2
hello UY
3
Special thanks to: Fanny&Idan for letting me into their studio even when they were busy as fuck Arthur&Bamboo for introducing me to UY and making me feel welcome in Berlin Sami Gottschalk for letting me into his place to be a camera perv Ivan Nabokov for the secret toilet photoshoot Milan Tak for hosting me (twice) I owe you!
10.
Intro.
12.
Berlin.
18.
The evolution of the Techno-Scene.
(an interview by Will Lynch 2011) 22.
Berghain.
28.
Sami.
32.
Words on UY.
34.
Visiting UY.
38.
Interviewing Fanny Lawaetz.
44.
UY sample sale.
50.
Berghain the centre of the world
(excerpt from Alexis Waltz) 54.
Berghain2.
58.
Berlin2.
64.
Sources.
5
Berlin (isn’t nice, it’s the place to be!)
24.
Berghain (is my church)
12.
19.
Techno (and the easyjet set)
UY (you know, like, ‘oo-ee’)
35.
50.
Berghain (on a saturday night)
Berlin (people get lost here)
– 8 –
58
58.
‘Sometimes you just forget to go home.’
UY is a young art collective based and growing in Berlin. Fanny and Idan are the incredibly inspirational duo behind it. To them, UY isn’t just a brand, but a movement. After spending a couple of weeks around them, members of the UY family and within the context of the city, it was really clear to me that UY is much more than a traditional fashion studio. What I experienced is an incredibly open, determined, protective and fun-loving environment. More than a brand, UY to me is a complete atmosphere. The way they interact, the events they organise and the products they create all hold this very special attitude of expression, freedom, creativity and youth. This publication is as much a report of my research as an homage to a group of truely great people. Success UY!
10
11
Berlin.
12
13
The evolution of the Techno-Scene.
important for the techno scene was this attitude that you explore spaces and think about spaces in terms of possibilities. That’s where the Berlin techno scene got its attitude from.
Interview by Will Lynch, words from Tobias Rapp
The Summer of Squatting—the real heyday of squatting, ended in November of 1990 when the city started to kick out people—but the attitude of squatting remained. The whole history of techno in Berlin in the ‘90s was really affected by this attitude that people learned in the summer of 1990. This attitude of, “You can take houses and do with them what you want to.” We kicked out walls, we threw stones out of the window, we tried stuff like having huge kitchens—like a whole apartment was a kitchen—the stuff like most of the people who live in communes do. But what was 18
Most of the clubs back then were just clubs for the weekend or for a couple of weeks and—maximum— for a couple of months. It was very transient. Also, the scene itself was very much word of mouth like, “Where is the party, where is it going to be?” Part of the experience was to explore the city, running through this empty city looking for a party. The inner city of Berlin, where the big stores are were empty and during the daytime there was nobody and during the nighttime there were all of these little groups looking for parties. It was really an amazing situation. In the ‘90s, techno was very small in the beginning, it exploded and then it became this movement that dragged one million people for the Love Parade into the city, and then it collapsed from more or less one day to another. It was like a textbook [example of a] subculture that goes mainstream and dies out. That was the ‘90s. It is very much different in the ‘00s. It’s not “charts music” anymore. It’s music that’s underground, music that found its place in a niche—a comfortable niche. I also think it’s a
growing niche, but it’s not at all music that has this mainstream impact that it had in the ‘90s. It’s a scene that also lost the desire to get mainstream impact. What I really find interesting about techno culture is that it is the first subculture that really organized beyond national borders. These borders are not important any more. It’s a culture that, when you can speak English, you can be a part of it. It’s a culture where it’s the most normal thing in the world when a DJ gets a booking in another European DJ’s city. For a Berlin DJ in the ‘90s, that was unusual. If you played in London that was the biggest deal you could think of. Nobody got gigs there, and we were very much looking up to London. London was another world, and we were just here in small Berlin. London was big. I think Germans are engineers and philosophers, and I think techno is that. Techno is philosophy plus engineering, and I think that’s what makes techno so attractive to Germans in a broad sense. Techno has no lyrics most of the time, which makes it a very universal language, and I think techno is a bodily music. I think it’s very big with the East German hedonistic kind of drugsand-techno crowd. That’s what makes it popular with the gay crowd, and I also think that’s what makes
it popular for people like me. I mean, I like this bodily aspect and I like the dancing aspect. You have to understand that Berlin is a city that does not like stars, which is also a weakness in a way. Berlin doesn’t produce stars—London or New York produces stars. Berlin doesn’t have a celebrity system the way London or New York has a celebrity system. That’s not what is interesting for Berliners. Berliners want you to be down-to-earth. That’s what makes the DJ so appealing. He’s not a star on a stage or rock sense, he’s down-to-earth. That’s a big part of this Berliner attitude. You don’t want the people to fly too high, you want them by your side, in front of you. I think that’s also what makes techno a very appealing music for lots of people who live here. When techno started, a lot of people thought it might have fascistic aspects: this DJ standing there, everybody dancing, looking to the DJ. Also because there were no lyrics, you didn’t know what the message was. The message was just being there and dancing and communicating with the leader—the DJ. There was lots of distrust, but fortunately this way of thinking died out at a certain point. 19
The Wall falls down, and this small scene in West Germany takes over huge empty spaces in East Berlin, so they celebrate the freedom. That’s one big historical accident that nobody could have anticipated, but then lots of other things added to this situation: the cheap flights pop up in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, the economic collapse Berlin had in the ‘90s. There was huge speculation that Berlin was going to be this boom town—it never was, and all those investors lost lots of money.
