The one true philosophy of clothes, by Simon Critchley

“America is here or nowhere” – Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1834)

What is the human being? Twenty five centuries ago, Plato gave a lecture in the Academy in Athens where he defined the human being as an animal, a biped and featherless. He was warmly applauded. Upon hearing this definition, Diogenes the Cynic – once described as a ‘Socrates gone mad’ – left the lecture room, found a chicken, plucked it clean and brought it back into the lecture theatre, declaring ‘Here is Plato’s man’.

Here’s another, better definition of the human being from the great 18th century satirist, Jonathan Swift. In A Tale of a Tub, he writes ‘What is Man himself, but a Micro-Coat or rather a compleat Suit of Cloths with all its trimmings (sic)’. Without clothes, human beings are hideous. We’re simply forked animals with bandy legs. Thus, clothes are necessary. But I’d like to go further and argue that clothes are essential and we might learn much from pondering their meaning.
Ask yourself: what is the human being but a garment and what is the world but the living garment of God? If language is the expressive garment of thought, then clothes are the expressive garment of the body. Nature and life itself are but one garment woven and ever-weaving from the loom of time. As the Earth-Spirit in Goethe’s Faust says – and note that these words betray the fact that God himself is not naked,
‘Tis thus at the roaring loom of time I ply, and weave for God the Garment thou see’st him by.’

Or as Carlyle writes in Sartor Resartus, or ‘The Tailor Re-tailored’,

‘The whole external universe and what holds it together is but clothing and the essence of all science lies in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES.’
The philosophy of clothes is not some specialized sub-discipline taught in fashion school ghettos. It is the key to understanding everything. It is the germ and gem of all science.
The human being is the fashioned animal and fashion is the key to understanding the human being. Put simply:

Mankind = manikin = mannequin

The fashion designer is not just the maker of clothes or purveyor of frocks, he is the creator, something almost divine. Like Plato’s demiurge or creator-deity in the Timaeus, the fashion designer in the sky and the fashion designers here on earth are his prophets, his true disciples: mortal portals to his immortal power.
In our depressingly sick society, we must fashion a new garment, a new and splendid outfit to clothe the naked body politic. And it must be a beautiful garment. Against the dominant utilitarianism that reduces all human experience to a mechanism of profit and loss governed by a crude hedonistic calculusm the body politic needs a sumptuous and gorgeous new frock. This is the eternal truth of dandyism and what we might venture to call ‘the dandiacal body’. Where most people dress to love, the dandy lives to dress. God loves dandies because, truth to tell, he is one himself. All forms of utilitarianism have to be refused through a refashioning of the human being through fashion. Dress and dress beautifully, for by doing so you are honouring the deity and becoming a little closer to the deity yourself.
But not too close. Remember why it is that we need clothes. To cover our shame, of course. It is because Eve was tempted by the wily serpent and Adam tasted the forbidden fruit that we were forced to exit paradise. It is only with the Fall and the fact of original sin that we felt shame in the eyes of God and covered ourselves with the first clothes, a tiny fig-leaf. If our entire social order is based on covering our shame, then the world that we inhabit is based on the need for clothes.

But here’s the delicious and essential paradox: clothes conceal and cover. They hide. But they also disclose, they reveal precisely by concealing. Think of the extraordinary importance of the slit, the hemline, the décolletage, of the symbolic phallic display of collar and tie. We see more in seeing less. Or at least we think we do.
This, of course, in a rigorously Heideggerian sense, is the true function of clothing, its bivalent play of disclosure and concealment. Full nakedness is always a crushing disappointment because it extinguishes desire. It is only in concealment that desire is mobilized. It is only through the slit, through the dark recesses of what the slit conceals, that desire takes wing. It is only in the not seeing that we desire to see, perchance to touch, even to taste.

You might ask: am I serious in advancing this clothes philosophy as the single key to everything?. My dear, I’ve never been more serious in my life. As Herr Diogenes Teufelsdröckh counsels, we must pass from the everlasting No, through the Centre of Indifference, to the everlasting Yes. We can only begin to think this through if we seriously meditate on the meaning of clothes and give ourselves up wholeheartedly to their philosophy.

As seen on A BLOG curated by.

Aanteni, a film for Rodarte.

Directed by Todd Cole, featuring Guinevere Van Seenus. SS10.

Karlie Kloss walks in Yohji Yamamoto Fall Winter 2010. Read my review here.

‘Untitled’ by Ed Ruscha, 1986.

‘Heavy Industry’ by Ed Ruscha, 1962.

