"You need to learn to say no to senseless rhythms and schizophrenia. Something fast, something that is supposed to change your personality, your tastes...you have to learn to refuse this mechanism..." - designer Christophe Lemaire talks to Apartamento magazine.
I really love this quote and the interview it's pulled from, they give us a lot to talk about. Like, a lot a lot - I've waited so long to address this that the next issue of Apartamento is almost out! But that's neither here nor there, because what Lemaire and his partner Sarah-Linh Tran make very clear in the article is that they are not about the here and now, the moment - the instant. They're interested in longevity, depth, history, context, reason and meaning.
"We've always had a problem with fashion as a self-referential system," says Tran. "For us, fashion must follow life, reality...we start from reality in order to get to the ideal."As someone with an interest in vintage and in garments that have a cultural function and purpose, I interpret Tran's remarks as a comment on trends, and trends informing trends - it's like babies having babies. To say "The 80's are back!" - what is the real context for this? Nostalgia can't be the driving force behind good or relevant design. To bring something "back" so that a new generation of people can throw it away - is this what we're designing for?
Lemaire argues, "Today fashion is a product of information and communication. I don't see how we can credit people for being fashionable." So what does it mean to be à la mode? I hadn't necessarily thought of it in this specific light before, but I think Lemaire's implication is that getting dressed has gotten prescriptive to the point that a good outfit almost comes to us like an equation, one that equals little more than the sum of its parts. What does it say about its wearer? How does it reflect on the whole? To that end, Lemaire continues: "...Elegant women have a certain consistency in the way they dress. They have some kind of personal uniform, a personal stylistic vocabulary...it can be really poetic. You need a certain courage and strength to cultivate your personality, even in terms of how you dress. It's a form of resistance."
Resistance to? Trends, yes - but also to impulse and self-doubt. It takes assuredness and maturity to resist your own urges to flirt with an item of Fashion outside your sartorial purview. I'm always playing around with my style and my look, but I have to admit that the people whose style I most admire are those with a very consistent and idiosyncratic self-presentation. Lemaire is also talking about resistance to peer pressure, or "mass whims," if you will. Blogs, Instagram, Tumblr - social media provides a new means of almost instant approval and gratification. Feeling down? Stand out with the latest shoe from Prada! You'll be a star!
On the flip side, I have to wonder to what extent our dressing choices are being subconsciously guided by the fear of rejection from The Internet? People have always emulated others' style, but today we're privy to such an endless stream of information that it's virtually imposible to parse through it all and not come away a little bit under the influence of so much collective goodwill towards Givenchy sweatshirts and Céline bags. "Fashion means conformity mode," laments Tran. "It's a way to get accepted, to get recognized, to show you belong to a certain social class, a certain group...most of the time these choices are really superficial and don't really belong to the person that makes them." "They are surrounded by images," says Lemaire, "so they don't have time to get bored."
The last quote I pulled is one of my favorites, so much so that I used it as the post title (obvs): "Dressing can help us to feel better. It must be a game, a playful experience, but that does not mean it is a useless and frivolous act. It shows how we think we are, how we want to be perceived and finally how the other perceives us. It's a matter of how to approach and receive the other. Through clothes we have the first approach to the other, yet we can decide to wear a mask."
It gets a bit erudite in the second half, but this really sums up for me the power of dressing. We have so much control over how we interact with our world through what we decide to put on our bodies, if only because people are conditioned to respond to gender coding and certain aesthetic principles in such strong ways. For instance, the other week I was looking on Facebook at pictures uploaded from a horse race derby (what's a derby?) in my hometown and everyone was dressed in the same thing - even a drag queen I know was in chinos and a polo! (Is this the decision to "wear a mask" Lemaire talks about?) I guess people do this on purpose, though I wish with a bit more irony...but I digress.
My last thought for the day: does Lemaire's own work deliver on his philosophy? Fashion oracle Cathy Horyn said of Hermès AW13, for which Lemaire is the women's RTW designer: "Good taste doesn’t have to be old-looking or bourgeois. What a crummy prison of ideas, the fashion world can be. Nor does it have to scream luxury. In fact, it shouldn’t. At Hermès, it was conveyed in the balance of impeccable cut and rustic textures...and in the array of pieces, like cashmere wraps or a blousy shirt worn with a full leather skirt, that owe as much to simplicity as the attitude of the woman who wears them." I think Christophe would be happy with that.
