we always liked him and his work is very related to our work. Lot’s of canvases that you think are collapsed, but are actually very controlled.

BJ PANDA BEAR: Did you get to meet him when he was around?

LAMY: Not at all, because all the years he was in Europe, I was here. I did know about him. I could have met him in Paris, but I didn’t. He was more known in Europe than in the States and he had a lot of collectors in Geneva. Did you like his work?

BJ PANDA BEAR: I like his work and his minimalist sort of nihilistic work. It reminds me a bit of Alan Vega’s work from Suicide and I like that deconstructed sort of connection between music and fashion.

LAMY: Steven Parrino’s work is very connected to those worlds. It speaks very well to this show at MOCA.

Rick Owens: Furniture will be on view until April 2, 2017 at MOCA Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. Interview by BJ Panda Bear. Intro text and photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

The Interminable Apprentice: An Interview Of Fine Jewelry Designer Elie Top

Elie Top may just be one of the most glamorous men in Paris. Working silently under the likes of Yves Saint Laurent before his passing, and Alber Elbaz for Lanvin before Elbaz left the helm of the fashion house, Top has gained a keen and sharp insight into the world of luxury jewelry and accessory making. Elbaz’s exit was a perfect excuse for Top to take what he learned as an interminable apprentice and start his own eponymously named label. His new collection, entitled Mécaniques Célestes, is an insight into the ornamental aesthete’s lifelong fascination with all things baroque, classical and talismanic. Gold, diamonds, precious stones and other metals reinterpret the armillary sphere – tiny universes atop a finger, atop a breastbone; perfect and encapsulated. When we met Top, we ambushed him with an interview proposal during a cigarette break from hosting his recent pop up at Maxfield’s in Los Angeles (it was his first ever visit to Los Angeles). Our conversation oscillated between his memories of working with Saint Laurent, his love for jewelry and his new collection.

SUMMER BOWIE: So when you were much younger did you know that jewelry design and accessories were going to be your career path?

TOP: What do you mean by younger? Which age? [laughs] 

BOWIE: A child.

TOP: When I was really young I was more into architecture and was sketching very precisely in a maniacal way. Mostly churches and castles. I was very inspired by the 18th century French style and Italian and Austrian things, and was very obsessed with the Baroque period. So not very modern.

BOWIE: Where in France are you from originally?

TOP: I was born in the very north of France, close to Belgium in the countryside. So really a very small village. There were factories because it’s kind of an industrial area, but at the same time, there’s a lot of farms and animals. So it’s a strange mix between both.

BOWIE: So not that many Baroque influences.

TOP: Yeah, I don’t know why I’m obsessed with that! I went to Italy for the first time when I was quite young. I was maybe nine the first time I went to Rome, then I went to Venice, then I went to Bavaria, and I used to go quite often to Versailles and places like that. But around eleven or twelve I decided I wanted to work in fashion and I started to sketch more fashion things...but not especially accessories. It was more general - but then I went to fashion school in Paris at seventeen. I went to work at Yves Saint Laurent when I was around nineteen as a general assistant in the studio when Yves Saint Laurent was still there.

BOWIE: How did you get that job?

TOP: Thanks to school. I went in as an intern for two months and they kept me around which was quite cool. I was doing illustrations. Then Alber [Elbaz] arrived because he was doing the Rive Gauche collections. It was late 90s and that’s how I met him; when I was twenty-one. I think he didn’t know exactly what to do with me and he didn’t have anybody to work on the jewels and accessories in general, because Loulou de la Falaise was no longer doing the jewelry at Yves Saint Laurent. So he just asked me to start working so I started doing sketches and working with manufacturers, which is how I got started. He encouraged me and pushed me to work in this direction. And I was working at the same time on handbags and leather goods. But progressively over the years, I just gave up everything but the jewels because it’s what I liked the most.

BOWIE: What is it about jewelry that makes it so appealing?

TOP: I think it’s quite close to what I used to sketch when I was a child. It’s the same way that I’m looking at it and the way I’m imagining it. There’s always so many variables, and it always involves these architectural problems. As I like to sketch very precisely, everything is the same thing, actually. Like all the castles and all the jewels are the same. I’m very passionate and precise so I can really sketch for hours.

