martes, 24 de mayo de 2016



La moda del 2016 es un excelente lugar para estar. La industria local parece más infértil que nunca, una tierra no cultivada ha favorecido a quienes tienen una propuesta innovadora  y fresca. Hay lugar para los matches erráticos, hay lugar para las mezclas disonantes y nunca, estar poco combinado,  se vio mejor que hoy. La moda de 2016 es un escenario amplio donde la moda de autor debate aguda frente al fast fashion, el retail y la producción en masa… No habíamos cuestionado tanto el sistema que nos rige como lo estamos haciendo hoy y la moda ha sido un fiel reflejo de ese cambio de paradigma.

En un país como el nuestro, donde el capital base se genera en la venta de materias primas que retornan a nuestra economía como un producto de consumo directo (saltándose el proceso local industrial de la manufactura ) y conseguir un producto Made in Chile que no sea comestible, se ha transformado en una proeza sorprendente y la pregunta-sorpresa tipo “…  AH, y lo hacen acá?!...” es cada vez más difícil de escuchar. Acá, en un país como el nuestro se está gestando un proyecto que bajo la opción de random life se han unido el NY fashion underground, la productora nacional SUDXD y Rodrigo Quevedo, el presidente de la Asociación Chilena de Robótica.

El random life es así: Esmeralda Garmendia, de la productora SUDXD conoció en Nueva York por casualidad al diseñador Mackswell Sherman, quien es figura de la escena divergente de la ciudad, su ropa fue mostrada en el contexto de la Queer NYFW y es también usada por la escena de raperos queer que azotan el underground neoyorkino como EarTheater y Guardian Alren. La oficina de SUDXD producciones colinda con la el taller del ingeniero en informática y fundador de la oficina de robótica ROTATECNO, Rodrigo Quevedo. El molde estaba marcado. Había que venir a hacer  a Chile un proyecto que fusionara moda y robótica. Si, a Chile, donde la industria del textil fue aportillada por la consagración del neo liberalismo y la producción de robótica son pequeños destellos en el universo tecnológico.


Casualidad  también es que este año el tema de la exhibición del Costume Institute del MET “Manus x Machina” aborde la dicotomía entre la creación artesana y la creación biónica. Entonces, el proyecto, de pronto descontextualizado, tiene una razón muy particular, ponernos al día en la dupla moda y tecnología a nivel global.


- So it’s an extrapolation between robots and people and fashion industry

- It's really a fucked up methafphore: “designing for fake robots”. So I started designing for actual robots because fashion industry is run by crazy evil robots. But I think is a very abstract thing, and what is concrete about this project is that we are creating art purely for the process and collaboration and to evoque inspiration. This is probably not gonna be for sale, I haven’t  wrap my mind around in how that will make sense, so this is the first time I take clothing design and put it purely in the art context.

- Art and fashion?. First time? Really?

-  Well… I always have, but in the past was always for profits, the final result was to sell clothes, I mean maybe not so specifically: I made bizarre science fiction movies and just once I made clothes for a Reggie Watts Motorolla collaboration for a Chihuahua but I think they pay me ok for that. That was making clothes lines not for retail. 


El movimiento anti retail ha calado hondo y no hay marcha atrás: La producción en masa, la sobre explotación de los recursos naturales, la contaminación del aire y de las aguas, la esclavitud humana en el siglo XXI. Todo esto  con el fin del mercadeo insano de la oferta y la demanda. Esa manufactura en masa que produce la aparición de estantes abarrotados de poleras iguales, jeans idénticos y productos imitación de casa de moda parisina imposibles de solventar con el bolsillo tercermundista. Pero el consumo retail no solo se encuentra en la moda. La arquitectura se ha preocupado de dejar su huella patrimonial en sus edificaciones fuera de la escala humana que, contruye colmenas y  gentrifica espacios urbanos. La salud en los mall con clínicas donde puedes canjear puntos del supermercado por una rinoplastia. La educación de mercado y la concesión de las carreteras. Eso es poco decir de nuestro instaurado retail y su sin numero de colusiones…

En palabras de Esmeralda Garmendia : El 90% de las personas compran ropa en retail. Un dato no menor hoy, cuando la posibilidad de encontrar una prenda hecha por un diseñador independiente no es una complejidad, sin embargo ella y su equipo han ido mucho más allá en la tarea de promocionar la moda, la factura y la producción local

Esmeralda:  One of the things in the project is local production:  We want to empower local production, we want people producting art, clothing, designs, mapping. But local production is really important. When Mackswell arrived he asked: “Hey Guys, where are the factories here?”... Well there are no factories here.