you want to get into a club, you have to look like you want to party hard. You have to be different. You cannot buy your way into a club in Berlin. Unlike New York or London, there is no cultural code in this city that is being generated by money. The cultural code is “I was there, I know this”—a subcultural code. To me, this is really appealing because I see lots of wealthy people moving into my part of the city, and I see all the expensive cars and then I think, “Yeah, but you’re not getting it.” The bouncer is not letting you in. That doesn’t mean anything in the world where I construct meaning. Your car doesn’t mean shit. I think that’s a Berlin thing.
‘When you want to get into a club, you have to look like you want to party hard.’
If the investors had gotten their way, techno never would have been this big in the ‘00s, and everywhere would be flourishing industry. But there is no flourishing industry in Berlin. There are just people getting wasted and dancing to techno music. All of these dreams of Berlin as an economic and financial capital never came to life, and the techno scene took advantage of it. The Berlin idea of a club situation was always different because there’s no celebrity culture—there’s no wealth. There’s sexiness, but it’s different than New York in the ‘70s. It’s a situation where wealth, doesn’t get you into a club. When 20
21
Berghain.
‘I once spent three days in here, I lost 5KG.’
26
‘This is my religion, this place is my Church.’
Sami.
he really represents their style! When I arrived at his place I could feel the same open and friendly atitude as from the Fanny and Idan, as well as the techno music in the background and coffee on the table. Sami showed me around., a beautiful place inbetween Prenzlauer Berg and Wedding. He introduced me to his cats before taking me down the corridor to his bedroom, light and spacious with a few plants dotted around. He showed me his monochrome wardrobe (including plenty of UY’s designs) before getting ready to go and party at Griessmühle.
Sami is a hairdresser and model living in Berlin, and appears in a lot of UY’s media work (pg. 13) . This is one of thing about the UY family that I experienced, everyone involved has skills to share and creativity to express, they really help eachother to build their dreams. When Babmboo was introducing me to Sami she said ‘he is the perfect person for you! He’s fabulous, he likes to take pictures, he’s best friends with UY and 28
Sami really stands out among the other (non UY) at the party. With the clean, clear-cut lines of his layered outfit and his perfectly in-place hair. He tells me how most of the UY family spend time preparing to go out. ‘If you feel good then you’ll have a good night.’
29
30
‘I can party for 20 hours and my hair will stay in exactly the same place.’
31
Words on UY.
With the feeling more of an artistic movement, rather than a fashion brand, Uy are engaged in many fashion, art, photography and even home decor projects, all perfectly lined with their expressive needs and ideals. Their main focus is not in any way to function as a market driven and profit organized brand, as they do not follow gender restrictions in their creative process nor seasons or trends. But they try to present their own point of view regarding the very same process of creation, resembling that of a pure artist.
Uy’s aesthetic universe is in a way a bizarre balance between Fritz Lang’s dystopic future vision in Metropolis and a fashionable masochistic orgy filled with the guys from a Matthew Barney performance. The art and fashion collective was founded in Berlin in 2013 by Idan Gilony from Tel Aviv and Fanny Lawaetz from Stockholm and consists of an avant garde fashion house, with a real intimate creative connection with their audience and fresh independent take on the fashion industry.
32
Raw, real and deeply personal. At the end the work of Uy is like an unfinished masterpiece, waiting for our own thoughts and feelings to complete the pieces, which is exactly what makes it so damn interesting.
