When did you start liking fashion?
Well how I define fashion is: a developed aesthetic which determines your unique sense of stlye created from a particular way of living. As such how any individual developed their particular aesthetic, one which informs both their unique sense of style and their particular values of personhood, might be thought of as their ‘fashion history’, this is mine:
My earliest introduction to my aesthetic, which informs my work as a fashion designer, was through the Zen aesthetic of Wabi Sabi, which includes asymmetry, simplicity, austerity, modesty, the poverty of means and materials which all add up to the production of objects that remind us of our own transience. It’s rather at odds with the traditional western aesthetic of essentialism: that ideal of perfection which ignores the fleeting in favour of the permanent, which values the precious, the exclusivity of gold, diamond and fur lined adornment.
That introduction to Wabi Sabi, early on, was through Japanese film, poetry and especially the fashion designs of the Tokyo Three, Issey Miyake, Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto.
What designers do you like and why?
I had the growing sense that my attraction to this aesthetic was because of how it affected the idea of personhood: the identification with those abstract qualities which we use to define our unique selves; such as, ‘I am wise.’ or ‘I am moral’, those qualities which are intangible, but which effect all the relations of an individual in society.
I understood how this aesthetic was status neutral: in the sense that the was no identification between being ‘good’ and how much money you could spend on a ‘coat’, although an expensive coat may be said to confer status, it did not, through ownership, reveal anything about the person. Their personhood was unrevealed.
I understood that my aesthetic valued ‘poverty’, be it as a simplicity of means, or an unostentatiousness of material. It contrasted, therefore, with the aesthetic of modern consumerism which valued a conspicuous display of wealth, rarity, and ostentatiousness that had negative affects on personhood.
I came to consider that the Japanese design Yohji Yamamoto most particularly displayed, in his design work, this burgeoning aesthetic of mine, that his design work in particular were immune to the concerns of status orientated consumption.
How long have you been collecting? What are your favourite pieces of clothing you own?
The notion of collecting is problematic for me as it fetishises objects with the assumption that their value is innate to the objects themselves, rather than to how that object is used within the context of personhood.
If I can you back to my own aesthetic concerns, how I resolve this is by eschewing any ownership of those designers I admire, but instead create everything I wear myself as a reflection of, my I see to be, a shared aesthetic and ethic of personhood. Therefore I can actively participate in this aesthetic without actually consuming anything of it.
As such the concept of ownership is removed from the material objects themselves and moved to the concept of ownership as an expression of a shared aesthetic, therefore my favourite pieces of clothing are all those that currently express my own creative choices within the aesthetic of rustic modernism.
What is your wish list? Do you prefer to buy jacket, skirt, shirt, dress or pants?
The only thing on any wish list of mine is that such an aesthetic, as I have described above, was more prevalent in our society, rather than the rampant status consumerism which prioritises social division, over cohesion. In a way they identify themselves through their consumption: as in, “I am this shirt by such-and-such.”, rather than, “Though this shirt is by such-and-such, I am not this shirt, I am in the shirt, I am apart from it, not a part of it.”
Apropos of ‘identity consumption’, in the documentary film by Wim Wenders “Notebook on Cities and Clothes” he discusses this trend with Yohji Yamamoto. Yohji observed it as a sad trend which corrupted the idea of personhood as something immaterial, something the qualities of which are abstract, intangible and knowable only through emphatic communication with the other. Now the person had become materialised in a series of concrete signs, through a set of consumable goods. These goods have no real value: in the old sense of the word, as in “I value John’s wisdom, as he is always right when it comes to matters of the heart.”, but through identity consumption value is seen only in things possessed, bought and displayed, it has moved away from such abstract qualities, such as John’s wisdom, and moved instead to more concrete assessments of worth such as, “John impresses me, anyone who can wear an Armani suit to brunch is a real go-getter. And that watch. Bet he drives a 911. Yeah, John’s a real cool guy.” Here is there is no need for emphatic communication, as there is nothing intangible to impart, with the other, since value and worth are seen only in what John consumes, and not in the abstract qualities of John’s soul.
Through my own aesthetic, therefore, I wish to remain me, myself, a set of intangible qualities which require emphatic communication to become recognised in another, and I resist becoming a materialised me through vulgar consumption of status goods. By wearing only myself I resist that faux me of consumerism, to know me, therefore, takes time, communication and emphatic understanding of qualities which have real worth and value. I am not my coat. I am in it, but apart from it. Admire it by all means, but I exist elsewhere.
Joanna.