Mackswell: And It’s crazy because there is a lot of people doing lots of stuff here, lots of talent..

La primera dificultad que  tuvo el equipo conformado fue encontrar un taller donde poder armar las piezas hechas molde: Una costumbre arraigada en muchas capitales es que haya factorías a mediana escala donde se puede encargar una propuesta seriada  de productos a partir de un molde llevado por el cliente. Sucede en Buenos Aires, en Sao Paulo, Lima, Bogotá, París, Nueva York, etc. Pero no en Chile, un rastro inequívoco de la carencia de taller y de práctica semi industrial asociada a esa escala media.

How did you get here?

Esmeralda: We met in NY, we worked together, we were together there, we partied together there. We developed a bond, an understanding.

Mackswell: I wanted to use my experience and do something more important than making clothing to sale for the fashion retail. So I was thinking about South America. I was in Argentina 9 years ago and I always wanted to come back and see more of South America. I thought how can I use my experience, my knowledge as an anti fashion/slow fashion… someone successfull and here I am, 10 years later and still running, so I thought about doing an artist residency, I thought about starting a street wear school to use open source information sharing and I was just talking with Esmeralda and other friend of us from New York about thinking in some way to collaborate to get North America and South America working together. Basically I got so fed up with the fashion industry about 3 or 4 years ago and I been doing different experiments to use mi skills and my  passion and I feel like I’m doing something… significant, something that actually is important. I don’t care about being successful in terms of perceiving trends and making clothing to make money… is not enough.

Esmeralda: But you also have been part of Queer Fashion Week , so you was experimenting on it…

Mackwell: I’m having a great time in NY but is not about making money to be totally honest, there´s a profit margin and the climate in north America to be a successful independent designer, it just gotten harder and harder until the point it’s ridiculous.


So, how did you get in the Queer fashion show?. How can you mix gender, anti retail and queer culture?

Mackswell:  I was selected, it was a huge honor, I didn’t have anything to do in the creative direction or the concept of the shows. But it was the first time that the queer culture in NYC was organizing in a very massive scale… Is the world’s largest fashion show coming from designers who are the umbrella of queer thought, so I came out with more a gender neutral, post gender designer. A lot of the designers are transgender and dapper boys who were specifically designing for that facet. So it was curated by four different magazines, a production company, two magazines and other queer entities. So what they were doing it’s saying HEY recognize us, let’s have a place for queer fashion and we want to not just be underground in some edgy venue in Brooklyn… No, we wanna be in the biggest venue and make it in a very pop scale. So we do it in the Brooklyn Museum and it was recognized as the official New York Fashion Week destination. So for me, was just an opportunity to do something really futuristic.

It’s a big distance between robotics and a queer fashion show… but in the end they are not that far away between them, you know? Now is about robots, before was about queer…  So how you do make the connection between the work you are creating here and the work you make in New York.

Mackswell: hahahaha… And that´s my career! Let’s go back ten years. When I began my brand I was going to a very politically oriented school. The Evergreen State Collegue, in Olympia, Washington. That's were the all riot girl thing started, a very progressive school. In 2004 or 2005 I was an activist at the time protesting in the streets for accountability for worker’s rights as far as manufacturing of all things, not just clothing. And at that time we were demonstrating and doing a lot of press, publicity stunts to get awareness for worker’s rights and accountability… Transparency was the new term at that time. And I was like “Awesome…  We stop the export of all this changes that were happening over here”. We disrupted something and we were on the news for five minutes but then two weeks later we were still seeing the same things happening.  So I thought instead of this I can become a lobbyist and trying affect  the way laws were developed but didn’t sound so good for a guy who is a feminist-crazy-puppetry-rapper, that was my main focus at that time, doing rap music and experimental stuff or I could make a product ethically accountable in the USA and so I just saw the timming worked out I was enjoying making clothing and I met the right people and I started a brand and quickly it was embrace by ETSY and… that is how, basically I took ethics and activism and turn into a platform for a brand. I move to NY after… because of a huge opportunity of the founders of ETSY, they give me a studio and I was invited to be part of a business incubator to help small designers, like myself, scale.