BOWIE: And then you worked for Lanvin as well?

TOP: Yeah, when Alber arrived at Lanvin, he called me and we started to work together immediately.

BOWIE: And do you prefer now working on your own better than for these major fashion houses like Lanvin and Yves Saint Laurent?

TOP: Hmm… It’s very different for me, because for me Alber, and Saint Laurent - and LouLou as well because I worked with her too - they felt like a continuation of my school years and they were really great mentors, because they really helped me. Alber and Loulou encouraged me and taught me a lot. And now I’ve grown up and I can do my own thing. It’s more about that freedom to do something for yourself and not for somebody else, which is very different. It’s more difficult in a way because when you work with my state of mind - I was very devoted to those people - I would do my best to please them and now I have to please myself which is something very different. [laughs]

BOWIE: Were you nervous at first about doing your own thing?

TOP: Yeah. It also took me a long time to find my own aesthetic, because it was so mixed. Like for instance with Alber, I had a lot of freedom but he was always there, so it was a mix of him and me, and it was very connected to the theme of the fashion show so we could do something one season and the opposite the season after. So it was always attached to the collection. Suddenly we were without clothes, and we were without a theme. It wasn’t coming out of me. So, I had to look at my previous work to find the elements that were really me. Because I could see how all the ribbons were completely Alber, and everything which was more Baroque and with all the mixes of materials was more my story. I realized that my story’s all about system and structure, so I tried to extract that. It took me a long time to realize and to find myself. For fifteen years I was working for so many people and a lot of clients and it became more of a mathematical exercise, where you have to find their aesthetic and then create it yourself. It was a sort of a game. But then suddenly I didn’t have anybody else and I didn’t have any other variables to work with.

BOWIE: And what was the difference between what you learned working with Alber Elbaz and Loulou de la Falaise, and what you learned working with Yves Saint Laurent?

TOP: Oh they’re all such different people. [laughs] For Loulou it was more about her own personality. She had a lot of freedom in the way that she could mix things that were very cheap with things that were very expensive. It was more about the way she was thinking about style and the way that she was mixing a lot of ethnic and Bavarian shapes. African themes mixed with Parisian couture. But she used to do it in such a free way because it was completely her own personality; very intuitive. I don’t work like her at all, because she wasn’t really sketching. She was more about taking the elements, mixing them, and it was more organic and a very sensitive experience. And actually Alber is a bit the same in his way of working because he’s not really sketching, but always doing fittings and fittings, and it’s all about words. He talks a lot as he’s trying to find the story and trying to find some keywords to define what he wants. And then he is really all about the body of the woman and...many fittings. But Yves Saint Laurent was the opposite in the way he was working. He was always sketching, very precisely, and if it wasn’t looking exactly like the sketch, he didn’t want the clothes. Alber would just be sketching basic silhouettes, and then he was progressively transforming everything and doing everything directly on the body in the fittings. He wasn’t attached to the sketch.

"At the end, sometimes, there would suddenly be one thing that was so moving, people would really start crying. And this happens so rarely because it is beyond fashion...you’re not talking about fashion anymore. You’re going somewhere else."

BOWIE: And it seems like you have a more specific vision that you put on paper, and then you try to realize it very directly, as opposed to this very sensual experience where you have an idea, and you play until you find it. 

TOP: Exactly. I’m really sketching exactly what I want to see with the jewels, and I don’t move from that. Whereas Alber was working like a lot of women - Vionnet, Chanel, Grès - all those women weren’t sketching, but just doing fittings.

BOWIE: Do you have any great memories of Yves Saint Laurent? Any in particular?

TOP: Sometimes. It never happens to me anymore but sometimes--and I think it’s why people are so attached to him--during the fittings we’d have goosebumps. Sometimes when the model would come in and do a twirl in the clothes it was just so perfect, so impressive, so moving that everybody’s jaw dropped. It’s impossible to describe the experience. Even when I’m talking about it I remember it so clearly.