‘UY Studio aren’t particularly concerned with chasingtrends and following seasons. Instead they aim to be considered as an art collective involving fashion, home decor, photography and art inviting us all to become a part of it. Their minimalistic style and almost futuristic cuts and shapes are reflections of their ethos to be a brand that “creates no aesthetic division between him and her”’.
33
Visiting UY.
34
35
Interviewing Fanny Lawaetz
And what does it mean to you, UY? like the whole brand? yeah wow it means everything actually, a lot! But only good things, of course. Yeah I mean it’s like our souls that we put into this, so it’s really from the heart everything. When did you start? We started a little bit in barcalona actually, we studied there fashion design and that’s how we met also. so yeah we started in barcalona but without knowing where it would go actually. and then, so since we moved here in Berlin then in August it is 2 years. So we are new still.
What does UY stand for? ermm, yeah first you say, everybody does it and says U.Y, but you say UY (oo-e). And it’s random a little bit how it came up, it was just something that we always say, like, it’s just an expression of us. But afterwards actually we figured out that the letters in UY is a little bit unisex, because its two, so the U would stand for the guy, and the Y for the woman. So it makes sense a little bit. But this we figured out afterwards. So yeah that’s it it’s as simple as that. 38
Did you always want to do this kind of thing when you were studying? Yeah yeah yeah, I always knew since an early age actually. Because my grandma, she taught me how to sew, and then I studied fashion design in High School, and continued in University. So it’s like basically the only thing I did in all my life. I noticed that your presentations are always quite theatrical what inspired you to do it like this? Ah yeah, well for our first fashion show in Barcelona, with all the models coming (towards the audience). Yeah well this is the most that
looked like a fashion show actually, and then we did another thing here in Berlin which was more like interactive performances. Actually yeah it was our one year anniversary so we wanted to show what we did during one year, so we had one performance and two different collections. An old one and a newer one. Just for the people to come into our world and to see what we did so far. This interests us more, like more interactive, more performances instead of like a typical runway, I don’t think we will do that actually, I don’t see ourselves doing that. I saw also a shoot in an old school or a hospital? Yeah with the white. Thus is a project called ‘touch me I’m sick’, we did a collaboration with Evelyn, a very good photographer. And so then we did one collection, the white one and did all these videos and shootings on different locations and everything, it was really cool actually. And where did you get the inspiration from? Erm, kind of inspiration from a mental house. And then our very good friend Shiera Kella, she’s doing mostly our videos. She’s a media designer so, we also do videos for all the projects we are doing. And shootings and everything.
How has uy effected your life? It’s become a huge part. Private life we don’t have, but also like our life is this a little bit, I guess that we are combining travelling and friendship and interest in what we are doing, so like in the summer, if we go somewhere like vacation, it’s vacation but we are always trying to sneak in the work. Like find the work there. So we are maybe planning to do a sample sale in Tel Aviv in the summer, we don’t know yet. But it’s a fucking cycle actually, like we cannot relax. What’s the importance of people in your work? Ah wow, it’s the most important actually. Because everything what we got so far is because of our friends actually. This is what makes it so amazing also, is that from he beginning we’ve had such amazing friends, so creative. Artists, everyone is surrounding us and everyone wants to help, favours with favours. So we always want to keep that our friends will always be a part of it. We are really a family. It’s not just me and Idan you know. It’s really thanks to all of our friends that helped us to build up all of this. So it’s very important. This is also our main inspiration, our friends and the people that you meet here in Berlin, it’s like the most unique people that you meet here actually. Super inspiring 39
Oh yeah i saw that you wanna branch out to more than fashion? Yes this is an upcoming project actually, we haven’t really had much time to work on it but we want to do it and we can do it. What we want is to not only create a fashion brand but to create a lifestyle, like a lifestyle concept. So this is the idea, this is the goal also. So an art collective with art, music, decor, fashion, so it’s really like a lifestyle. Do you really easy recognize people from the UY family? I think it’s very obvious actually. It’s not like we created them, we did it together somehow like, we met for a reason also. But you can kind of see it actually that they are from the UY family. And are you also having common interests and places where you go? Yeah of course, yeah actually I would say that we met through berghain actually. But we also have other interests of course like going to exhibitions and listening to the same music and the same kind of lifestyle. What’s your opinion about the human body? Wow. what can I say about that? Well I can talk about gender actually. I don’t believe so much in gender 40