At that point I didn’t know what a stylist was, I didn’t understand designing for seasons and collections… I was just a punk-rock rowdy-rapper who was making clothing that was good for active wear, for bike riding and doing stuff, because that’s what I did, but it was looking more chic in the street, because I have more of a desire to create urban wear. And I didn’t give a fuck about the fashion industry. And year after year, after I became more successful and more recognized in the fashion industry I started getting advised, and started building my team, and started to accept the fashion industry standards and found myself wasting tons of money on trade shows and show rooms, and being part in different fashion exposes, and in the last two years I was just like WHERE THE FUCK AM I?… HOW THIS HAPPENED?. So I´ve done lots of things I’m really happy about: We create the “Multi Task” which is a lifestyle function, that was a fusion of shopping and retail featuring independent designers and music, performing live rap and incredible djs in the local underground pop artists. And everything is really awesome but I’m still struggling with the bottom line on how to be comfortable and successful as an independent designer… Like… at one point I thought: should I go work for a giant fashion house today…should I just become part of the industry to survive? So for me, this opportunity to use my experience to collaborate and create something very futuristic was a new alternative to continue to push the ethics and my philosophy without having to popping out products and marketing and doing it for retail. 


No seguir la moda, no estar al tanto, no estar cerca del mainstream de la industria de la moda es parte de la filosofía de Mackswell, ya en el 2005 creaba atuendos a partir de nylon y telas como el neopreno que tanto se hicieron populares después de la arremetida de Wang, Proenza Schuler u Oppening Ceremony. “ The function is first!” dice Mackswell y cuyo enfoque se basa en ropa urbana, post gender y con un cuidado modo de hacer.

 Do you have some major- scale influence in your work? What happened in NY now? Do you feel close to the newest and strongest brands like Public School or Creatures of the Wind?

I don’t know, they are just copying each other. Probably an underground artist had a really good idea and then everybody copied it. They steal everything from underground. I don’t want to sound like I’m saying that I have and a authority or an opinion about something I don´t care about, I don’t actually follow New York fashion. I’m so invested in the local underground, but I can say that I was working in meshing, creating futuristic clothing that was great for functionality, exercising and partying in 2005. Using mesh, using waterproof nylon fabrics, because I care about the function.

Mackswell es un diseñador residente en Nueva York, la cuna del street wear-sport couture. En la capital financiera,  hace algunos años atrás, los show de pasarela más importantes de ver eran lo de De La Renta o Carolina Herrera, Michael Kors y una camada de diseñadores cuyo rol en la moda no era la innovación. Hoy son las marcas cuya visión contemporánea del vestir han revolucionado desde las vitrinas hasta el modo en que el retail diseña sus colecciones.

Working here, in Chile, has some sense to you now?.

Originally when I came here I said: I want to make this clothing for robots and maybe some capsule collection for humans and do a little pop up sale and work with the local factories and just streamline it the same way that I do production in NY. But really quickly I kept coming to dead ends of people saying: Yeah… I know about local manufacturing. So let’s talk about if they can do this pattern making, can they take an original sample?, can they make all the process? And everyone goes like: for us local manufacturing is one source, one talented seamstress, but you have to drive 1 hour outside of the city to go find her… So is not really organized in the way you can create a model. But at the same time is so fresh and new and there is no real standard of mainstream fashion that’s happening here, being produced here, so you guys could do anything here, you can find your own terms.

What's the most exciting thing about working here?

I went to Independecia and is awesome, still have the same feeling than the Manhattan garment district but is SouthAmerican garment district and has a little bit of everything, and maybe a lot of the fabrics are not necessarily the best quality but is organically happening. So, what I think is the most exciting thing about this project is supporting the local talent and learn from all my assistants who have work with another independents designers in different ways and sharing a similar concept of transparency and research and see how people are using their own experiences in different ways to help me find alternatives and solutions. 


Pudiesen haber sido personas, modelos gordas, enanas, flacas, abuelas o abuelos, hasta incluso perros, pero no, son robots de cerca de 30 cm los que llevaran la ropa el día del Future Fashion Show. La década pasada nos llevó a una serie de encuentros con la robótica y quien inauguró la temporada futurista fue Alexander McQueen quien decidió que dos brazos mecánicos dispararan chorros de pintura a Shalom Harlow mientras giraba en una plataforma a ras de pasarela. De esa primavera del 99´se desprendieron otros eventos relevantes encabezados por Hussein Chalayan, Iris Van Harpen y Philip Plein, sin embargo, solo un equipo de japoneses había podido poner en pasarela un robot símil a un humano en un contexto alejado de cualquier calendario relevante en el circuito de la moda global pero en una pasarela al fin y al cabo. Sin embargo y con mucho en contra, The Future Fashion Show se ha instalado como el primero en abrir el debate de tecnología y moda en suelo nacional y a pesar de la presión de ser los primeros, descansan en, justamente ese paradigma, ser los primeros.













Texto : Nico Castillo
Fotografías : Camilo Bustos Delpin www.visiondel89.com

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