‘Fear Not’ by Ed Ruscha, 1991.

www.edruscha.com

condolences and respect to the friends and family of the late Lee Alexander McQueen, a designer whose visionary work will live on through the ages.

above, an image of his mentor and friend the late Isabella Blow, who walked in his Fall Winter 1994 show with his name written across her hair.

A watercolour by New York jeweller Philip Crangi, in Nomenus Quarterly.

an excerpt from chapter 11: Maison Margiela, a sign of the time in ‘Fashion Zeitgeist’ by Barbara Vinken, 2005.

I was privileged to sit in and contribute to an interview between Riccardo Tisci and Maxime Büchi from Sang Bleu magazine in Paris last month, barely minutes after the Givenchy Fall Winter show for 2010 in La Sorbonne in Paris (to see my coverage of the show please click here). Between us, among many topics, we discussed Riccardo’s A MAGAZINE (as the interview has been first published on the A BLOG), the role of media in fashion today, and Riccardo’s views on a male muse.

Below is Maxime’s recount of the events – with a direct and personal interview approach which Riccardo appreciated and that allowed much positive discussion and mutual understanding. [My two cents is at the end!]

* * *

Riccardo Tisci’s work is laced with an impalpable force. His creations induce within me visions of Santerian altars and ritual trances. I won’t be mad at someone objecting that his shirts are nice to wear at a business meeting, and that there doesn’t seem to be much else to it. It may be that my perspective is biased: I really got to know Tisci’s world through his issue of A Magazine, and one will admit, it generally sailed fairly remotely from the safe shores of corporate offices and the rosewood helm of Hollywood entertainers.

It was one day this winter that the postman brought me another tangible sign that there may actually be more to Tisci’s work than starched collars and magnificent marabou feather dresses. What the postman delivered was a Christmas gift from the Givenchy office – an oversized, t-shirt screen-printed with the silhouette of a dismembered boy and three stars. As I unfolded the pleasant surprise from its white patent cardboard box and held it in front of me, the vision of the Paul Barnes-designed Givenchy logo hovering above the truncated body suddenly summarized that underlying awkwardness I always felt in Tisci’s work. The spell was cast like chicken foot.

So when Jean l’Olivier of A Magazine asked me to interview Riccardo Tisci after the men’s Fall Winter 2010 show, beyond the thrill and honour such an encounter might be for me, it somehow it felt natural – like it was the natural course of things.

* * *

When I enter the room, I am accompanied by Dan Thawley, enthusiastic ambassador of the ‘A’ empire, and faithful disciple of Jean, its benevolent first minister.

(Greetings & introductions)

Maxime Büchi:

I would like to start with what touches me the most in your creation, and especially that one particular experience I had. This t-shirt I received. I wonder how can you do this. Can you tell us about that twist, that “dark side”—or let’s just call it “flip side” that your creation seems to have. Where does it come from, how does it relate to you and what creative process leads to such a product?

Riccardo Tisci:

My work process at Givenchy is very intense. Day after day, we research a lot, but at the same time my approach is emotional. I do not base myself on what has been done. I am a very careful person, but in the end, my work in based on emotion and not reinterpretation. Especially in these days, it is hard to find emotion and inspiration. Not only in fashion. In music, arts, society in general. When I find something I like, I explore it throughout, I dig deep, without considering what the reactions might be. I am not scared. That is the way I work: drawing inspiration and emotion from my travels, my friends, my family. My work then expresses my vision and my vision, like it or not, is pretty dark. I am a happy but dark person. It comes from my origins, the way I was brought up in the south of Italy where religion is omnipresent. Football, sex and religion, that’s the Italian way, you know. Religion has always been near me, like my family. We never had much money, so I saw I grew up tough. So those are the ingredients of my creation: a certain latin romanticism and a necessary toughness of who I am. But without being ugly. So that’s where the darkness lies. But it is a soft one, especially for menswear.

Now regarding this collection, it is the one I prefer so far, because it is not about shocking. It brings together a sense of tailoring that I have been developing for a long time, but still with that identity we were talking about. Also because of its theme — Jesus Christ — I left aside the embroideries and the in-your-face-ness of my past collections for a much purer street meets couture spirit.

MB:

Speaking of streetwear, can you tell us more about how what is your relation to it and in extension to that, who is the ‘Givenchy man’?

