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