BOWIE: You start to get goosebumps? [laughs]

TOP: And some people would be crying during the show which was really strange because the show, to be honest, was very old-fashioned. At the end, sometimes, there would suddenly be one thing that was so moving, people would really start crying. And this happens so rarely because it is beyond fashion...you’re not talking about fashion anymore. You’re going somewhere else.

BOWIE: It’s very transcendent.

TOP: And I think that’s the reason people were so attached to him. Because it was something else, not only about clothes. He was doing something else. 

BOWIE: And did you feel that yourself too?

TOP: Yeah, once I was really crying.

BOWIE: Well can you tell us a little bit about this collection?

TOP: This collection is the first I’ve shown and now I’ve developed a few new pieces and I’ve done some variations on those themes. It’s called Mécaniques Célestes. It’s all about the armillary spheres, the planets, and globes. Actually my work in the beginning was trying to unify my two aesthetic tendencies, which are from my childhood and my industrial side. And I thought it was coming from living in the middle of all these factories, and mechanical and industrial landscapes. Then my fascination for something more Baroque, more precious and narrative came, so I tried to find a way to put these two opposites together in the same piece. So that’s the reason there is this thing that you can hide or show. And when it’s closed it’s a bit more radical and pure. When you open it, for me, you’re telling something more poetic and more narrative. Then I found inspiration from the principles of globes, for instance from the sugar bowls you see in Parisian bars. I saw the way it opens and closes and I was looking in and thought, “oh that’s perfect.” And that was really my starting point. [laughs] 

So I had already sketched a few things but couldn’t find exactly what I wanted to put inside, so I was always looking for the perfect matching thing about the system and the mechanical on the inside and outside and what would be the good unity between everything. Then I found an amazing book with the same title called Mécaniques Célestes about the whole collection of these armillary spheres from a really great antique store in Paris. It’s exactly what I needed so when I found it, I sketched everything and that was really the start of it. What I also really liked was how you can always hide the most gorgeous part to give something more playful, but it depends what you wear with it. It all has to do with your own attitude and clothes.

BOWIE: Yeah it’s really quite romantic, this combination of the celestial and the industrial element. If you could describe your work in three words, what would they be?

TOP: Talking about my collection? Strangely, when it came out it was a mix of futuristic and medieval at the same time, and structure is important as well.

You can visit Elie Top's website to see more of the collection and stockists. Intro text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Interview by Summer Bowie. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Gardens of Pleasure: An Interview with Designer Yaz Bukey

On a quick trip to Los Angeles, we caught up with Paris-based designer Yaz Bukey. Her eponymous label is a trompe l’oeil pop art explosion of plexiglass that combines the aesthetics of advertising and everyday objects, like cigarette boxes and lipstick. Bukey is also an Ottoman princess and her ancestors were once the rulers of Egypt. In fact, one of those ancestors, Mehmet Ali Pasha, King of Egypt, gave the Concorde Obelisk to Napoleon. Despite her royal blood, Bukey is more modern than ever. Her collections are inspired by everything from ancient mythology to Boy George. In fact, Boy George is a customer of hers – so is Björk. Lately, Bukey has been eschewing the traditional runway presentation and showing her collections in the form of a performance that is half burlesque and half vaudeville shtick, with a splash of erotic revue. One regular performer is retired gay male pornstar François Sagat. We got a chance to catch up with Bukey in the Hollywood Hills to talk about her work, life and inspiration behind her current collection – as well as her wildly ambitious plans for the future of her label, which includes an all encompassing universe splashed with her vision. 

DOUGLAS NEILL: How do you like being in Los Angeles? Is the sunshine inspiring?

YAZ BUKEY: It’s true that we need sun. For me, I love the fact that you can be isolated and at the same time in a big city. This is the thing that I love here. That’s why I would like to move here. My dream would be to have my house with my garden. I love plants. And behind, I have my atelier, and I can work from there.

NEILL: You like having a space for peace?