nowadays, I think that, especially in Berlin it opened my eyes to many things like sexuality, like if you’re gay or straight or blah blah blah. Everything is kind of mixed here, and i think it’s amazing actually. It’s not really a difference to be a girl or guy, you can be bisexual or openminded and it’s really like that here. I mean ok there’s a girl and guy but it comes together here. Like it doesn’t matter I think. And the sexuality here is very open, the most open I think in any place that I’ve been, you will feel it. And no, we don’t believe in that. Like no gender at all. And I think that the future is going in that direction At least I hope so. Futuristic is quite a big thing for you guys, why is it so important? I don’t know how important it is, it’s more interesting I think. Like where it will go and what will happen. because you don’t know really.But in terms of gender and this, Berlin is really ahead I think. And yeah we are following that direction Also. But how important it is is. Yeah It depends how far you see in the future also, but I would say that it’s more inspiring actually. Oh yeah, what must i see before i leave berlin? Berghain. you should see also the Jewish monument also, you should go to, Ah there is a new restaurant called Industry, there’s a hype on
that one because it’s new and very trendy. You should go to this store, Darklands, it’s very cool how it looks there, and Apartment if you want to go see some stores. I wouldn’t say all these Berlin walls, but yeah for sure you can see it. And actually you can see it if you’re going to Berghain because it’s on the way actually, it’s amazing art. It’s so sad actually you can see the change of Berlin, how they’re killing many artistic things. This area for example it’s becoming very touristic and there’s money involved so they’re closing so many small studios, and building new apartments for tourists and everything. And all the graffiti, this was full with graffiti when we first came here and now they are just cleaning up everything. And that’s what was very cool about Berlin before, that it was really dirty, very rough. But Berlin is changing a lot and I don’t like it actually.. Can you tell me a bit about what youre working on now? Yes now we are expanding our online shop actually, so we are building a whole new website, this is the main thing we have been working on now. And in two weeks, the 8th of May, we will have a sample sale, yeah we just started to promote it. It will be in a very cool location actually, it use to be a whole building filled with artists, like you have your studio there and
lalala. But yeah they are killing that place actually and re-doing it with apartments and everything, so we got that chance for an event there, so we are happy for that at least. Also soon we will do something for fashion week also, we’re not participating in the fashion week, but during the fashion week we will do something. It will be some performances and a similar concept to what we did before. Ah we are also starting another line, kind of. We don’t know exactly yet but the idea is that we will do it before the summer. So it’s more, I wouldn’t say it’s more exclusive but it’s a line we are offering to stores, so not things that we sell ourselves but just for them. And we want to do more pieces with more leather maybe, more worked pieces. So yeah an exclusive line for them. UY UNIQUE we can call it. So yeah this and then we will see actually. But we have small projects all the time, like collaborations with stylists, but yeah this is what’s always happening. So that’s it. We don’t plan too much in seasons or something like that, we’re doing whatever actually. So yeah normally a project is planned, like it can be one month before normally… So we don’t plan too much ahead. Yeah it’s a bit crazy like that, but yeah this is how it started 41
UY sample sale.
‘Usually we don’t sleep before a sale like this, but this time we’re really on time.’
48
49
52
53
Berghain2.
54
55
Berlin2.
‘I don’t think you’re ever gunna leave.’
59
Sources:
Pg. 13 KALTBLUT magazine. (2015) Accessed April 20. http:// www.kaltblut-magazine.com/ uy-presents-us-power-freedomand-unity/ Pg. 22 - 26. Resident Advisor. (2011) Berlin in the ‘90s: An interview with Tobias Rapp. Accessed April 17. http://www. residentadvisor.net/feature. aspx?1434
Pg. 32 Matthew Barney performance. Accesed April 20. http://www. lacasapark.com/la/wp-content/ uploads/2010/09/Matthew-Barney-drawing-rest.jpg
Pg. 32. Sangbleu. (2015) An interview with Fanny and Idan from UY Studios. Accessed April 22. http://sangbleu. com/2015/03/27/an-interviewwith-fanny-and-idan-from-uystudios/ Pg. 33. LadiesnGents. (2014) UY_Studio. Accessed March 17. http://www.ladiesngents.com/en/fast-forward2/ UY_Studio.asp?thisPage=1 Pg. 50-53 Berghain, the centre of the world (excerpt) Rapp, Tobias (2010) Lost and Sound: Berlin, Techno and the Easyjet Set. Berlin: Innervisions.
Pg. 32 Fritz Lang Metropolis still. Accessed April 20. http:// static01.nyt.com/images/2010/05/05/arts/05metropolis_CA0/05metropolis_ CA0-popup.jpg
64