RT:

For a while, I couldn’t answer that because I was concentrated on developing the woman, but here it is: the ‘Givenchy man’ is a Latin man. It is who I am as well. It might sound strange for a French house, but there is something about the heart of the Latino that I love. And then there is the strong body language. The latin man is proud and masculin, but is not afraid to have feminine facets in the way he dresses. You can see it illustrated in the casting of the shows. I explore the menswear world farther show season after season. Every item is the encounter of so-called streetwear—the trainers, the clothes I wear—and elegance. It is the twist. There are many beautiful shirts, coats, suits on the market. How do you come up with something that will be new, that will stand out, but still be wearable? Is is a particularly challenging in menswear.

MB:

I just saw Chris Brown at the show. Would you be interested to work with RnB singers or such? (NB: Obviously, we are talking about menswear. We already know Tisci has worked with RnB singer Ciara in the past.)

RT:

When I arrived a few years ago, there was the legacy of Givenchy himself — a genius — I had to close the doors in order to appropriate the company, get comfortable with my position, but I don’t “close the box” anymore. RnB and Rap are maybe less “me”, music-wise, but the world is very much like mine. The self-confidence, not being scared of anything. I love dodgy people, dodgy situations! The obsession of beauty. Menswear is being developed now, but if you consider womenswear, I have been consistently working with a group of women. Not many, I like it like that. We remain close and faithful. I am now extending this to menswear. You know, I dress women from Courtney Love to Madonna. Different identities, different worlds, but the same strength. It applies to men too. The people I surround myself with, the people who attend to my show, him (Chris Brown), whoever, they have that strength too. They can be Punks, Hip Hop, whatever, I don’t judge them by the way they look, but by the emotion they carry and provoke in me. And I like them because they’re strong, even if some of them are a bit dangerous — which attracts me very much!

MB:

And, like you have these strong women around you, do you have a male muse?

RT:

I am building it. It is difficult because everybody is trying to be skinny, delicate, whereas my man is rough and tough. Reason why my casting is so exclusive. I cast in Puerto Rico, etc. Latinos have now become trendy in fashion, but not when I started. Already then, most of the boys came from other countries. So as for now, I am still construction the picture of my real muse.

MB:

I was also interested in approaching the question of media in fashion. I was very impressed by the work you did for A Magazine. It could have been the common “arty-fashion”, but instead it was a real dense and serious editorial work, way beyond fashion. How did come up with all these things and generally, what do you expect from a fashion-orientated medium?

RT:

The experience was fantastic, but tough, also for the people around me at Givenchy! (laughs) One of my best experiences actually. I have a tight schedule, but when I give, I give 100%! I wanted to approach it in a different way. It is easy to do yourself, you do it everyday, but to see someone else doing you… Brief them… Is much more challenging. I selected people among my close, talented friends and family and asked to illustrate our friendship. I wanted people from all kind of worlds, photographers, artists, transsexuals, It was a big success because of the intense injection of real creative emotion. Which is something I miss in the media. Today it’s all about business. And I understand that, because what makes allows us to do what we do, but the work I did with A was the real me.

Nowadays, what misses in the media is the possibility to really express yourself. And also the need to stop looking at each other. They end up all looking the same. I used to read lots of magazines, but not anymore. Today,they all look in the same direction. I am a leo and I like to go counter-current. Like bringing the gymnast of Rio de Janerio in a world of skinny boys, you know! Media should stop copying each other and develop their own identities.

Dan Thawley:

I feel it is what you did for your A Magazine. It is so different to all the others, you have such an amazing list of contributors…

RT:

Absolutely. Another thing that annoys me in mass medias is the run for novelty and the quickly out-dating content. Like it or not, what I did with A is not about a trend, or who’s inside. You can read it again in 10 years, it is all about expression emotions, page after page, and that’s permanent. People went crazy from Courtney love to my transsexual friend or that rockabilly guy. Like Maria Carla making photography while she’s a model! Turn things upside down, that’s what I like. Express emotions. That was the keyword.

MB & DT:

Thank you very much Riccardo!

(Greetings)

Image above: Simon Nessman walks in Givenchy Fall Winter 2010 in La Sorbonne, Paris. Photographed by myself, Dan Thawley.

Above: Cole Mohr in Dries Van Noten’s Fall Winter 2010 presentation at the Palais Brongniart today in Paris.

The models carried portable speakers in their right hands, carrying the soundtrack with them as they walked. In a show that fused together army surplus trousers with collegiate double breasted suiting and deconstructed, cut-off outerware,  the technological injection was a modern conceit that re-contextualised the pieces for the new decade. Ranging from Snoop Dogg to The Clash, each boy who turned the corner brought with him a new song, and a new and unusual atmosphere for the wearable, modern collection.

Happy New Year.

‘There is light through the tunnel, not just at the end.’ by Dan Thawley.

Antwerp, December 2009.