BUKEY: Yes. I need that, more and more. Before, I was always thinking, “I have to stay in big cities, like Paris, London, or New York.” I think that we really need to be resourced by nature. Here, you have everything – the sea, the gardens, the desert. Everything is here.

NEILL: Your aesthetic is very unique and instantly recognizable. How would you describe it in a word or phrase?  

BUCKEY: It’s all about trompe l’oeil. Through this material – Plexiglas – I arrive to have pieces that you don’t know if it is a print, or if it is an object. Same for the home decor that I am starting to make more and more. You can have different pieces that you put on your wall. I like that a clutch can become a box that you have in your house. It’s accessory for yourself and accessory for your home.

NEILL: It transfers well from situation to situation.  

BUKEY: I like the fact that, when you wear something, people in the street say, “This reminds me of this movie or that pattern.” It’s storytelling. You don’t need to speak. Just having a piece can pop up images in your eye.

NEILL: What was it like meeting Björk and selling your first collection to her?

BUKEY: That was the first big move that happened when I launched my brand. I was sold in three stores. One was Kokon to Zai in London. They – namely, Marjan Pejoski – are very close to Björk. She did the swan dress and this big pink dress that she wore at the Cannes Film Festival. Before going to going to Cannes to show Dancing in the Dark, Björk went to the store and bought each of the pieces I had made. She started wearing it, and then she contacted me to have pieces for her show. It shifted the brand, actually. She’s so inspiring. I like when people are bold like this, you know? She’s not scared of wearing something weird, something that people can even laugh at. People could say, “Oh, that’s so ugly.” She doesn’t care. That’s a side of her that I like.

NEILL: You are a part of a really fascinating group of artist and designers in Paris. Do you inspire or influence each other?

BUKEY: We have a close group of friends. Each of us is in his own world, of course. The one that is closest to me is Vincent Darré in terms of aesthetics.

NEILL: He has a great personality. He always makes me smile.

BUKEY: He’s a very happy person. There is also Michel Gaubert, who does the music for my show. I love talking to him. Sometimes, he’s like, “Oh, I thought of you when I saw this image.” We have a lot of exchange, whether musical or otherwise. I was more into music before. I wanted to be a singer. But it was not possible due to my family. [Laughs.] They wanted me to go and do political science. I went to study it. But after three months I was like, “I don’t understand what they’re talking about. Please let me do something else.” They accepted that I do something else, but it had to be kind of like mathematics. I figured out that industrial design was not so bad. I went into graphics to be able to be close to the music industry. I wanted to do the album covers. Slowly, that shifted to perfume bottle designing. From there, I met this old lady who was the head of this very famous fashion school in Paris. Vincent went to the same school. Camille Bidault went to that school.

NEILL: Did you guys know each other before school?

BUKEY: No, we were all from different eras of the school. This lady has changed all of our lives.

NEILL: What’s her name?

BUKEY: Marie Rucki. When you arrive to that school, she says, “Everything you learned from your parents is shit. We’re going to empty it and refill it with what you like.”

NEILL: So she is responsible?

BUKEY: She is responsible for a lot of designers. The school has been there for forty years, and she’s still there. She’s over 80.

NEILL: I always attribute creativity to what people do on their own. I always forget that a teacher can be a huge influence.

BUKEY: A teacher can change your life. Or they can make you hate something.

NEILL: There’s a rumor that you are a descendant of royalty. Is this true?

BUKEY: My great great grandfather was the king of Egypt in the beginning of the 19th century. It was a family that ruled from the beginning of 1800 until 1953. The last king was King Farouk. The first was Mehmet Ali Pasha, who comes from Italy and Greece. He was the one who offered the Obelisk to Napoleon when they lost the war against him. For me, the most inspiring person from my father’s family is Princess Fawzia, who was the sister of King Farouk. She was the first wife of the Shah of Iran. She stayed there two years. She was a party girl, and she couldn’t stand it, so she left. She’s beautiful, like a Hollywood actress. I’m going to Egypt next week, actually.

NEILL: What are you doing there?

BUKEY: I have some of my father’s family there – aunts and cousins. In 1953, the family lost all of their houses and mansions – everything. Everything belongs to the state. You can still live in it, but you can’t sell anything. You can’t restore it. It’s unfortunately fading away. I haven’t been in 25 years. I’ll have to hide the tattoos. [Laughs.]

NEILL: For your collections, you stage, dramatic, beautiful, and elaborate scenes, instead of the typical runway show. Are runway shows boring to you?

BUKEY: Very boring. Sometimes, I go to support friends who do shows. All the journalists and stylists, they have so much to see right now. They travel so much. I believe you have to give them something else. I love performing. I used to perform myself, a few years ago. Unfortunately, now, I can’t during my shows, because I need to do the interviews. Being able to take care of the music, the image, the photography, the design, the furniture – for me, it’s a global art. That’s what I like.

NEILL: It’s like a painting.

BUKEY: Yeah. And I like working with the same crew. I like adding newcomers in. Now, we have more and more well-known people who want to be part of the show. They call me and say, “Hey, can I be part of the show next season?” If it fits, I’ll let them do it. I have a little list.

NEILL: Can you give an example?

BUKEY: I would love to work with Marie-Agnès Gillot. She’s one of the main dancers in the Opéra Paris. Right now, it’s not the right moment, because the next collections are not fitting her. At some point, I would love to work with her, having her dancing.

NEILL: I agree. The fashion show is…

BUKEY: It’s so quick. A show is only seven to ten minutes. Very sad.

NEILL: Now, they’re doing it where you can watch the show on the computer and buy it right away.

BUKEY: This is the thing that people started doing to avoid copying. I wish that we just did one collection per year, and that we showed it for Spring/Summer. In the end, it’s a lot of work, a lot of research. You put your heart in there, and it’s only living in the store for two months. The value is down right now. That’s why everyone tries to do things very quickly. You don’t have the time to go deeper into your research. What I liked, back in the day, was that you could be interested in an image or artist, look for it in a library, and then find other things that inspire you even more. It takes you from one spot to the other. That’s what we need right now.

NEILL: That’s exactly how I feel about collecting records.

BUKEY: Collecting records, you go to the store, you search and search. You don’t find what you’re looking for, maybe, but you will find something else.

NEILL: You don’t have enough time to research?

BUKEY: Right now, everything is quick. Three seasons ago, I worked a lot on Bob Fosse’s work. In the end, you speak to the journalists, and they don’t even know who he is. You’re like, “Come on. This is not possible.” [Laughs.] Let me do a few moves for you.

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NEILL: Do you have any hand in choreographing the performances?

BUKEY: I work with this boy who used to be my student. (I worked at Studio Berçot after I was student there.) He shifted from being a stylist to dance. He has a group called House of Drama. His name is Aymeric Bergada Du Cadet. We have this very close relationship. More or less, we do everything together. I am around Christopher Niquet a lot as well. He lives in New York. I really believe in his eye. When I finish my collection, I always say, “Hey, can you have a look at it?” He always has the right words.

NEILL: It’s like you have a little family.

BUKEY: Yes. The dancers are all young kids. I like to have those young girls around, to show them the way as well. “Maybe don’t go there… Do more of this.” I help them out with their daily looks, so they are elevated.

NEILL: What do you look for in a performer? I know you just worked with François Sagat.

BUKEY: He used to be a porn actor. Before that, he also did Studio Berçot. He was in my sister’s class. he worked in the fashion industry and then got fed up from it. I see his porn work as an artwork. He’s not afraid to have bubblegum looks. I like that. I understand very well why he went into that. Now, he has stopped after five years. He has a brand now of men’s underwear. It’s called Kick Sagat. When I asked him, “Would you perform?” He said yes. We performed together three times before, in clubs. It was quite a pain in the ass. We were dressed in cat suits, and people would pull our tails.

NEILL: A lot of unexpected issues.

BUKEY: I used to be very stressed with the performers. “Okay, you have to do it perfectly!” Now, I know that they will give it their best. Let them be. “Do how you feel the best.” There’s no competition between them. Everyone has her own character. We work with MAC for the makeup. I always tell him, “It’s not just one makeup for the show. I need one for each girl that shows best their character and personality.” It’s quite free. I like to leave each person who works with me a lot of freedom.

NEILL: Would you say anybody could come? Do you have auditions or casting?

BUKEY: Auditions, no. But, for instance, we have worked many seasons with Anna Cleveland as a model, and this season she said, “I want to dance.” She’s not a dancer, so we did more rehearsal with her. But in the end, she was amazing. The star of the show. Then again, the character has to go with the show. One season we will use someone, but the next season I have to say, “I’m sorry, but you won’t be in.” Then, they come back. It’s like a family, as you said. Also, I need to be sure they didn’t gain weight. [Laughs.]

NEILL: Where do you look for inspiration when it comes to your collections?

BUKEY: For the Hollywood collection, it was the dancing of Bob Fosse, the actresses of classic eras, Samuel Goldwyn. I make all this research, and then I pull out my own story. For the collection, My Heart Belongs to Paris, it was the Pink Panther, Henry Mancini’s music, and American in Paris. My American in Paris was an American girl tourist. She arrives to Paris. That morning, at the Café de Flore, there is a big scandal. The Mona Lisa has been stolen from the Louvre. There are many stories as to what happened – someone stabbed the Mona Lisa, someone what in love with her. I make my own story out of it.

NEILL: It sounds almost like a dream. You have all these things that you filter through.

BUKEY: Yeah. Also, there are images that were inspiring for me when I was a kid. My father was an ambassador who pretty much specialized in the Arab world. We lived in different Arab countries, like Saudi Arabia, where there were no movies or anything. My father helped me a lot with my cinematographic side. We would watch and rewatch and then act out a lot of musicals.

NEILL: So that was very inspiring to your collections now?

BUKEY: Yeah, yeah. One of the first things that inspired me so much was Boy George, Culture Club. The only way out was to go to these shopping malls in Saudi Arabia and walk around. I was obsessed by the album covers. When I saw Boy George and the Culture Club I was like, “Yes!” I would dress like a mini Boy George. I put my hair in braids. My parents would freak out, of course, because I ruined all my mom’s makeup.

NEILL: Can you talk a little bit about your current collection, Gardens of Pleasure?

BUKEY: There is a cartoon in France called Asterix. It’s about a little village that fights against the Romans back in the day. There is one that is called Twelve Worlds of Asterix, where they have to do Olympic things. I started listening to the music. It was a cartoon from the 70s. I found out the guy who did the music, and I found this album that he made, Tropical Fantasy. It was amazing. I took a bit of Tropical Fantasy, and then I wanted to do my own Gardens of Eden. What will I have inside that? La chicholina, for me, is the sexual side of beauty. The birth of Venus. Poison ivy. Cupid. Aphrodite and Zeus. It’s totally different, but I do my own story.

NEILL: Do you bring a character to the story?

BUKEY: The show starts with the priestess of the island, doing the welcome dance. Then, we have different personalities who come out for different tableaux. We finish with Adam and Eve, but Adam is eating the apple.

NEILL: Where do you see you and your brand going in the future?

BUKEY: I want to grow it into the thing I call Yazbukeyland. I want to make a lifestyle around the brand. You are able to have furniture, bedsheets, glasses, rugs, oil paintings, perfume, car (the Yazmobile) – everything. You can be in that fantasy world, you know? That’s what I want.

NEILL: Is there anything that you want everybody to know?

BUKEY: Not too long ago, I saw that Boy George bought a piece of mine. I was in his concert last year in Paris, which was amazing, and he kept saying, “My friend Jerry is here!” And I though, oh, Jerry is my friend too. I contacted him and said, “I really want to do something with Boy George.” Lately, I sent him two pieces, and he wrote me back on Twitter saying, “I really loved my gifts.” He was like, “Follow me!” Like, oh my God, from age 11 to age 42, the circle is there. I really hope one day we can do something. Maybe he can sing during my show. It’s possible. He is so open. 

To find retailer's or purchase Yazbukey's collections online, click here. Photographs and interview by Douglas Neill. Intro text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE