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Editor’s Letter On 23 June 2016, citizens of the United Kingdom voted by a 51.89 percent majority to leave the European Union. From that date, there has been a catalogue of moves and failures-to-move from the British government in their attempt to negotiate an exit from the EU. Currently, following July’s appointment of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of the UK, it’s become clear that a no-deal Brexit is likely. The UK is becoming an isolated entity, and across the world, borders are being created both physically and culturally – from the US-Mexican border to Europe. For the Autumn issue of SLEEK, we wanted to research the idea of walls – the impact of borders, real and imagined. In November, Germany will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the barrier that separated the city into East and West for 28 years. In The Fall of the Wall, Sirin Kale looks at how the end of the Cold War influenced club culture in the German capital, while in Photographing The Border with Griselda San Martin, Ayesha A. Siddiqi speaks to the photographer dedicated to depicting an alternative to the mainstream media lens on the US-Mexican border crisis. We also wanted to look at the cultural divisions from the past that are still active today. How have these barriers transformed national cultures? In A new fashion trade route between Israel and Palestine, SLEEK Senior Writer Angela Waters speaks to Palestinian and Israeli garment makers in her profile on Adish, the Israeli-Palestinian fashion brand attempting to create new business trade routes across the Israeli-Palestinian border. I’m also pleased to be working with Martin Parr again for our fashion story Go (South) West. Stylist Eliza Conlon travelled to Bristol, England, where Parr’s photography foundation is located, to shoot the most captivating Autumn/Winter 2019 looks on American model Maggie Maurer. Parr’s lens gives this season’s stylings his classic British satirical edge. In Back and Forth, Andrew Nuding and Kieran Kilgallon took to the streets of London to shoot this season’s women’s and menswear with Nuding’s trademark ethereal style. Elsewhere, I had the honour of interviewing the Libyan-American journalist and activist Noor Tagouri. Tagouri makes me excited about the prospect of truthful news and current affairs reportage. Her new take on journalism, in which she challenges the fake news rhetoric, puts the pursuit of truth at the centre of every inquiry, from her documentary podcast Sold in America to her upcoming investigative series In America With Noor. “Instead of fighting for certain stories to be covered and certain stories to be covered in a certain way,” Tagouri says, “we’re doing it ourselves.” For this feature, photographer Mayan Toledano shot Tagouri wearing a purple leather Sies Marjan power suit. SLEEK 63
Photo: Mayan Toledano
Finally, Billie JD Porter’s essay on conspicuous consumption analyses the impact of social media from a new angle; examining the class divides created by influencer marketing, using research which explores how this creates a new class border: “At a time where the issue of poverty is so misunderstood and misrepresented, we have a responsibility to make efforts to improve the state of the conversation,” says Porter. Porter argues that in times of economic austerity and crisis these issues are exacerbated – a sentiment encapsulating the subject of this issue. Grace Banks 6
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Contents
6 Editor’s Letter
11 Contributors
14 Chris Kraus Column On Mary McCarthy, public shaming and the take-down of women writers
16 Class Portrait
22 Linda McCartney’s Unseen Polaroids Chrissie Hynde reflects on a photoshoot with her late friend
Photographing the Border 38 Ayesha A. Siddiqi speaks with Griselda San Martin about migrant struggles and showing an alternate story to that of villains and victims
24 Incoming
46 A New Fashion Trade Route
32 The Fall of the Wall
Gaby Sahhar Keiken Martina Cox
Angela Waters explores how Israeli-Palestinian streetwear brand Adish crosses checkpoints and social divides
Sirin Kale looks at how reunification impacted Berlin’s techno scene
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72 Noor Tagouri How the journalist is using digital storytelling to change the world
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RESEARCH Walls
Hyper-feminine looks shot in Clifton Township, Pennsylvania by Rebekah Campbell, styled by Rachael Wang 82 Go (South) West Photography by Martin Parr Styling by Eliza Conlon Photo: Rebekah Campbell
Who’s playing dress-up? Chris Black explores the cosplay of day-to-day life
Writer Aysegül Savas presents short story in Turkish and English
Knock Off
Cover: J Maggie Mauer and Sylvie Markes are photographed by Martin Parr, with styling by Eliza Conlon. Maggie wears jacket and shirt by Bottega Veneta, trousers by Fabrice Delvaux de Marigny, glasses by Oakley, sandals by Teva. Sylvie wears fleece and tights by Miu Miu, skirt by Ganni, shoes by Acne Studios, Bag Susan Fang
20 In the Act
68 Bahçe
102 Photo: Griselda San Martin
Natasha Stagg unpacks the colour’s rich history
What the photographer’s vivid interiors have to say about identity, modernity and gender
Lacoste’s new creative director delves into Nineties club culture and her Northern English upbringing
FASHION
Do luxury social media images filter our view of poverty? Billie JD Porter investigates
18 All Black
Farah Al Qasimi
Farah al Qasimi, It’s Not Easy Being Seen 3, 2016
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10 Imprint
SLEEK 63 Autumn 2019
54 Louise Trotter
FEATURES
116 Back and Forth Andrew Nuding alters the shape of the body through layering and movement in AW19’s new looks
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194 Francesca Allen × Tin Gao 9
210 Last Word David Hillman on Nova magazine
Imprint CEO / Group Editorial Director/Publisher Christian Bracht (V.i.S.d.P.) cb@sleekmag.com
Editor-in-Chief Grace Banks Art Direction and Design Lorenzo L Pradelli design@sleekmag.com
Creative Editor (Maternity Leave) Victoria GisborneLand victoria@sleekmag.com
Acting Creative Editor Marta Wilkosz marta.w@sleekmag.com
Fashion Editors Lorena Maza
lorena@sleekmag.com
Kamilla Richter
kamilla@sleekmag.com
Junior Editor Kathryn O’Regan
kathryn@sleekmag.com
Senior Writer Angela Waters
Advertising and Marketing
Sales Manager Sascha Melein
sascha@sleekmag.com
Creative Producers Emma Hughes emma@sleekmag.com
Finja Rosenbaum finja@sleekmag.com
Staff Copy Editor Huw Nesbitt Proofreader Redfern John Barrett Publisher’s Assistant Franziska Rutkowski franziska@sleekmag.com
Contributing Editors Chris Kraus Francesca Gavin Annie Collinge Arvida Byström Micaiah Carter Jeni Fulton
angela@sleekmag.com
Junior Designer Keano Anton Interns Henry Lifshits Madeleine Fletcher
Contributors Becky Akinyode Francesca Allen Berenice Ammann Shin Arima Adrian Bernal Chris Black
Rebekah Campbell Mary Clohisey Eliza Conlon Yacine Diallo Stefan Dotter Linda Gradin Patricia Heck David Hillman Felicity Ingram Sirin Kale Attila Kenyeres Kieran Kilgallon Rocco Kowalski Marc Krause Mary Lennox Simon Lohmeyer Ian Moore Nadia Morozewicz Andrew Nuding Itziar Nzang Jorge Ortiz Perez Martin Parr Anna Payne Billie J D Porter Kristina Ralph Andrews Tomi Roppongi Alfie Sackett Ayesha Siddiqi Julie Sinios Cathrin Sonntag Kyra Sophie Natasha Stagg Max Stürmer Anne Timper Mayan Toledano Nai’Vasha Max vom Hofe Rachael Wang Mattie White Wilfried Wulff
Special Thanks Café am Neuen See DUDU Berlin FrischeParadies % Arabica Coffee Garten Der Welt
Offices Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alexanderstrasse 7 10178 Berlin T. +49 30 288 86 75 20 F. +49 30 288 86 75 29 info@sleekmag.com
Distribution Subscriptions and special distribution Marta González Silla marta@sleekmag.com
Europe, United Kingdom, USA WhiteCirc Ltd, London
Contributors BILLIE JD PORTER
FELICITY INGRAM
Billie JD Porter is a British journalist and filmmaker. Writing about politics and culture, Porter’s work covers topics from prostitution to the women of UK rap and Brexit. One of Channel 4 News’ youngest reporters, Porter is a staple member of the UK political scene. In this issue, she tackles our misconceptions of poverty and wealth in the digital age.
Shooting SLEEK 63’s editorial Flower Freak Show is British photographer Felicity Ingram. Not long after graduating from Bournemouth’s Art Institute, Ingram became a well-known name in the beauty photography sector. Working for publications such as Vogue, i-D and Harper’s Bazaar, Ingram’s flawless style has garnered recognition across the industry.
FRANCESCA ALLEN Francesca Allen’s career has been defined by her intimate portraiture of women, both alone and in groups. Contributing to British Journal of Photography, American Vogue and Twin Magazine, and collaborating with brands such as Stella McCartney, Adidas, Diane von Fürstenburg and Topshop, Allen’s style often centres around female friendship. For SLEEK 63, Allen shoots model Tin Gao in an editorial which captures a sense of closeness between the subject and the artist.
MAYAN TOLEDANO
Mayan Toledano is an Israeli-born photographer and designer. Based in New York, Toledano has worked with publications such as Vogue (she shot Cardi B’s recent Met Gala look), Interview, i-D and more. Toledano is keen to subvert expectations. Her widely-acclaimed series Girl Soldiers refigured perceptions of young female Israeli soldiers. Continuing in this vein for SLEEK 63, Toledano’s photoshoot centres around activist and journalist Noor Tagouri, casting the reporter in a new and unexpected light.
AYŞEGÜL SAVAŞ
SIRIN KALE
Ayşegül Savaş is a Turkish author living in Paris. Savas has written for The New Yorker, Granta, Guernica, The Paris Review Daily and more. Her debut novel, Walking on the Ceiling (2019), was heralded by The New York Times as having “both sensuality and coolness”. This coolness can be found again in Savaş’s short story Bahçe, which features in these pages in both English and Turkish.
Sirin Kale is a writer, editor and documentary producer. During her three-year reign as Associate Editor of VICE’s international women’s site Broadly, Kale launched the widely-acclaimed anti-stalking campaign ‘Unfollow Me’. Since then, she continues to focus on investigative and longform journalism, writing for publications such as The Guardian, Observer Magazine, The Independent and more. In our research section on borders, Kale speaks to exhibition curator Felix Hoffmann about the Berlin Wall’s impact on clubbing culture.
SLEEK accepts no liability for any unsolicited material whatsoever. Opinions contained in the editorial content are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of the publishers of SLEEK. Any reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited. SLEEK magazine and sleekmag.com are published by H&B Publishing GmbH, Alexanderstrasse 7, 10178 Berlin, Germany, info@sleekmag.com
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BEGINNINGS 14 CHRIS KRAUS COLUMN: ON SOCIAL MEDIA JUDGEMENT 16 BILLIE JD PORTER CLASS PORTRAIT 18 NATASHA STAGG ALL BLACK 20 CHRIS BLACK IN THE ACT 22 LINDA MCCARTNEY’S UNSEEN POLAROIDS 24 INCOMING: GABY SAHHAR KEIKEN MARTINA COX BEGINNINGS
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On critical judgement, social media’s braying mob and the public takedown of women writers Chris Kraus column:
Text by Chris Kraus
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Mary McCarthy, who died at age 77 in 1989, was one of the most brilliant, and also the most polarising, of American writers. Championing ethics over ideology, she was a warrior for truth, writing freely from her own life and never assessing the possible consequences of what she might say. McCarthy’s nerve, courage and wit are almost unthinkable now, when the whole (online) world can be instantly mobilised in hate against a public figure – no matter how small – should they misspell a name or misuse a pronoun or otherwise step off the ideological rails. First published in 1963, Mary McCarthy’s The Group is being republished this fall in the United States and in several new translations. Almost 60 years after its debut, the book is more timely – and timeless – than ever. Adapted as a Sidney Lumet film in 1966, McCarthy’s novel re-emerged in the mid-Nineties as the inspiration for Candace Bushnell’s ‘Sex and the City’ columns in the New York Observer. The Group famously traces the lives of eight friends over seven years,
beginning with their graduation from Vassar, the then-elite women’s college, in 1933. They emerge from college at the beginning of the Great Depression determined to remake the world, bursting with ideas and idealism. But the personal and intellectual freedom they enjoyed at Vassar hasn’t prepared them to navigate the unbridled cruelty of their employers, husbands and boyfriends. Except for the mysterious Lakey, who escapes the US for Europe and a lesbian relationship, the girls stumble over the conflicting mores of their generations’ sexual liberation. Within seven years, most of the girls have settled into their lives as young society matrons, except for the protagonist Kay Petersen, whose violent and drunken philandering husband, Harald, commits her to a psychiatric ward when she confronts him. But The Group is a comedy – in fact, it’s outrageously funny. McCarthy describes all these horrors through the women’s deluded perspectives. Breathlessly, Kay explains her psychiatric incarceration to her friend Polly as a kind of mis14
take. “We’d had some people in for cocktails, and we all got quite high. Then when they left, about seven-thirty, I needed a cucumber pickle for a sauce. So I sent Harald out to a delicatessen, and he never came back. I realise it was stupid; I could have used India relish. But the recipe called for a cucumber pickle. Anyway he didn’t come back till morning. I ought to have pretended to be asleep – I see that now. Instead I confronted him … whereupon Harald said he was tired of my dirty mind, and he hit me … It was silly, but I hit him back. Then he knocked me down and kicked me in the stomach. What should I have done, Polly?” McCarthy makes ambitious and independent Kay’s unwitting victimhood seem plausible. In fact, the whole fracas – down to the name of the hospital – was drawn from events in McCarthy’s own life during her marriage to the critic Edmund Wilson. And Kay’s husband shares a name with McCarthy’s first husband, Harald Johnsrud, whom she married, just as Kay does, within days of her graduation in 1933. McCarthy didn’t make very much up, she was one of the most truthful and least inventive American writers. As she told the Paris Review in 1962, replying to the tiresome question – asked only of women – about whether her novels were actually memoirs, “What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake.” Her books hew close to events in her life, and the characters – especially those based on McCarthy herself – parody real people with cruel and shocking precision. It’s unthinkable that Carrie Bradshaw or any of the Sex and the
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City characters would ever encounter an act of domestic violence, let alone confess her comic ambivalence about it. McCarthy was always a realist. She was punished for this, both in her lifetime and for years after her death. Writing in The New York Times in 2000, Larissa MacFarquhar described her as “a viperously clever but minor writer, much admired, much detested”. As a kind of revenge for the success of The Group, in 1964 the New York Herald Tribune tracked down some of McCarthy’s old classmates, who were delighted to tell ‘the truth’ about her: “Mary was sort of a beatnik,” one anonymous respondent recalled. “She appeared unwashed and unbrushed – always kind of gray. You certainly wouldn’t have thought of her as a sex object.” “It was the book that ruined my life,” McCarthy would confide in a 1989 interview shortly before her death. Crank letters sent to her publisher from religious readers asking “What kind of filthy perverted mind do you have to write such a novel?” weren’t hard to withstand, but she was devastated by the hateful criticism unleashed by her peers in
the New York intellectual world. Oblivious to McCarthy’s irony, they found The Group too middlebrow and its commercial success was repugnant to them. The New York Review of Books, a publication she’d helped to found, commissioned a 4000-word hit job by Norman Mailer. The Group, Mailer wrote, was “a trivial lady’s writer’s novel”, infused with “a communal odour that’s a cross between Ma Griffe perfume and contraceptive jelly”. The writer Lillian Hellman called it, in the Paris Review, the work “of a lady writer, a lady magazine writer”, and McCarthy’s close friend, the writer Elizabeth Hardwick, pseudonymously published a mean-spirited parody in the New York Review. Taken alone, each of these attacks seems ridiculous. And yet cumulatively they led to a general diminishment of McCarthy’s work and her gifts, functioning very much like cancel culture today. Few of her peers defended her work publicly. Even the most positive critical considerations of her writing were careful to acknowledge its ‘controversy’, withholding full approval and praise. I wonder about this. And I wonder why certain writers become so instantly polarising to the point they’re considered fair game for the most rancorous effusions of hate. But the attacks on McCarthy don’t matter now. 56 years later, Mailer’s review reads like a misogynist parody, and his bombast loses its sting. The Group, she explained during a reading in 1963, was conceived as “a novel about the idea of progress … What I’m trying to do in this book is to make some kind of study of what it means to be a young American trained in progressive ideas, and trained to be a consumer.” New readers will be free to enjoy McCarthy’s brilliance and wit, and maybe recognise themselves, even now, in its world. 15
Class Portrait
Billie JD Porter on how social media images celebrating luxury lifestyles are perpetuating dangerous misconceptions about wealth and poverty
Around the time I began writing this piece, a photograph shared by Kylie Jenner popped up on the 'Explore' page of my Instagram. In it, she proudly sits atop a black Ferrari, parked in a driveway alongside her other five luxury cars: two Range Rovers, a Porsche, a Lamborghini and a Rolls Royce. The image has, so far, racked up 8.4 million likes from an audience who have grown more than used to watching the 22-year-old billionaire flaunt her decadent lifestyle from the rolling hills of Calabasas, Los Angeles County, California. Thanks to its famous residents, this particular neighbourhood has become synonymous with wealth and celebrity, but just weeks ago, shocking statistics rippled through both the local and international press, shedding light on the grim reality of LA’s wider housing crisis, stating that homelessness in the county had increased by an alarming 12 percent in the last year. Zoom out a little, and the broader picture is similarly bleak. Last year, the US Census Bureau announced that California, alongside Florida and Louisiana, had the highest rate of poverty in the US. These numbers aren’t easy to consider or unpack inside the social media universe where we spend so much of our time. But when we urgently need to address the topic of inequality, how do our habits online, both in sharing and consumption, contribute to an already twisted poverty narrative? It’s perhaps a little unrealistic to expect a personality like Kylie Jenner to be shedding light on issues such as these in her Instagram captions, but staring at such a vulgar picture and considering the ways it revels in its own blinkeredness leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Recently, our obsession with materialism has become almost farcical. We’ve succumbed so deeply to the smoke and mirrors of social media that the performance of wealth has turned into a strange, dark art form. The ‘Falling Stars’ challenge, which swept across social media in China last year, is the epitome of this. To take part, individuals are photographed face down on the floor, surrounded by their most expensive possessions. The images feel almost haunted, as though the bodies are cadavers at a crime scene, about to be outlined. In my mind, it’s no coincidence that these online trends have surfaced during a time when the mainstream media landscape is still clinging to the idea of wealth being a mark of hard work, and poverty being the result of laziness. Publications on both sides of the political spectrum are guilty of twisting the poverty narrative, buying into and perpetuating falsehoods about what having money means and says about us as people. We’re drowning in misinformation; headlines are telling us that welfare systems make people lazy, and that Kylie Jenner is ‘self-made’. I’m not sure which bare-faced lie I find more troubling. Lately I’ve been dissecting the framing of poverty within the media much more than I ever have done in the past. This is due, in part, to some work I’ve been doing alongside a social affairs journalist named Mary O’Hara. For the past 18 months, she’s dedicated her life to an investigation into the ways that those living in poverty, particularly younger people, can be impacted by their perceived status in society. Her findings will be published in a book next year, aptly titled The Shame Game. I assisted Mary in the launch of an initiative she spearheaded around the book called Project Twist-It, which seeks to challenge the immeasurably damaging and
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Illustration by Ian Moore
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reductive rhetoric that echoes through both the UK and the US, implying that financial hardship is the result of poor life decisions, as opposed to government policy and systemic economic inequality. This ideology isn’t new. Dr Heejung Chung, a sociologist at the University of Kent, has been a strong force within Mary’s project, and, in an interview for it, commented on the efforts of Thatcher and Reagan to dismantle the welfare system in the Eighties. “The idea was that, as a citizen, you don’t have a right to a decent living; you have to show that you’re going to be working for it,” she noted. “They developed this term, ‘the welfare queen’. The welfare queen was a fantasy, it doesn’t actually exist – it was a black single mom, with lots of children, scrounging off the state, wearing a mink coat, with a fancy car, but then using her food stamps to feed her children. That doesn’t really exist in the US, but they used that image to make sure that the voters were okay with the state dismantling benefits and services at that time, to those really small, very deprived groups.” When examining the hangover this has caused, one of the themes that has come up for us, time and time again, is the influence that certain imagery can have on young people in the digital age. While issues surrounding the internet’s influence on our body image have long been the subject of numerous studies and think pieces, this wave of visuals online celebrating unabashed consumerism, in which so many of us are complicit, is seldom talked about. When writing her book, Mary came upon some particularly worrying research relating to this which we later discussed. “An academic was testing the ways that people’s attitudes towards poor people are affected by being shown images of wealth or conspicuous consumption,” Mary told me. To those not familiar with the term, ‘conspicuous consumption’ is the spending of money on expensive items and services that are intended to be visible and on full display, giving very deliberate outward signals about a person’s wealth. The idea is that conspicuous consumption is based more on indicating a person’s status than actually meeting the needs of the consumer. “He found that the test subjects that were exposed to the most visual examples of this – for instance, shows like Keeping Up With The Kardashians – were the ones who were most likely to have negative attitudes and views towards poorer people,” she added. It’s a sobering revelation, and one I believe could have the power to inspire some real change in people’s attitudes. There’s nothing inherently wrong with enjoying or celebrating one’s wealth, but we must question why we worship figures who hold such influence and power when they reinforce damaging stereotypes about the rich and poor. We’re too early on in this era of digital overshare to understand the real, long-term repercussions of our online behaviour, but this much is overwhelmingly clear: the exposure to certain imagery can drastically impact our attitudes about ourselves and others. At a time where the issue of poverty is so misunderstood and misrepresented, we have a responsibility to make efforts to improve the state of the conversation. Step one could be as easy as rethinking your own content. What I’m saying is, if you have six sports cars, I hereby congratulate you. Just hold the photo.
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Black is a mask for high-octane emotion. It is the veil worn over tears at a funeral, the ski hat worn by a thief, the top hat tipped by the master of ceremonies. Black is a turned-off screen, the end of a movie, a relief for eyes sensitive to light, a cool cover after hours of daytime strain. 20 It is the colour of vacancy and no vacancies, the expression of infinity and of nothingness. When speckled with white stars, or ribbed with the reddish caves of bodily interiors, or dappled with the blue reflection of the sky that can survive the pressures of watery depths, a black field looks beyond our existence. 21. Style advice: imagine the staying power of black shoes and undergarments. Imagine blackness, true blackness, the expanse and depth of it, if you can, if it is possible, and layer it.
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A travelling exhibition of Cristóbal Balenciaga’s black dresses, Balenciaga, l’oeuvre au noir was recently curated to show the designer’s capacity for impres-
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Black is at once all colour combined and the absence of all colour: the most and the least. A ‘blackout’ means the lack of something (power, light, memory) and a ‘black eye’ means a bruise that looks like a rainbow trout.
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For all of its cultural cache, its darkness and metaphorical darkness, its ‘absence of’, its ability to stand in for the whole as a hole – as in Malevich’s Black Square, viewed as the ultimate conclusion to a breaking down of visual codes that went from Cubism to Abstract Expressionism to primary-coloured grids and then the shape of a painting in pure black, framed by white and the white of a gallery – black is an intellectual colour but it is also, in every sense of the word, the most basic. 17
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When we say “black people” – a fraught construct – we refer to a giant spectrum of origins, ethnic descents, and experiences, which is defined differently in different countries, eras, communities and contexts. 12
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There is blackness and there is blackness and there is blackness, but we are focused for the moment on this season’s BBD (‘big black dress’) that comes in all volumes: graduation
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The English word ‘black’ sometimes means evil: death’s cloak, a bad witch’s cape, a bad luck cat, immoral magic, a plague, the darkest humour, the great beyond, the deep unknown. But black is a symbol of simplification, too. Black and white means an easy binary, a heightening of contrast, a yes or no answer. 11
Vampires – because they are nocturnal and elusive, or because they turn into bats, or because they were first seen in black-andwhite movies – wear black, and therefore black is a goth colour, the gothest colour.
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“Venice,” as Peter Ackroyd writes in Venice: Pure City, is “not so much a city but a representation of a city”, an “endless drama”. In 17th-century Venice, black clothing was “a costume with which to express uniformity … the colour of gravity. Black was the colour of anonymity. Black also held elements of intimidation. It represented death and justice.” 5
It is imbued with more meaning than the others, but it is still a tone, a nameable one, with varying depths and warmths: black denim is washed. Black iron absorbs. An oil spill is iridescent. A tattoo fades to green.
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When black is not standard, the cover of a notebook, it is dramatic, the colour of wrongness, a reversal. As Anne Carson writes in Totality: The Color of Eclipse: “The sun quits us, we are forsaken by light. Yet people who experience total eclipse are moved to such strong descriptions of its vacancy and void that this itself begins to take on colour. What after all is a colour? Something not no colour.”
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Something about having to move around this big set in all black makes sense: stagehands wear black so they can disappear behind scenery, unlike the actors, vying for attention. The goal is to look like one is part of this place, integral to the show.
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Even when Morrissey (not known for wearing black) sang, “I wear black on the outside because black is the way I feel on the inside”, he was mimicking a type of melodrama, and when Lana Del Rey (also not known for wearing black) later sang, “I paint the house black, my wedding dress black leather, too”, she was pandering to a depressive, hoping to point out the absurdity of her song’s subject’s lifestyle. The Rolling Stones’ 'Paint It Black' is sped up and slightly hysterical; its lyrics feel distant from Mick Jagger (never one to exclusively wear black, either) as if he is quoting someone. 9
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In small cities, black is a scary colour to wear, a sign of outside interests. Visiting large cities like New York or Chicago or Berlin, one is struck by the amount of black everyone wears: professionals, writers, tech people, designers, security guards, waiters, even children. (Back home, maybe the only people who wear monochrome black are hairdressers.)
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At some point, each subculture owned black: bikers wore black leather, gallerists wore black linen, the upper crust had black tie events, single women claimed the little black dress. But because it is everything, it is nothing, and so reclaiming black as subcultural today feels almost satirical, an echo of naiveté. 8
Looking at the Fall/Winter 2019 runway shows, black palettes look particularly dark, as in nightmarish: Prada’s Anatomy of Romance collection, Balenciaga’s Asphalt showspace, Bottega Veneta’s quilted leather, Comme des Garçons’s all-black poofs, and Rick Owens’ models’ blackout contacts look more creepy than formal, answering the Anthropocene with supernatural villains. 15
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Back when wealth was best represented by materials, brighter, cleaner hues easily informed their fineness, whereas black could hide anything. Eventually, though, high fashion became a new kind of elitism, and black was prioritised. The innovation of haute couture was explained with a garment’s structure more than its makeup, and to the human eye, black is best for seeing silhouettes.
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Saying anything is the new black is déclassé now, an empty adage because it never worked – nothing ever replaced black as black, even when black was the new black, meaning something racial, and then something not racial, ad infinitum. 7
sive construction by directing the focus away from his wild colour choices.
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gown, layered ‘Goth Lolita’, corseted period piece, mouse-ear-topped t-shirt dress or shapeless shift-in-felted-something.
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Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, a train of thought about just one colour in numbered sections, starts, “1. Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a colour”, and goes on to explore blues, the blues, blueness, blue things and herself. Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red (1998), on the other hand, follows a red-winged monster named Geryon and starts, “He came after Homer and before Gertrude Stein, a difficult interval for a poet.” In each colour, though, we see infinity, the guardrails humans have created in order to name colours, a watery depth, an arbitrary assignation (why is sadness blue, anger red?), and the isolation of tone from meaning.
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Book credit: Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York 2011–2019 by a collection of essays by Natasha Stagg will be published by Semiotext(e)/Native Agents in October
All Black
Author and critic Natasha Stagg talks about the history of the colour
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Although often associated with nerdom, getting dressed up and acting out your fantasies is, in fact, fashion’s modus operandi, writes Chris Black. Just ask Kanye West, Melania Trump and Steve Jobs. Maybe the geeks are onto something
In the Act
Cindy Sherman is at the National Portrait Gallery from 27 June to 15 September 2019
CINDY SHERMAN, Untitled #602, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
CINDY SHERMAN, Untitled #466, 2008. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
CINDY SHERMAN, Untitled #204, 1989. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
baffling choice of donning towering stilettos to tour a Hurricane Harvey-ravaged Texas in 2017. I guess you can’t cosplay all the time. My mind also goes back to Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple. At the beginning of his career, his sartorial choices were often pronounced – he was seen in leather jackets and the occasional bowtie. Inspired by a trip to Japan in the Eighties, Jobs saw the Sony staff in matching jackets, designed by Issey Miyake, made of rip-stop nylon with sleeves that unzipped to make a vest. He brought the idea back to his staff, and it was quickly shot down. They wanted to keep things casual. That didn’t stop Jobs from working directly with Miyake to create what went on to become an iconic black turtleneck that he paired with Levi’s jeans and New Balance 993 trainers, a uniform he seemed to wear every single day. This was a subtle form of cosplay used to make an eccentric and often brash and cruel billionaire seem more approachable and straightforward. The idea of escaping from reality through clothing can be done in more understated ways as well.
Traditionally, casual cosplay involves dressing up like a character without going all out and donning an exact replica of their attire. We see this in real life almost daily. Think about the rich suburban mother shuffling the kids from private school to ballet practice wearing an expensive vintage Iron Maiden t-shirt. She is in character, telegraphing a manufactured edge through a flimsy and grossly overpriced t-shirt. The high-powered Wall Street guy wearing an expensive suit and even more expensive watch, his boss-approved Hermes tie giving him the extra confidence he needs to take calculated risks with other people’s money. He switches into this costume like Clark Kent becoming Superman. The cool teenager wearing a Thrasher t-shirt, baggy jeans and Vans who has never stepped on a skateboard in his life. All of these examples aren’t dressing like a character from Disney, DC, Marvel or anime. They are dressing up like a more realistic character that they are trying to portray. Cosplay, in any form, is a fun way for us to escape from reality for a little while. All of it is fantasy – we use clothing to embolden ourselves and provide the confidence we didn’t think we possessed.
Text by Chris Black
Cosplay is a marriage of the words ‘costume’ and ‘play’, a sort of performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character. When I think of this phenomenon, the first thing that comes to mind is a pack of nerds dressing up like video game or comic book characters. It is deeply uncool, but somehow the practice and associated terminology have entered pop culture’s lexicon. Maybe that is because when you take the anime and furries out of it, getting dressed up is something everyone does. Clothing, at its core, is a costume. The smart-casual office look, worn to seem professional but cool and relaxed; the Instagramready couple, perfectly coiffed and ready to snap a like-garnering photo at a moment’s notice – we all cosplay from time to time. At this year’s Met Gala in May, rapper and designer Kanye West wore a jacket and matching trousers in all black, made by the classic workwear brand Dickies. His look was scrutinised in certain circles: was he letting his wife, reality television star Kim Kardashian, who was wearing a skintight nude Mugler dress, take BEGINNINGS
the spotlight? Maybe. But, it was also, by definition, cosplay. Kanye, as he often does, was playing a character. It was understated and nondescript, but he had chosen this specific look because it screams “DON’T LOOK AT ME”. He was wearing a working-class costume at a charity event where a single ticket goes for $30,000. He still managed to get the attention that he desperately craves. One can even apply the term to the First Lady of the United States, Melania Trump. It seems that cosplay has gone from comic-con to the White House. Despite the trappings of this role, the former model tries to dress ‘normal’ – a word that, in this case, is hard to define. In September 2017, Trump hosted a group of pre-teen members of the Greater Washington Boys and Girls Club to partake in some good old-fashioned manual labour in the White House vegetable garden. In an attempt to seem relatable and down to earth, she wore a pair of brand new Converse shoes and a red plaid flannel button-down from Balmain, a shirt that retails for $1,380. Still, this cosplay version of a regular American was more successful than her 20
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Linda McCartney’s Unseen
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Text by Chrissie Hynde
In an excerpt from Linda McCartney. The Polaroid Diaries published this Autumn, the former NME writer and frontwoman of The Pretenders, Chrissie Hynde reflects on a photoshoot with her late friend
I was talking to Linda on the phone. I told her, “I’m calling this album Viva El Amor." She said, “I like that. It’s positive. I like positive. I want to do the cover photo.” A couple weeks later I got the train to their place on the south coast of England. Husband Paul was next door in the studio putting the final touches on her album. She asked if I wanted a ‘greenie’ (green tea) and proceeded to shoot. I liked her new short hair style even if it reminded me of the treatments she’d been getting. My fist was in the air in what I hoped would look like the pose on a propaganda poster. It didn’t take long. She said, “We’re going to Arizona tomorrow, so I’ll see you in a few weeks.” We waved goodbye and I got the train back to London. Two weeks later my younger daughter, Yasmin, walked into the kitchen. “Mum, a man on telly says Linda died.” I went into the back garden and looked up at the moon. Linda was gone. A month or two went by. I was sadly getting used to the idea that my pal wasn’t going to be around anymore when I got a call from her assistant, Nick. “Linda had something she wanted me to make sure to give you.” A package arrived. It was the contact sheets. Linda’s last portrait.
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Linda McCartney. The Polaroid Diaries TASCHEN All photos by Linda McCartney. Copyright Paul McCartney.
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Polaroids. As a non-photographer, I always wonder, “Why not just use the Polaroid?” They often, like a demo tape, capture the vibe better than a proper recording. I guess it’s about the quality. I go for the vibe myself. But like I said, I’m not a photographer so I don’t really understand the nuances. When I did the portrait with Linda she had all the lighting set up before I arrived. I understand it’s all about the lighting. I just walked into the frame, she took the Polaroids (I guess as a reference to see if it was going to work) and then snapped away while I kept punching the air. I’d done pictures with her before (she ALWAYS had a camera on her). It seemed for her taking pictures was just second nature. I didn’t mind her photographing me (something I find uncomfortable most of the time) because she was a very comfortable person to be with. That was her thing. Around her, everyone was always relaxed and at ease. I think her pictures reflect that. This text is excerpted from the book Linda McCartney. The Polaroid Diaries, £40 (Taschen), out September 18.
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GABY SAHHAR WHY THE SOUTH LONDON MULTI-DISCIPLINARY ARTIST IS REFUSING THE GENTRIFICATION OF QUEER SPACES IN LONDON
Raised in Streatham, a traditionally working-class neighbourhood in South London, 27-year-old Gaby Sahhar is more than qualified to make art about urban space. In recent years, Sahhar has watched their native Streatham grow steadily more alien. Diverse communities have been replaced by a heteronormative monoculture, accompanied by a gentrified stream of franchised coffee shops, luxury developments and 24-hour gyms. This process – what the artist refers to as ‘genderfication’ – leads to a homogenisation not only of city space but of the people who get to live there. In Streatham, as with Brooklyn or Berlin’s Kreuzkölln neighbourhood, queer spaces and modes of living are invariably pushed out. Crucially, the work done by artists and queer individuals invariably sets the scene for a new ideal: as Sahhar sees it, for wealthier communities. “More straight white men, more families … less diversity.” Here, privilege takes a spatial turn. This idea of ‘genderfication’ – and with it, the shrinking range of possibilities afforded to queer individuals – is central to Sahhar’s practice, which takes in video, painting, performance, writing and film. These ideas were explored at the
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artist’s recent summer exhibition, Second Home, at Berlin’s Sweetwater gallery through a kaleidoscopic installation. Lengths of painted paper, undulating with showy patterns in turquoise, pink and emerald green, unfurled down from the ceiling, smothering the walls and the floor. Above this hung a series of large works on paper, pitchblack vignettes of inner-city life, while a pair of intimate, text-based videos played out facing one another on the floor. The idea behind the installation, Sahhar says, was to allow visitors to “reconnect with a certain element of themselves which maybe they might have lost through gentrification, as ambitious as that sounds”. Part-construction site, part-studio, the exhibition hinted at a creative and experimental public space quite unlike the banal iterations currently being rattled off in London and Berlin. Sahhar’s studio practice is accompanied by constant activist work. While critical of other students who – Sahhar feels, fetishised working-class culture – studying fine art at Goldsmiths, University of London, taught them “to engage with political art
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Gaby Sahhar, Second Home (installation detail view), Sweetwater, Berlin. Photos: graysc.de. Courtesy of Sweetwater
Text by Rebecca O’Dwyer
forms”, leading to a series of site-specific art projects that critiqued changes unfolding in Streatham and elsewhere. A year after their graduation in 2015, Sahhar staged a performative film screening, Upgrade Me, in their local Tesco; in 2017, some of their paintings were exhibited at Arcadia Missa New York, too. While enjoying their success, Sahhar sees it as an opportunity for more activist work, founding the organisation Queerdirect in 2017. The aim behind it, they say, was simple: to “platform queer arts in the way I wanted to see it platformed, rather than being misrepresented by other people”. This has meant facilitating events at institutions including Tate and Somerset House, and forging temporary, if still valuable, opportunities for queer artists. Expressing admiration for New York’s permanent, dedicated queer art spaces – the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay & Lesbian Art, most notably, along with the gallery Queer Thoughts – Sahhar hints at the kind of work in which Queerdirect could hopefully play a role down the line. In July, Sahhar curated a performance night at Autograph in Shoreditch alongside [Sur]passing, an exhibition by the queer artist Lola Flash, a member of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). Elsewhere, they will work on a publication mapping the queer art scene in London, participate in a residency at Mayfair art space Mimosa House, and lead a youth workshop at Tate, where they will use Queerdirect and Upgrade Me as case studies to show the possibilities of art as a form of political protest.
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Returning to their studio work, Sahhar describes the “aesthetics and sickly -sweet qualities” of pop music as an important influence, in particular London radio station Kiss FM, with its indelible link to urban space. Such music, they feel, can be universal, and because of this, Sahhar enjoys “using it as a tool to tell stories”. Urban space and masculinity are key themes, “analysing men from an outsider’s point of view”, seeing how they act in space, and how space acts with – and even anticipates – them. More than anything, though, Sahhar is influenced by their queer friend group and by “having a lot of discussions … about how they perceive the world based on their sexual or gender identity”. Speaking with Sahhar, it is clear that these informal, intimate, small-scale and hard-won alliances are the most potent means of staying critical and warding off the gentrification of the self.
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Gaby Sahhar, Second Home (installation detail view), Sweetwater, Berlin. Photos: graysc.de. Courtesy of Sweetwater
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THE INTERDISCIPLINARY, LONDON-BERLIN-BASED ART COLLECTIVE ON “WORLD BUILDING” AND THEIR HYBRID, COLLABORATIVE EXPERIENCES
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March, they appeared at Technology and its Intersections, hosted by London’s ICA. Their aims are to “question the boundaries of experience” and to foster “a mutual appreciation of each other” while making explorative artistic experiences existing at the intersection of collective research, technology, sound and immersive design. According to the group’s founders, the concept of “world-building” is integral to their creative methodology. “We wanted to make a space where you can have multiple people working at the same time, but is to some degree like world-building because it allows multiple inter-forking narratives to exist,” explains Ramos. “A world is held up by multiple perspectives, so therefore you need lots of different people for a world to be believable. But, at the same time, a world needs to have individual paths and journeys, so therefore [world-building] is a really good model to allow people to work both collectively and individually,” adds Omori. “Working collaboratively you have to really let go of your ego to work successfully with someone else,” continues Ramos. “For us, because we have all worked together for so long, we left
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GEORGE JASPER STONE, Highlighting, 2019
Text by Kathryn O’Regan “A lot of the outcomes and approaches we take to making work are informed not so much by seeing a piece of work but by experiencing something,” says Isabel Ramos, one of the founding members of London-Berlin-based art collective Keiken, whose hybrid practice involves moving images, virtual and augmented realities, and spoken word. The idea for the collective came about in 2014 when Ramos, Tanny Cruz and Hana Omori were studying fine art at Falmouth University in Cornwall, England. “What we really wanted to do was truly collaborate, not just to have individuals working alongside one another. The overarching idea was this concept of different experiences,” explains Ramos over Skype. Since then, the collective has grown to include collaborators in both London and Berlin, including fellow Falmouth alumni George Jasper Stone, multidisciplinary artist Suzannah Pettigrew and digital artist AGF Hydra, among others. Together, they have brought their performative lecture and evolving project Honey, I’m Data (2016–), critiquing white male Silicon Valley narratives, to IMPAKT Festival in Utrecht as well as SPACE Art & Technology in London. In January this year, they also spoke at DEFRAG in Somerset House and exhibited at Berlin’s transmediale Vorspiel festival; in
themselves. I think with face filters there is a big online community of people who are making it, but that community is still not very diverse,” says Ramos. “It is still just the people who are interested in tech and it is not extending beyond that … Who’s coding technology and leading the research? It tends to be white men. I think it’s really important to start using these technologies in a progressive way.” And what’s next for the future of Keiken? “We want to make more intricate experiences, and allow people to immerse themselves in a world that is very accessible,” says Omori. “We want our work to reach the right people that it's needed to reach.”
GEORGE JASPER STONE, Workstation, 2019
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our own personal practices behind and now focus on maintaining this entity, with all its different arms reaching out.” Keiken have applied this expansive, collaborative approach to a spate of new and upcoming projects. Recently, the group were selected for Jerwood Arts’ programme Collaborate!, and will be exhibiting a new film and installation (in collaboration with Stone) at the London gallery in October. The film is based on the concept of ‘platform diverse body’ by the American designer and transhumanist academic Natasha Vita-More, and probes the idea of human identities surviving simultaneously between real and virtual worlds. Out of these ideas around multiple identities – and a performative lecture with Vita-More, no less – bloomed an interest in augmented reality, and they have subsequently developed face filters, hoping to make the online community more inclusive. “We can show people how they can access software and build something that is an expression of
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KEIKEN, Honey, I’m Data!, at IMPAKT Festival 2018, Utrecht. Keiken in collaboration with Suzannah Pettigrew, AGF HYDRA, George Jasper Stone and Nati Cerutti. Photo: Pieter Kers
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MARTINA COX
sort of work ethic.” This led Cox to reflect upon her practice, especially in an art school environment that pitted art and craft against each other. “Seeing my grandmother approach [sewing] so beautifully, it makes me feel like there is something lost there,” reflects Cox. Not only that, but Cox feels that the opposition between art and craft was due to the patriarchal conventions of the traditionally male-dominated art school structure. “You can’t really talk about work and techniques without critiquing the history behind it. That was something that I wanted to address more by approaching my work with more of a craft – embroidery, sewing and using really lacy, ugly florals, things like that.” For Cox, these lacy, flower-festooned patterns carry a ‘baggage’ associated with traditional femininity which she flips on its head, often through playful, even titillating means such as transparent windows and bawdy details. As an example of this, Cox highlights a particular pattern she designed, inspired by a rose-printed fabric her grandmother worked with a lot, in which she swapped the dainty blossoms for phallic shapes. “I wanted to capture that baggage for maybe someone like me as a young adult in New York City, who is not forced into a domestic environment and make it kind of dark but humorous.”
THE NEW YORK-BASED DESIGNER SUBVERTING THE TRADITIONALLY FEMININE LANGUAGE OF HOMEMAKING AND CRAFTS THROUGH PLAYFUL, UPCYCLED AND BESPOKE GARMENTS
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made “a bunch of friends” who introduced her to the idea of getting dressed to go out. “I realised ‘Oh my God, I can make my own clothes to go to the club’.” Cox describes her pieces as “sculptural garments” that are always “in conversation with the body, specifically the femme body”. Each piece is lovingly constructed, treading a thin line between fashion and wearable art. Previously, for example, she designed a pair of casual trousers featuring hand-printed panels with scenes from Hieronymous Bosch’s early 1500s triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Cox says that a piece like this takes “a very long time” to make. “I bought a piece of plain white cotton and cut it into even rectangles, spray mounted each one onto a sheet of paper and ran the squares through an inkjet printer. This is where it becomes very art school. I printed 70 squares or something, it took about a month to make.” Central to Cox’s practice is the concept of reclaiming the visual language of homemaking and domesticity, making it empowering rather than harmful for women. Her designs frequently feature the sort of ornamental and pretty flourishes associated with a traditionally feminine approach to home decorating and crafts: tassels, elaborate chintzy textiles, curtains neatly tied back, dainty buttons and ruffles. Her interest in this sort of cutesy, homely aesthetic was largely on account of her grandparents, particularly her maternal Italian grandmother. “My grandmother was such a hard worker and had such a beautiful approach to home making. I was fascinated at how different my lifestyle was to hers – the way she approached getting up really early, that
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Beyond her desire to subvert gendered tropes, Cox’s practice is motivated by a rejection of fast fashion and a life-long interest in thrifting – she once ran a vintage shop out of her house. “It’s just part of who I am,” she says of her obsession. As a self-taught seamstress, it made sense to upcycle elements from vintage clothing bought for very little. “I love using clothing from a time period that maybe I feel connected to in my work.” In the future, Cox wants to see her clothes on people in real life. Right now, she is selling some of her pieces at Café Forgot, a New York concept store, and her buyers still remain something of a mystery to her. Counting as inspirations radical and boundary-pushing figures like performance artist Leigh Bowery, feminist conceptualist Valie Export and contemporary fashion designer and artist Susan Cianciolo, Cox visualises her clothing in new and experimental spaces. “I feel like wearing my clothes in different settings would create these different scenarios of confrontation. I’m curious to see what they would be and how empowerment, or lack of, would operate for both the viewer and the wearer. Maybe it would be through performance or through film, but I haven’t thought that far yet, except that I want movement, I want bodies.”
All photography by Valentina Von Klencke. Creative direction and styling by Martina Cox. Model: Kristina Nagel, Makeup: Clara Dietz
Text by Kathryn O’Regan “I feel like I make each piece individually, like a stream of thought,” says 23-year-old New York-based fashion designer Martina Cox, who specialises in made-to-order and upcycled garments. Her approach to fashion is particular and personal. Having studied fine art at The Cooper Union in New York, working predominantly in abstract painting, her transition to fashion design was inspired by a year abroad in Berlin in 2016 (her alma mater had an exchange programme with Universität der Künste). Drawn to the city’s sprawling and hedonistic nightlife, Cox says she
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WALLS: A Modern Crisis 32 The Fall of the Wall 38 Photographing the Border with Griselda San Martin 46 A New Fashion Trade Route Between Israel and Palestine 31
A new exhibition at C/O Berlin looks at the impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall on the city’s techno scene
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TILMAN BREMBS, DJ Keokie, Tresor, 1991. From the series Zeitmaschine, 1991—1997. Copyright Tilman Brembs
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Text by Sirin Kale
Felix Hoffmann feels conflicted. The long-time Berlin resident, and cocurator of the upcoming photography exhibition No Photos on the Dance Floor! Berlin 1989 – Today, knows that by documenting the magic of Berlin’s pulsating, vibrant techno scene, he risks intruding. After all, Berlin’s nightclubs are famously phone-phobic zones, and for good reason. With the advent of smartphone technology, any iPhonetoting tourist can take a photograph of your private darkroom explorations and upload it online. Berlin’s world-famous techno clubs are sacred, intimate spaces. Maintaining their integrity as places where people from all walks of life feel free – especially the LGBTQ+ community – means leaving them be. We don’t want photos on the Berlin dancefloor – not now, not ever. Nevertheless, Berlin’s techno clubs aren’t only spaces for sexual and musical exploration; they’re also historic cultural institutions. In 2016, Berghain was officially recognised by city authorities as a cultural space and given the same tax breaks afforded to concert halls and museums. And if we recognise that Berlin’s techno clubs are high art, don’t we have a responsibility to preserve that legacy for future generations in the same way we’d catalogue exhibits in a museum, or photograph the performers of a play on opening night? It’s this push-pull tension between wanting to document Berlin’s techno legacy and providing space for the club scene to thrive and grow that is at the heart of Hoffmann’s exhibition. Along with his co-curator Heiko Hoffmann (no relation), No Photos on the Dance Floor! will lift up the curtain on Berlin’s sacred techno spaces, featuring photography
from Berghain bouncer extraordinaire Sven Marquardt, as well as Wolfgang Tillmans, Camille Blake and Lisa Wassmann. Held at C/O from September, the exhibition takes visitors on a journey from the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the techno scene was in its infancy and intrepid ravers ventured into disused buildings, factories and vacant lots. It charts techno’s rise in Berlin, from embryo to fully-realised adult, taking in the city’s landmark institutions: clubs like Ufo, Tresor and Planet. We see how Berlin’s techno scene is arguably the last major youth culture movement in Europe to date, and observe how techno intersects with other art forms, such as video and live performances. Along the way, the exhibition touches on the challenges that threaten techno’s continued survival in Berlin: the increasing gentrification of the inner city and the loss of spaces in which to party, as well as the influx of “techno tourists” from cities like London, who threaten to turn Berlin’s nightclubs into historical curiosities rather than evolving spaces. Ahead of the opening night, we caught up with Felix Hoffmann down the line from Berlin, as he put the finishing touches to No Photos on the Dance Floor!
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LEFT WOLFGANG TILLMANS, Outside Snax Club, 2001. Copyright Wolfgang Tillmans. Courtesy of Galerie Buchholz Berlin/Köln
THIS PAGE TILMAN BREMBS, Carl Cox, 1993. From the series Zeitmaschine, 1991—1997. Copyright Tilman Brembs
The world of scholars who write about the music world are always writing about opera, like that’s the only ‘serious’ music. Maybe they’ll write about pop music sometimes, but very rarely about techno. But the only thing that Berlin has made in the last 30 or 40 years, musically, is techno! 34
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Sirin Kale: Let’s start by getting the most obvious question out of the way. What’s your favourite photograph from the exhibition? Felix Hoffmann: There’s a photograph of Chilly Gonzales, who I have a close relationship with, and it’s a picture taken by Martin Eberle after he DJ'ed at the end of the night. He’s very exhausted and wearing a wet t-shirt. It feels so intimate, the way he looks at the camera. So I would say that’s my favourite image at the moment. What were some of the challenges when it came to staging the exhibition? We always wanted to make a show about music, but obviously when you look at photography, it’s a quiet medium. So we decided to transform part of the space at night into a club, so you can feel the music as well. We’ve invited some Berghain residents to come and play music. Right now, we’re working on getting Modeselektor to join! What is your personal relationship with Berlin club culture? I moved here in 1997 to study art history, and I used to go to a club called Art and Technique. There were lots of young artists there involved in DJ projects, creating imagery using former GDR slide projectors. That was it – I became fascinated with this world.
THIS PAGE ABOVE Ewerk Parkplatz, 1996 BELOW Marco, Insel der Jugend, 1991 RIGHT PAGE ABOVE Love parade, 1992 BELOW Goldie, WMF 1997
How did you decide which photographers to feature? For me, it was really important that Wolfgang Tillmans accepted the invitation to take part, because he’s so important not only in the photography world, but also in the nightlife world, as he’s known for DJ'ing and also sometimes using video pieces in his exhibitions when he’s playing music. It was a good day when he accepted our invitation.
TILMAN BREMBS. All images from the series Zeitmaschine, 1991— 1997. Copyright Tilman Brembs
How did you decide on the title? The title describes the void that we don’t want to show in the exhibition. We show photographs from around the dance floor, but we don’t show photographs of the dance floor itself, because we don’t want to break into the intimacy of that moment where people are with themselves and the music.
We always wanted to make a show about music, but obviously when you look at photography, it’s a quiet medium. So we decided to transform part of the space at night into a club, so you can feel the music as well RESEARCH
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So there’s a tension between documenting the nightclubs, and letting them be? Yes! It’s not so easy because it’s a fragile system. Was it easy to find photographs spanning the entire 30-year time period? We didn’t find so much material from the first 15 years or so of the scene because people weren’t interested in taking cameras on the dance floor. In the last 15 years, we’ve seen the complete opposite. Tourists bring interest to the city, and they want to share pictures on Instagram, to show they’re here. Why document techno? The world of scholars who write about the music world are always writing about opera, like that’s the only ‘serious’ music. Maybe they’ll write about pop music sometimes, but very rarely about techno. But the only thing that Berlin has made in the last 30 or 40 years, musically, is techno. What are some of the challenges in your view facing the Berlin techno scene? We are fighting against gentrification all of the time. At the very beginning, these spaces were empty and people could just rent empty houses or spaces and decide to create a club there. You look at photography from back then, and it looks like a completely different city. But that’s changed entirely in the last 10 years. There’s some photography from Ben de Biel in the exhibition that really shows how much things have changed since the midto-late Nineties. Back then, he photographed the Bunker from the outside. They were entirely empty spaces, but now there are new buildings in that area, all built in the last five years. What do you hope that people take away from the exhibition? I hope that younger people in particular get a sense of what happened in this period. Because club culture and techno music is such a rich world. I hope they feel it, and take it with them, and realise that when we think about high culture, it’s not only opera we should be thinking about. Because techno has a rich culture, too. The techno world shouldn’t be seen as ‘other’.
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No Photos on the Dance Floor! Berlin 1989 – Today runs from 13 September to 30 November 2019, at C/O Berlin, Hardenbergstrasse 22–24, 10623 Berlin
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GRISELDA SAN MARTIN, Untitled, from project The Wall, 2016 Women speak with family members through the border fence at Friendship Park on a sunny summer day. It is not unusual to see people sitting on folding chairs during the time the park is open, which is only a few hours on Saturday and Sunday.
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Based in New York, Spanish photographer Griselda San Martin creates images humanising migrant lives affected by the US-Mexico border crisis, challenging racist narratives propagated by the media and the White House RESEARCH
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The people in Griselda San Martin’s portraits congregate, drawn in pilgrimage to that most unconsecrated of places, the US-Mexico border. Young and old alike stand along fencing, leaning, grasping through gaps. The camera is close enough to count the lines on their faces. This February, 66,450 migrants were apprehended by US officials while illegally crossing the border from Mexico. According to US Customs and Border Protection statistics released in January, 95 percent of people doing so arrive in families, and in June, Vox reported that approximately 2000 migrant children are being detained at any given time by the US border patrol agency. This is the crisis that San Martin, a Spanish photographer based in New York, documents. In her series The Wall (2018), for instance, she focuses on Friendship Park, a small, binational half-acre of land running along the border between San Diego and Tijuana. In these images, you can see metal fences running into the Pacific ocean, marking the division between the US and Mexico – a beach town on one side, a heavily-patrolled territory on the other. San Martin’s photos capture the anguish and mundanity of separation, offering a poignant view of a situation that’s often framed as a crisis experienced only by Americans. In truth, the tragedy is as simple as the fence itself; a man-made separation. On either side of the fencing, family members approach the barrier for a chance to see and possibly touch their loved ones. The resulting photos are a conspicuous departure from the anonymous aerial shots and digital renderings of caravans heading for the United States. As exaggerated fears of ‘invading’ migrants dominate imaginations, inspiring violence and shaping policy, San Martin’s photos ground the issue in lived experience. In contrast to news coverage, they are tinted with hope. For San Martin, the wall itself is secondary to people’s RESEARCH
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GRISELDA SAN MARTIN, Untitled, from project The Wall, 2015 A man speaks with a family member through the border fence at Friendship Park. For many, it is the only way that they can see their loved ones in person.
GRISELDA SAN MARTIN, Untitled, from project The Wall, 2016 Deported musician Jose Marquez visits his daughter Susanna and 14-yearold grandson Johnny who are both on the U.S. side of the fence. Jose and his daughter have been separated for almost 15 years since he was deported from the United States after living and working in San Diego for almost two decades. Once a month, they see each other through the metallic fence at Friendship Park.
interactions with it. In her work, the structure is something that divides people as well as bringing them together – if not for the right reasons. Speaking to the photographer about using photography as a humanising tool against border violence and media bias, she explains how the key to greater understanding is viewing experience as a spectrum rather than rendering it as spectacle.
GRISELDA SAN MARTIN, Untitled, from project The Wall, 2016 Maria Flores (in blue) with her sister Rosario and friend Haydee, visit with Maria’s son David Osorio and his American-born fiancee Jocelyn Diaz (behind the fence, on the U.S. side.) Maria has been separated from her son since 2012.
Text by Ayesha A. Siddiqi
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Ayesha A. Siddiqi: What inspired you to choose these particular subjects and locations for your work? Griselda San Martin: I’m from Spain, I’ve been living here in the US for nine years. So I’m an immigrant, [but] I have a visa so I am not going through the difficult situation that means. But I can relate to the fact that I’m away from my family and trying to navigate two cultures, trying to adapt to the country that I live in while at the same time staying in touch with my roots. I think that’s the way I became interested in these subjects in the beginning. And also, how can I relate to the people that I photograph? Especially immigrants here in the US. It brings up an important part of myself. I’m not saying that I’m going through the same, because I’m not. I can go out and come back. I can go back and see my family.
How do you feel about the relevance of your work now? Yeah, I started this before the wall was on the news every day. It takes on more relevance now because people are confused. People are bombarded with images that show a very different story from what I think is real. I’m happy that I can show this other view. I think it’s important because what you see on mainstream news, it’s the same story told in the same way with the same images. I try to offer an alternative, a more complex story.
Documentary photography is tasked with being both aesthetically compelling and communicating essential truths. Do you categorise your work as a journalistic endeavor or an artistic one? Is that a useful distinction to you? There is a distinction but I try to do both. I do follow the journalistic rules. I try [to have] my images reflect the truth. It’s difficult to use that word, truth is very subjective. I’m trying to basically show what I see, but my vision is very personal and subjective. I do try to address issues that I think are important.
A lot of mainstream news stories regarding immigrants are framed by a white nationalist agenda. But how can photography change this? My goal is to challenge the dominant narrative and offer alternative imagery. And when I say “the dominant narrative”, I mean both the logic of how the border is conceptualised and the media coverage. When politicians and media outlets talk about the border they use the logic of territory, where identity is defined by the borders. And foreigners or migrants are usually… Politicians talk about them as if they’re a threat to the American identity and a threat to national security. So in that sense this ‘threat’ legitimises the need for a border wall. The media coverage ends up being very simplistic and sensationalistic because it is made to satisfy these ideas. This aggravates the xenophobia and stereotypes. At the same time, it’s
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GRISELDA SAN MARTIN, Untitled, from project The Wall, 2015 Pastor Jonathan and wife Gladys at their wedding photoshoot in front of the U.S.- Mexico border fence in Tijuana, Mexico. The border is a symbolic place for Jonathan and Gladys, who both grew up in California but now live in Tijuana separated from their whole family. Jonathan was deported and Gladys doesn’t have papers to legally reside in the United States. She tried to cross over three times to be with her children but was caught by the border patrol and returned to Mexico.
One of my goals is to neutralise this power of the wall. I don’t want to show something that is powerful and huge and impenetrable. I want to repurpose [it] and show it in a beautiful way RESEARCH
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In your images, the scale of the wall compared to the people in front of it seems like a deliberate choice. It appears to ‘shrink’ the issue of the border violation, emphasising instead the plight these individuals are facing. Yes, that is one of my objectives. I felt it was very important to include portraits in my series, with the goal of not objectifying people. Normally, immigrants are portrayed as criminals or victims, and I didn’t want to do either. In my photos, I try to show that [they’re] neither criminals or victims, just normal people. The wall is not shown as monumental, it’s just a backdrop. It’s part of the story, a very important part of the story, but it’s not only that: [it’s] their everyday life. I didn’t want to [shoot] very far [away] because remember the photos of the migrant caravan? People were very small and tiny and not important. I want to give them importance but I don’t want to get too close because I was trying to find the distance that gives them respect.
What you see on mainstream news, it’s the same story told in the same way with the same images. I try to offer an alternative, a more complex story and he said something like, “If they build the wall we’re just going to paint it again. We’re just going to make it beautiful because this is where we live. We don’t want to see a huge metal structure.” I don’t want to give the wall the power it’s supposed to create [as] a symbol of imperialism and American power.
GRISELDA SAN MARTIN, Untitled, from project The Wall, 2016 Rosario Vargas (in the foreground) poses for a family portrait with her daughter Jannet and grandson Hector, 15, (behind the border wall, on the U.S. side.) Rosario and her daughter meet every weekend at Friendship Park. They live just a few miles apart but have been separated for almost 10 years.
a powerful reminder to immigrants that they don’t belong. My objective is to reframe this narrative. Instead of talking about territories, [my images have] a logic that goes beyond borders, where identity is not defined by borders or boundaries but instead [by] spaces of belonging. My wall work and also the work I’ve been doing here in New York with the immigrant communities is about creating spaces of belonging. I try to capture the complexities in a way that’s not the usual, but at the same time I also try to empower the migrants and their allies. I don’t want to say that I’m an activist because I’m not – I’m a journalist. My goal is to challenge popular assumptions. At the same time, I have an activist role.
A recurring motif in your work features hands placed on the wall. It’s so intimate, but also very pleading. It reminded me of Christian iconography. I think this is a very human thing, touching. There’s an area called Friendship Park [where] there are two [sections]. One, where you can actually touch, but the holes of the metal mesh are so tiny that only the fingertips can go through and touch. And there’s another area where there are bars and you can see through, but on the US side, the border patrol [doesn’t] allow people to get close. In some cases I show the hands to show how tiny the holes are. But speaking about the Christian iconography, this is common in many immigration images. In this case, you are right, but I do try to stay away from the crying and the Passion of the Christ and the Virgin Mary holding her son,
The wall is a very routine piece of architecture in the lives you photograph, but in the minds of others, particularly Trump supporters, it’s very monumental. For rightwingers, it’s a symbol of American force and power. Yes, one of my goals is to neutralise this power of the wall. I don’t want to show something that is powerful and huge and impenetrable. I want to repurpose [it] and show it in a beautiful way. There’s an artist who is painting murals all over the wall on the Mexican side, RESEARCH
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Right, or at the very least the dialogue should be grounded in these people’s lived realities. Is your photography personally important to you as a reflection of your politics? Yes, I think it’s important for me and I think it’s important for everyone who cares a little bit. Right now, seeing what’s going on, now is the moment to speak up and take a stance. I don’t think it’s right. Your images humanise people who are often dehumanised by politicians and the media. But the very fact this is necessary seems to indicate a huge failing, but what sort of failure is it? A failure of the representation or the failure of the audience’s imagination? Well, it’s difficult because you could blame the people for expecting these images, or you could blame the RESEARCH
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There’s definitely a widespread ignorance regarding what these refugees are running from. They’re forced to make these journeys. And because of how much the wall dominates discussion of these events in the US, we’re blocked from having a conversation about what’s actually going on in Central America and the role the US has played in those conditions. Exactly, that’s what I was trying to say before. There’s an overwhelming focus on the border crossing moment, or the wall. Instead of doing a more complex coverage of the immigration experience which starts from the place of origin and goes to the settlement or even return. Because that’s a whole different story when people who’ve lived here for 20, 30 years, and go back to their countries of origin. But all those stories are completely ignored. As a documentarian, what do you identify as the moral imperative you’re faced with? What do you hope to accomplish? I am not an activist, I just want to inform people who have no idea – or who have a very one-sided or simplistic idea, based on the simplistic coverage of news – that things can be seen in a different way. I mean, some people don’t even know that there’s already a wall.
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Right now, seeing what’s going on, now is the moment to speak up and take a stance. I don’t think it’s right
BELOW: GRISELDA SAN MARTIN, Untitled, from project The Wall, 2016 Families separated by immigration status gather at both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border fence at Friendship Park. The park is the only federally established binational meeting place along the 2,000-mile border dividing the United States and Mexico. On the U.S. side, the area for visitation is only open a few hours on Saturday and Sunday and the Border Patrol is always vigilant.
Is that why you shy away from depicting spectacles as well? Yes. Instead of thinking, “Oh, there is a way I can do something to fix this problem,” [they] make you think, “Oh, they are hopeless, there’s nothing we can do for them.” And this is totally wrong because this is not a problem of stopping immigration from crossing a border, it’s structural. We have to examine the whole immigration experience, why are they coming here, who they are and how they got here. If people started talking about this issue in a different way there might be an opportunity to bring significant change.
ABOVE: GRISELDA SAN MARTIN, Untitled, from project The Wall, 2016 Arely Garcia Abad, 6, poses for a portrait at Friendship Park, in Tijuana, Mexico. Arely and her sister live with their grandmother Gladys, who came from Guatemala decades ago hoping to cross into the United States, but ended up staying in Tijuana.
GRISELDA SAN MARTIN, Untitled, from project The Wall, 2016 Esther Gonzalez visits with her children and grandchildren at Friendship Park. She has been separated from her children Alejandro and Magdalena for 4 years since she left the U.S. due to a family emergency. They meet at the border once a month.
because that is the other way the mainstream media shows immigrants.
media outlets for only showing these images, or you could blame the photographers for making those images. But I think everyone is a little bit guilty. Those images, don’t get me wrong, we must see those images. There are a considerable amount of people who are coming from Central America to the US. It’s the constant repetition of those images without any other context. Why are they coming? What’s the reason? The problem is if you only see those images then you’ll think it’s true that there’s a danger. But we also have some guilt in this even if we try to make alternative images. And I’m not talking about personal projects, but if you’re a photographer that works for a newspaper or a wire, even if you try to show a more humanising view of the phenomenon, you have the editorial obstacle – they’re going to choose the images that better tell the narrative they are pushing onto the people. It is difficult.
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A New Fashion Trade Route
With over 700 checkpoints and road gates, the West Bank in Palestine is a difficult place to do business. For Adish, an Israeli-Palestinian streetwear brand employing 60 embroiderers in the territory, it’s a reality that’s bringing the two sides together
Between Israel and Palestine
RYAN O’TOOLE COLLETT, Abdallah, 2018
Text by Angela Waters
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At approximately 30 kilometres, the drive between the Palestinian cities of Bethlehem and Ramallah should take less than half an hour, but on a good day, the journey takes a local nearly three times as long. Although connected directly by two main roads that go through Israel, since Palestinian-born citizens are prohibited from entering the neighbouring territory, they have to go the long way within Palestine. And since the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War, travelling through this area of the province also means driving through three Israeli checkpoints, where documents, car models and number plates are inspected to see if they have the right to pass through. A bad day at the checkpoint could delay the trip by hours, or even days. For Adish (pronounced ‘a-deesh’), an Israeli-Palestinian fashion label that has built a cult following producing streetwear with traditional Palestinian stitch work, made by embroiderers in Bethlehem’s Dheisheh refugee camp and a factory in Ramallah, it’s the only way to run the business. Although the name means ‘apathetic’ in Hebrew, the brand’s not only refused to stay quiet
about working with Palestinians – they’ve made it a central part of their business. “Until you actually visit and you see what is going on, you can’t imagine what life is like there, what it means to go through a checkpoint or what it is like to see soldiers in your neighbourhood every night,” says Amit Luzon, 25, who founded Adish two years ago with fellow Israeli Eyal Eliyahu, also 25, in Tel Aviv. Like many Israelis, Luzon and Eliyahu had never been to Palestine before starting their business, but are part of a movement among a younger generation that disagrees with their country’s treatment of Palestine. From restricting the movement of people and goods in the Gaza Strip, to facilitating the unlawful transfer of Israeli citizens to settlements in the West Bank and implementing an open-fire policy on its borders (last year 190 Palestian protestors were shot dead and 28,000 injured by the Israeli Defence Forces), Israel has been condemned 45 times by the United Nations Human Rights Council since 2013. Granted, the violence isn’t oneway: in 2018 the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre reported that 1119 rockets launched from
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Palestinian territories hit Israel, and that 12 Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed in terrorist attacks by Palestinian groups. Nevertheless, the divisive reality of the conflict, which has its origins in tensions between Jewish and Palestinian communities during British control of the region from 1920 – 1948, has informed Adish’s desire to work with their neighbours and their rich textile heritage. When they were introduced to Palestinian embroiderers through The Parents Circle-Families Forum – a charity working with families who have lost members in the conflict – the delicate Tatreez cross-stitch embroidery style seemed like a natural fit. “We didn’t calculate how big of an issue movement would be,” Luzon says. While the founders were used to moving relatively freely around Tel Aviv and being able to run to their patternmaker in the middle of the night if there was a problem, they didn’t realise that security issues, traffic and even maintenance could delay the simplest trip by days. In order to navigate the area’s precarious roads, the team turned to those who know them best: taxi drivers. There are three types of cabbies in Israel and Palestine: those with yellow plates, and others with green and blue plates. Like the majority of Palestinians, the green and blue-plated drivers were born within the West Bank and can only move within Palestinian territories. Drivers with yellow plates, like Ahmad Abbad, are also Palestinian, but were born in Jerusalem. Their heritage prevents them from obtaining an Israeli passport, but their place of birth grants them an Israeli identity card, which carries with it the privilege of passing between the two countries. “Having a yellow-plate car means either that you are an Israeli citizen or a resident of Jerusalem,” Abbad says. “However, no Israeli other than Palestinians with Israeli citizenship or ID cards are
allowed to cross into Palestine – it’s actually forbidden by law.” In the context of relations between Palestine and Israel, and as a company headed by Israelis, getting Palestinians to work for Adish was not an easy sell. Across the operation, all of the Palestinian employees we spoke to reported a backlash from their friends and family for working with “the enemy”, as the Palestinian coordinator Qussay Abuaker phrases it. This isn’t surprising. For some Palestinians who have seen many of their Arabic traditions – Untitled, 2018 including traditional Levantine cuisine and embroidery – marketed globally as Israeli, receiving credit and working with Israelis is rebuilding trust between the two sides. Although the trained eye can spot where the embroidery comes from by looking at the motif and the colour of the thread, Adish adds the information on the label as a way of creating visibility for the very localised practice. Still, when it came to shooting their Spring/ Summer 2019 campaign for Dover Street Market – which featured Palestinian creatives – Luzon admits it was difficult to find people who would put their names behind the brand, and perhaps rightly. The company still has a long way to go to convince people that it is a force for good. Palestinian Adish embroiderer Al Masir, whose family is originally from the 'Ajjur region in Hebron, has been working with the brand since its inception. She lives in the Dheisheh refugee camp, a place that experiences frequent dawn raids, and says she still finds it difficult to help hire local women to do the work. “I receive a lot of criticism for working with Israelis,” she explains. “Sometimes when we have lots of work, we have to say we work with international people to get more ladies involved.” But it isn’t necessarily easier to reach out to women outside of the camp. “It costs time and money to
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Untitled, 2018
Until you actually visit and you see what it is going on, you can’t imagine what life is like [in the West Bank], what it means to go through a checkpoint or what it is like to see soldiers in your neighbourhood every night
RIGHT Nadia, 2018
Adish textile makers Amal abu Zatar, Sabah Rummana, Suha Jber
All images Ryan O'Toole Collett
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Israeli companies cannot work in Palestine, just as Palestinian companies cannot work in Israel – a circumstance which doubles taxes. Aside from requiring an elevated level of trust on both sides and an increase in paperwork, cross-border businesses that are run to the benefit of Palestinian communities are politically and logistically risky, adding unforeseen costs. “We usually visit Qussay in Area C, which we as Israelis are allowed to go,” Luzon says. “However, we only went to meet the ladies that work with us once, three months ago, as they are working from Area A, where we are not allowed to go. It’s important to say, physically, that we can go to Area A; it’s a risk for us, but it was essential for us to meet them in person.” As for those in the West who have become jaded by businesses that advertise the bridge between the two countries as part of their identity and see ‘Israeli-Palestinian’ as a marketing gimmick, Luzon laughs at how little they understand the emotional and logistical struggles it takes to make that combination work. “Meet the
ladies and see if it’s a gimmick or not, if it’s helping families or not, if we aren’t encouraging the ladies to work with more Israelis,” he says. “We are trying to change the status quo of what Palestinians think of Israelis. Maybe people will think it’s a gimmick, but for us it’s working, which means it’s not a gimmick anymore.” In today’s clothing industry, crediting traditional artists – let alone making them part of the business – is not the norm. Fast fashion and luxury labels too often cut corners, like Carolina Herrera’s Resort 2020 collection, which was denounced by the Mexican government in June for stealing well-known stitchwork. So when a label goes out of their way to make sure people not only know where the craftsmanship comes from, but ensure that they have safe working conditions, it’s refreshing.
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All images Ryan O'Toole Collett
“If you are moving inside a city, not the district, but the main roads, it’s less dangerous,” Abuaker says. “When you start to move between the territories, when you move from Bethlehem to one of the countryside villages, which is like a 10-minute drive, it’s dangerous.” Getting all of the 60 embroiderers to go to one workstation would be better for production and result in fewer defects. To accommodate the women doing the stitch work, however, taxi drivers often collect the products from the women’s homes, take them to the factory, and deliver them back to the villages again if there is a problem. Still, Adish is doubling down, with plans to create full-time roles with benefits for the embroiderers. It’s not uncommon for Israelis to produce things in Palestine because of the cheap labour market, but true partnerships, such as those cultivated by Adish, are still rare. Company ownership is split, with Luzon and Eliyahu as the Israeli partners, and Abuaker and Jordan Nassar, 34, as the Palestinian side. The label is also registered with both authorities because
Tarek, 2018
deliver and pick up work from ladies living outside the city,” Al Masir continues. “The moment you leave the city, you either have to use Israeli settlement roads or go through checkpoints. If the checkpoints are closed, you could be unable to do even the smallest missions.” Abuaker bears the brunt of the responsibility when it comes to finding a way to work in the occupied West Bank territory, which was divided into three areas by the Oslo II Accord in 1995: A, B and C. Area A, which includes cities like Ramallah and Bethlehem, is supposed to be under the full control of the Palestinian Authority, while villages in Area B should share joint control between the two sides and Area C is under full control of the Israeli government. Instead of segmenting the West Bank into three distinct parts, however, the areas speckle the region like a tri-coloured leopard print, with checkpoints, walls and other security measures blocking free access. Planning factory locations means taking into consideration the safety of the workers.
Abdallah, 2018
ADISH FW19 Lookbook
ADISH FW19 Lookbook
We are trying to change the status quo of what Palestinians think of Israelis. Maybe people will think it’s a gimmick, but for us it’s working, which means it’s not a gimmick anymore
FEATURES FEATURES 54 CLOTHESARE ARE NOT NOT 56 56 LOUISE LOUISETROTTER TROTTER CLOTHES ART ART--THEY THEYARE ARETO TO BE BEWORN WORN 60 66 66 FARAH FARAHAL ALQASIMI QASIMI:: “IF “IFPEOPLE PEOPLE HAVE HAVE STEREOTYPES STEREOTYPES IT ITPROBABLY PROBABLYMEANS MEANS THAT THATTHEY’RE THEY’RE NOT NOTTHAT THATCURIOUS” CURIOUS” 68 74 74 AYSEGÜL AYSEGÜLSAVAS SAVAS BAHÇE BAHÇE 72 80 80 NOOR NOORTAGOURI TAGOURI “INSTEAD “INSTEAD OF OF FIGHTING FIGHTING FOR FOR CERTAIN CERTAIN STORIES STORIESTO TO BE BE COVERED COVEREDAND AND IN INA ACERTAIN CERTAINWAY, WAY, WE’RE WE’RE DOING DOING IT IT OURSELVES” OURSELVES” 52
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Louise Trotter
The new creative director of Lacoste is responsible for bringing the classic heritage tennis brand to a new audience through laid-back knitwear, a new view on the brand’s crocodile logo and military tailoring, to name a few things. Here, she talks with SLEEK Editor-in-Chief Grace Banks about how it all comes together
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Text by Grace Banks
Louise Trotter is telling me about her early clubbing days in the North of England. It was an important part of her youth, a period of her life that’s heavily influenced her professional trajectory as a fashion designer and creative director, taking her to London, New York and eventually to Paris, where in October 2018, Trotter made news when she was named creative director of Lacoste. It was growing up in Sunderland that Trotter first experienced the creative impact of nightlife, as well as the contrast between cold and warm that’s inspired her. “I’ve always been really attached to music, and the fashion around music,” she says, “I grew up in quite a concrete city with this level of contrast, and I’ve come to realise that I find harmony and inspiration in that.” Trotter has reshaped the aesthetic of Lacoste in just one season with ravey colours on the same dress as a neutral beige, strict architectural shapes blended with handmade knitwear and reams of tailoring paired with a frayed Lacoste logo. The fact she’s managed to create an Autumn/Winter 2019 collection – her first for Lacoste – FEATURES
that’s exactly what people want in their wardrobes before thet even know it, well, it doesn’t surprise me. The British designer has worked her love for both a casual knit and a structured coat into this collection and still nothing feels out of place on the catwalk of this heritage brand. Because of all this, Trotter has become one of the most talked about designers of the year. Her success comes via roles at Whistles in the UK during the Nineties, then Gap, Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger in New York, Jigsaw in the UK again, then Joseph in 2009, where she made her name in tailoring everyday wear. Now residing in Paris for the last four years, she’s enjoying the radical fashion aspect of her role while looking back into Lacoste’s archive.
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Photo: Cyril Masson. Courtesy of Lacoste
“Clothes are not art – they are to be worn.”
Louise Trotter: Thank you. GB: How are things going? I saw on your Instagram that you’re working on fittings for Spring/ Summer 2020.
LT: It’s been extremely busy at the moment. Because I work on everything we do as a brand, it’s busy, but it’s very, very interesting and very rewarding. GB: So, from Paris, where you are now, to the North of England. I wanted to start with your background and growing up in FEATURES
the North. I know that you’ve spoken before about how that has impacted your approach to design.
LT: I grew up in an area that had a beautiful, incredible coastline – in Sunderland, by the beach and the sea. And I grew up with this level of contrast. There was an incredibly beautiful coastline, wild countryside, but with a very concrete and ‘down’ city. So I grew up with this level of contrast. I’ve subconsciously always kind of thought that was in my work and also within my surroundings and me as a person. I still go back there all the time, and I like that contrast because it’s incredibly beautiful. It can look like quite a barren and hard place. I think that’s really what drew me to Lacoste, because Lacoste is a brand of contrast. On one side, we have
a beautiful heritage, a rich heritage from our founder René Lacoste, dating back to the Thirties. At the same time, René was an innovator. He was constantly looking forward, and Lacoste as a brand is constantly looking forward and innovating. I think that’s why we really come together. Being French is very much a culture of contrast. GB: The North of England has such a rich history in clubbing and I don’t know if you’re a clubber, but I wondered if nightlife in the Nineties affected you.
LT: Yes, it did. GB: This might be totally wrong, but I just loved that logo that you had with all the fraying. That felt almost a bit ravey to me … 56
LT: It’s interesting that you say that because music has been a big influence on me. When I was growing up, music really represented something, it was about belonging. And I’ve followed music all my life. From when I was younger and getting dressed for nights out, to rave culture in the Nineties. And I’ve always really been attached to music and the fashion around music. I’ve always found that really interesting, and also, I like that element of community – that you belong to something when you attach yourself to a music movement. So yes, and then certainly once I moved to London. During the Nineties, rave culture was very important in my life. GB: Those were like the clubbing years in England. I just don’t think there is that anymore, you can’t FEATURES
really go out in that way now.
LT: Yeah, I know. You know, I can remember, even from the Eighties, the Mud Club [an event held at Busby’s in London’s Charing Cross, known for extravagant costumes] and then during the Nineties, London was such an amazing place because you had all these subcultures around music. And that was the foundation, for me, that was where I really honed my aesthetic and my character during that time. So I am very pleased that I was fortunate enough to live through that and have that experience. GB: Your upcoming Spring/ Summer 2020 will be your second at Lacoste. How does a collection begin for you? In your Autumn/ Winter 2019 show, you seemed to stick to the underpinnings of the
brand, but there was some stuff that felt quite radical and just so exciting to see, like the knitwear polo shirts, all the tailoring.
LT: First of all, I was very drawn to Lacoste because of René Lacoste and because of the history of the brand. And he was really the person who drew me into the brand, with who I really connected. The knitwear is… I enjoy knitwear, I like knitwear. It comes quite naturally to me. First of all, I looked at it in the context of the polo t-shirt, and not just through jersey but knitwear. I’ve worked a lot on the polo t-shirt through different scales and through different treatments, colours and textures. And then I was also looking at how I can use colour blocking and knitwear that was really colourful and handmade. 57
All looks Lacoste AW19
Grace Banks: Thanks so much for making the time to speak with me. I’m such a big fan of your work. I loved the Autumn/Winter 2019 collection, it was really beautiful.
LT: They were hand-knitted, yes. GB: Oh, wow! Amazing. How did you approach the logo? Because on some of the items, like the knitted polo shirt, the logo is a bit bigger. And then also you’ve got some versions where wool seems to be pouring out the logo too, like it’s frayed. How did that come about?
LT: The original crocodile was actually hand-embroidered. And I felt, coming into the brand, that the crocodile in places has become quite ubiquitous. And I wanted to look at the crocodile in a different way, in different scales, in different media, to bring a kind of artisanal quality back to it. And hand embroidery with FEATURES
thread left undone, because in a way, the brand is unfinished for me. And I wanted to have a sense of unfinishedness, that it was still a work in progress. And you could see that continuing to the next season in the sense that I’m looking through the archive and looking at various crocodiles that have existed previously, and how I might repackage them. GB: It felt like you really brought a lot of your creative outlook to the collection. For example, the tailoring was just so beautiful. And, you know, I think people who wouldn’t have necessarily looked to Lacoste for tailoring before, or women who might not have necessarily been as excited by Lacoste, were just completely into it, everyone
was talking about it. How did you bring your vision into the context of a sportswear brand?
LT: Tailoring has always been part of my background. When I was researching René, it struck me that in every image I found of him, he was wearing something tailored. I didn’t think that could be ignored and I wanted to bring it back. But how would René wear tailoring today? I was quite specific in working with a tailor who came from a military background because I really wanted to have movement within the tailoring. What’s interesting with military tailoring is that you have to understand movement. GB: I loved the block colour polo dress you showed, with the bright purple on one side and the beige on the other. 58
LT: I wanted to make a polo dress. And for the women, I worked a lot with pleating because I really had two women in mind: René’s wife Simone [de la Chaume], and then Suzanne Lenglen, who was his tennis partner. I studied Suzanne and she was always in pleated or long-pleated skirts and was quite masculine in her dress. And so it is really a combination of those two references.
is an element of dreaming and there is an element of that experience and journey, and shows allow for that, they really do. They allow us to dream for 10 minutes and they allow us to be really submerged into a brand.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
GB: It was such a talked-about piece. In fact, the whole event created a storm. Do you think it’s important for a brand to show?
All looks Lacoste AW19
GB: The polo shirts are handknitted?
LT: Yes. I think we have to remember that even though it’s a huge industry, I really believe in creating clothes people can wear because in the end, clothes are not art – they are to be worn. I think it’s also important that we dream and there FEATURES
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Farah Al Qasimi:
“If people have stereotypes to begin with, it probably means that they’re not that curious”
Driven by a sense of intrigue and loneliness, Farah Al Qasimi photographs the vivid interiors of her native UAE while exploring questions of visibility, Gulf modernisation, taste and gender
In an image by 28-year-old Farah Al Qasimi, a man sits on an embossed periwinkle sofa; his face shrouded by a plume of white smoke. He wears a white kandura – a traditional ankle-length tunic commonly worn by men in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and elsewhere in the Gulf region. The room in which he resides is heavily decorated: the walls are painted deep blue, a Persian carpet sits at his feet and a mahogany coffee table with a glass top lies before him, boasting an impressive collection of ornate vases, the largest of which is stuffed with a bouquet of multi-coloured flowers. To his left stands a patterned tapestry screen, and at the edge of the photograph a woman in a gorgeous purple-pink garment is just about visible, her hair shining and her hand outstretched. The photo, called Living Room Vape (2016), offers a good introduction to the ideas governing Al Qasimi’s work. A photographer from Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital, Al Qasimi’s images are extravagantly detailed, elaborate and layered. To someone unfamiliar with the UAE’s interiors and fashion trends, her photographs, such as this one, could appear strangely bright and saturated. But
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to the Yale-educated photographer, this is simply “what the Emirates look like – I’m not exaggerating, it is truly a place of magnificent colour”. These details aren’t just for show. “I want to make photographs that people will want to spend time with,” explains Al Qasimi over Skype, about her preference to shoot interiors. “I always think that you have a ‘one punchline joke’ or you have hundreds of little jokes that reveal themselves over time, so I try and stay away from the ‘one-note’ easy ‘knock-knock’ jokes.” Al Qasimi’s photographs could never be described as ‘easy’ or ‘one-note’. The now New Yorkbased image maker and educator (she has taught at the Pratt Institute, and has also tutored at the Rhode Island School of Design and NYU) recently made waves at Art Basel back in June. Her Dubai gallery, The Third Line, dedicated an entire booth to her work, with new, research-based photographs such as Dyed Pastel Birds (30 AED each) (2019). As is the case with many of her images, there is more to this picture of fantastic pastel chicks than initially meets the eye. According to the artist, who is currently exhibiting at MIT List Visual Arts 61
Farah Al Qasimi, Dyed Pastel Birds, (30 Dirhams each), 2019. Inkjet print. 102 x 74 cm. Courtesy The Third Line, Dubai
Text by Kathryn O’Regan
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Farah Al Qasimi, After Dinner, 2018. Inkjet print. 102 x 74 cm. Courtesy The Third Line, Dubai
TOP: Farah Al Qasimi, It’s Not Easy Being Seen 7, 2016. Archival inkjet print. 120 x 96 cm. Edition of 5, framed. Courtesy The Third Line, Dubai
Centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts (as well as a concurrent show at The Third Line—her third solo show at the gallery), dyed birds like these were a popular gift in the UAE in the Nineties; parents would buy them for their children, before there were regulations for the treatment of animals. “Obviously it’s a cute photograph but it’s actually very morbid because these chicks are living in a trap (they would usually die on account of the chemicals). They’re kind of forced to become these aesthetic objects as opposed to living things,” she laments. Al Qasimi’s sense of curiosity fuels her approach to photography. Throughout our conversation, the term comes up a lot – in fact, curiosity is what led her towards photography in the first place. Growing up in Abu Dhabi, Al Qasimi learned piano and went on to study music at Yale University. During her undergraduate degree, she decided to take some photography classes “out of curiosity” and as an alternative to her dense, theory-led major, then found that she really enjoyed the solitude of working in the darkroom. For Al Qasimi, who went on to earn an MFA in photography from the Yale School of Art in 2017, her projects (which also include video and performance art) blossom from an intuitive sense of what is interesting. “My work is obviously very aesthetically driven so often it starts with an aesthetic curiosity about a place,” she says. Even though Al Qasimi has been living in the United States on and off for the past five years, her native UAE has been a constant in her work, one which she initially regarded with unease. “At first, I felt a bit guilty or a little bit afraid of being typecast as somebody who only creates work about where they’re from,” she admits. “But now that I think about it, the [UAE] is a really fascinating case study for questions of national identity and progress. I am baffled by how it transforms at such a rapid pace and what that means for the people who live here and some of the problems that presents. So, even though the work is about the Emirates, the images bring up questions about nationhood or belonging that can be widely understood.”
BELOW: Farah Al Qasimi, It’s Not Easy Being Seen 2, 2016. Archival inkjet print. 120 x 96 cm. Edition of 5, framed. Courtesy The Third Line, Dubai
“As an artist, if you’re constantly trying to be educational in your work it removes some of the raw curiosity. I try not to tailor my work to an audience that might not understand it.”
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Farah Al Qasimi, Living Room Vape, 2016. Archival inkjet print. 66 x 89 cm. Courtesy The Third Line, Dubai
[There’s] a lot of misinformation. It’s a place that’s shrouded in mystery, with vague associations of excess and luxury FEATURES
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colonial past. Al Qasimi identifies Living Room Vape as a photograph that demonstrates these Western tastes. “The decor of the living room is very typical of an Emirati home. He’s sitting on a baroque-style couch, he’s got a gold-trimmed painting of what looks like a medieval European landscape, porcelain, and a Persian rug. It has a distinctly Gulf flavour, but if you actually think about where the drive to seek out furniture like this for a parlour comes from, that is one example of Western influence that’s been fully absorbed into [Gulf] ideas of tastefulness.” Towards the end of our conversation, I ask Al Qasimi whether anything besides curiosity fuels her work. “I think anger, also, and loneliness,” she confirms. While her loneliness is on account of living away from home, her anger is a combination of frustration at seeing the culture and traditions of her homeland “bulldozed to make way for shopping malls and hotels”, as well as outdated attitudes toward women. “I think that there’s an anger about how, in the Emirates, education is still segregated in government schools ... A lot of the young people growing up don’t know how to FEATURES
regard women as human beings. There’s a huge catcalling problem, and [men] can be really disrespectful towards women in public.” Al Qasimi is cautious and measured as she makes this point, qualifying her statement by noting, “It’s generally no better in the US, and I don’t say these things to say that the Middle East is backwards, because it’s really not, but… I just had a feeling that I was a secondary citizen because of my gender, and that I was regarded as someone who could never really talk back. That anger fueled a lot of my drive to work and to understand how the place operates.”
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Farah Al Qasimi, Aviary, 2019. Archival inkjet print. 114 x 152.5 cm. Courtesy The Third Line, Dubai
of family photographs or personal photographs. Photography is still a fairly new tradition there,” she reflects. While this is changing with the popularity of smartphones and Instagram, Al Qasimi maintains that it’s still generally considered inappropriate to take people’s photos without their permission in the UAE, and that many people would prefer to remain anonymous, even when they have consented to having their picture taken. “Young women, for example, if they want to post a picture of themselves and their friends, they might blur out their faces, or they might put a picture of a kitten in front of each person’s face as a method of keeping anonymous,” she explains. “I’m interested in how you can make a portrait of somebody without showing their face; that is in line with the visual traditions of the region and also respecting people’s anonymity.” Al Qasimi’s gallery describes her work as examining “postcolonial structures of power, gender and taste in the Gulf Arab states”. Until 1971, the UAE was a British protectorate in an area with a long history of British rule. As a result, the region assumed certain tastes and traditions due to its
Farah Al Qasimi, Bedroom (Baba), 2018. Wall paper. Courtesy The Third Line, Dubai
Al Qasimi considers the perception of the UAE abroad, especially in America, to still be somewhat skewed. “[There’s] a lot of misinformation. “It’s a place that’s shrouded in mystery, with vague associations of excess and luxury.” When I ask her if she is interested in challenging those stereotypes in her work, she rejects the simplicity of that idea. “I try not to think about that. If people have stereotypes to begin with, it probably means that they’re not that curious. It is a trap to try and respond to people’s stereotypes – it only validates the misinformation. As an artist, if you’re constantly trying to be educational in your work it removes some of the raw curiosity. I try not to tailor my work to an audience that might not understand it.” In this sense, Al Qasimi does not cater to the expectations of some abstract international viewership. One aspect of this is visibility, of ‘being seen’ – a Western concept that is still finding its footing in the UAE and its neighbours. “I come from a place that has a very particular relationship to photography and visibility. For example, we don’t really have a publicised archive
Bahçe
Following the success of her novel, Walking on the Ceiling, published in April, Turkish-born, Paris-based author, Aysegül Savas presents a short story, Bahçe (The Garden), in Turkish and her own translation in English FEATURES
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I went out to the garden every morning in the restful hours. Beyond the marble terrace, the dusty olive trees and oily mandarins appeared ab sorbed in silent conver sation. The old woman and I greeted each other from either side of the terrace. She wore a blue cotton dress, slippers on her swollen feet. “Would you join me for breakfast?” she called out. “Let me offer you some tea, at least.” * I shook my head, then went to the back of the garden to write. The old woman went inside, pantomiming with exag geration her efforts to move without a sound. I didn’t pay her attention when she came back with a book. She sat down with the same exagger ated gestures and began turning the pages noisily. She reminded me of an actress in a black and white film I’d seen years ago. In the film, an old woman – her face wrinkled, her body deflat ed – tied ribbons around her pigtails, painted her cheeks with lipstick, and giggled as she watched her reflection in a mirror. Her face had repulsed, even frightened me. That was already a long time ago, when, for a short time, I’d lost my bal ance. I’d left everything and moved to the city. Things were differ ent now. I’d arrived here with focus, on steady footing. * As soon as I’d set tled in the house where I was to spend the whole year, I’d carried the wood en table far away from the terrace, to beneath a gnarled tree. I worked there, not minding the yel low dust that blew down at the slightest stir. The book I was writing took place in a similar, deso late town. I’d drawn my characters in bold strokes and began to know them
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Sabahın dingin saatlerinde bahçeye çıkardım. Mermer terasın ilerisindeki pul pul, tozlu zeytin ağaçları, yağlı, bodur mandalinalar, kendi aralarında sessizce konuşuyorlardı sanki. Yaşlı kadınla bahçenin iki tarafından selamlaşırdık. Üzerinde mavi basma elbise, şişkin ayaklarında terlikler. “Buyurun birlikte kahvaltı yapalım? En azından bir çay ikram edeyim.” Başımı sallar, bahçenin arkasına doğru yürürdüm. O da yerinden kalkar, ses çıkartmamaya çalıştığını gösteren abartılı hareketlerle içeriye giderdi. Elinde bir kitapla döndüğünde oralı olmazdım. Aynı abartılı hareketlerle kitabını açar, hışırdatarak sayfaları çevirmeye başlardı. Seneler önce izlediğim siyah beyaz bir filmdeki bir kadını hatırlatıyordu bana. Cildi kırış kırış, vücudu sönük ihtiyar aktris, saçını iki yandan fiyonkla toplayıp yanaklarına rujdan yuvarlaklar çiziyor, ayna önünde kıkırdayarak kendini seyrediyordu. Bu film bende korkunç bir korku, hatta tiksinti uyandırmıştı. Belki bu nedenden filmi sonuna dek izlememiştim. Bu olayın üzerinden çok vakit geçmişti. Kısa süreliğine dengemi kaybettiğim bir dönemdi bu. Her şeyi bırakıp şehre taşınmıştım. Artık bunları arkamda bırakmıştım. Buraya kendimden emin, dengem sağlam gelmiştim. * Bir seneliğine taşındığım eve yerleşir yerleşmez, bahçedeki ahşap masalardan birini terastan çok öteye, boğum boğum, asırlık bir ağacın dibine çekmiştim. En hafif kıpırtıda masaya dökülen sarı toza aldırmadan, her sabah orada çalışırdım. Yazmayı düşündüğüm kitap, oraya benzer tenha bir kasabada geçecekti. Kitabımın iki kadın karakterini genel hatlarıyla çizmiştim. Yine de hayatlarındaki her şeyi bilmek, vücutlarındaki benlerden tut en eski çocukluk hatırlarına kadar hâkim olmak gibi bir isteğim yoktu. Her sabah, önceki gün yazdıklarımı gözden geçirir, sonra bahçeyi izlerdim. Ağaçlar gün geçtikçe birbirlerine yaklaşıyor, muhabbetlerini ilerletiyorlardı sanki. Güneş tepeye tırmandığında eşyalarımı toplayıp loş mutfakta bir sure daha çalışır sonra yemek hazırlardım. Yaşlı kadının yeğeni ben gelmeden bir hafta önce evin eksiklerini tamamlamış, telefon açıp her şeyin hazır olduğunu haber vermişti. “Halama de değişiklik olacak. Gelişinizi dört gözle bekliyor.” Kasabaya çalışmak için geldiğimi, rahatsız edilmek istemediğimi tekrarladım. “Tabii ki, halamın size hiç zararı dokunmaz.” Zararı dokunacağını düşünmüyordum elbette. Herhangi bir sorumluluk üstlenmediğimin, benden hiçbir beklenti olmadığının teyidini istiyordum sadece. Böyle endişelerime rağmen, bahçeyi ilk ziyaretimde orada çalışabileceğimi, karakterleri aynen benimki gibi bir eve yerleştirebileceğimi idrak etmiştim. Hatta, yaşlı kadın ve ben gibi tek arazi içinde iki evde yaşayabilirlerdi. Kitap boyunca araziyi ortadan ikiye bölen bir taş duvar örülecekti. Duvar bittiğinde, kitap da sona erecekti. Zarif, tertemiz bir yapı canlanıyordu aklımda. Hiçbir fazlası, görünmezi olmayan. * Yaşlı kadının yeğeni salı sabahları, kasabanın girişine kurulan pazardan alışveriş yapıp halasına gelirdi. Güzel, genç bir kadındı. Üstünü değiştirip 69
as the writing evolved. Still, I had no desire to find out everything about their lives, from the moles on their bodies to their most distant memories. Every morning, I read over my writing from the previous day, then sat watching the garden. The trees seemed closer each time, deeper in their con versation. When the sun reached its peak, I gath ered my things and wrote a while longer in the dim kitchen before making lunch. The old woman’s niece who lived one town over had prepared the house before my arrival. She phoned me in the city to tell me that everything was ready. “It will be a nice change for my aunt. She’s so eager for your arrival.” I repeated that I was coming there to work and did not want to be inter rupted. “Of course,” the niece said. “My aunt is harmless.” Surely, I didn’t think that the old woman would harm me. I wanted confir mation that I would have no responsibilities, that nothing was expected of me. But despite these worries, I’d realised from my very first visit that I would be able to work there. I could even place the characters in two adjacent houses on the same large plot, just like the old woman and I. The book would progress with the building of a stone wall that split the plot in two; it would end when the wall was finished. The old woman’s niece came every Tuesday, after going to the week ly market set up at the town’s entrance. She was a young, beautiful wom an. When she arrived, she would change and clean the house and terrace. Afterwards she chan ged back into the clothes she’d arrived in, made coffee, and carried it to the garden on a tray. “Get your
self some chocolate,” the old woman said, as if she were talking to a maid. “There is half a pack in the fridge. Don’t open the good one.” When the niece was leaving, she called to me across the garden. “Good bye. Let me know if you need anything.” “If she needs any thing,” the old woman interrupted, “she’ll tell me. Hurry now, you’ll miss the bus. Don’t buy so much fruit next week, it goes bad.” * Most days, I slept a little in the late afternoon before going out to the garden in the evening. The old woman would have changed out of her blue dress into another one with a different pat tern of flowers. “Why don’t you join me?” she said sweetly. “You’ve worked all day, you must be so tired, poor thing. But I envy you. I’ve wasted my life here and no one even noticed. Only you could under stand me.” On my first trip from the city to see the house, she’d shown me several booklets with faded covers she’d writ ten years ago about the history and mythology of the region. When I was leaving, she insisted on giving them to me. On evenings when we sat together in the garden, she would talk about our shared passion, asking questions about my writing and reading. I didn’t have to respond; she answered her ques tions herself, telling me about her imagination and wasted talents. Sometimes I brought her a bowl of the sim ple dishes I’d cooked for myself. Tomatoes and cucumbers chopped with thyme from the garden; a quick bean stew. “Everything you do is elegant,” the old woman said, “just like yourself.”
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evi, ardından terası temizlerdi. İşlerini bitirdikten sonra tekrar giyinir, kahve yapar, tepsiyle bahçeye taşırdı. Yaşlı kadın sanki bir hizmetçiyle konuşur gibi, “İçeriden kendine çikolata al,” derdi. “Buzdolabı kapağında açık paket var, iyi kutuyu açma.” Yeğeni akşam giderken bahçeden bana seslenirdi. “Allahaısmarladık. Bir ihtiyacınız olursa söyleyin.” “Bir ihtiyacı olsa bana söyler. Hadi sen git, dolmuşu kaçıracaksın. Haftaya o kadar çok meyve alma, bozuluyor.” Öğleden sonra biraz uyur, akşamüstü tekrar bahçeye çıkardım. Yaşlı kadın sabahki mavi, basma elbisesini çıkarmış, farklı çiçek desenli bir diğerini giymiş olurdu. “İşiniz bittiyse buyurun. Yazık değil mi, tüm gün çalıştınız? Gerçi size özeniyorum. Benim ömrüm böyle geçti. Değerimi bilen olmadı. Beni ancak siz anlarsınız.” Şehirden günü birliğine geldiğim ilk tanışmamızda, yörenin tarihi ve mitolojisiyle ilgili yazdığı soluk kapaklı bir iki kitapçığı göstermiş, ayrılırken hepsini ısrarla hediye etmişti. Bahçede oturduğumuz akşamlar ortak uğraşımızdan söz açar, yazdıklarım, okuduklarımla ilgili sorular sorardı. Cevap vermeme gerek kalmadan kendi sorularına kendisi cevap verir, hayal dünyasından, ziyan olan yeteneklerinden bahsederdi. Bazen kendime hazırladığım basit yemeklerden bir kâse ona da götürürdüm— bahçeden kopardığım kekikle doğradığım domates ve salatalık, özensiz bit fasulye yemeği. “Her yaptığınızda bir sadelik var,” derdi. “Her işiniz sizin gibi zarif.” İltifatlarını soğukkanlı bir tebessüm ile kabul ederdim. * Hava gittikçe serinlemesine rağmen sabahları bahçede çalışmaya devam ediyordum. Üstümü kalın giyinip bir battaniyeyle oturur, üşüdükçe mutfağa gider çay yapardım. Yaşlı kadın da sabah boyunca terasta oturur, dizlerini, kollarını abartıyla ovardı. Öğlen vakti içeri girdiğimde o da kalkardı. Bir sabah dayanamadım. “Neden bahçede oturuyorsunuz? Bakın, üşüyorsunuz. Hastalanacaksınız.” “Karşılıklı oturunca zaman geçiyor,” dedi. “Hem bahçemiz de ne güzel değil mi?” * Kasabaya geleli altı ay olmuştu. Şehirdeki dairemin rahatını, haftada iki kere temizliğe gelen, çıt çıkarmadan işine bakan temizlikçi kadını, farklı lokanta ve kafelerde buluştuğum tanıdıkları hemen hemen hiç aramıyordum. Postam iki haftada bir kasabadaki postaneye gönderilir, salı günleri genç kadın vasıtasıyla bana ulaşırdı. Mektupları hızla gözden geçirir, çok gerek olmadıkça cevap yazmazdım. Arada sırada bir zarfa para koyar, posta karşılığı genç kadına verirdim. Önce mahcup itiraz eder, sonra boynunu büküp kabul ederdi. “Halamın pazar alışverişine kullanırız, madem.” Kitap hızla şekilleniyordu. Son bölümü de yazdıktan sonra tümünü gözden geçirecek, düzeltmelere başlayacaktım. Yalınca işlediğim ilişki günden güne 70
I responded to her compliments with a slight smile. * The weather grew cooler. Still, I spent my mornings writing in the garden with a blanket, going to the kitchen to make tea whenever I was cold. The old woman sat on the terrace all morning long, rubbing her arms and knees with exagger ation. Only when I moved inside in the afternoon did she finally get up. “Why do you sit in the garden?” I asked one morning, when she came out with her book. “You’re so cold. You’ll get sick.” “To pass the time,” she said. “Anyway, isn’t our garden beautiful?” * It had been six months since my arrival. I rarely missed the comfort of my life in the city, the woman who came twice a week and cleaned my apartment without a sound, the ac quaintances I met on dif ferent days of the week at different restaurants and cafés. My mail arrived ev ery two weeks to the post office in town and was picked up by the young woman on Tuesdays. I looked through the letters hurriedly, not answering them unless I absolutely had to. The book was tak ing shape. Once I wrote the last chapter, I would read over everything and begin the final revision. The relationship I’d set up in the sparest terms crystalised each day; the cruel ending became in evitable. The low stone wall dividing the plot was almost complete. Some mornings I woke up with a pain in my wrists. At times the pain climbed to my elbows, up my arms and neck, be hind my eyes. It wasn’t so severe as to prevent me from working, nor was it unbearable, but it upset
me. Afternoons, I tossed and turned in bed unable to fall asleep. I monitored my food, my sleep, my activity meticulously, pay ing attention to the slight est discomforts. I’d begun to notice small changes, too. A strand of hair had grayed above my right temple without my realising. There were sun spots on my hands, stretch marks and protruding veins on my legs. Minute, insignificant changes. Still, it unnerved me to see them. In those moments when I noticed the slow transformation, the pain in my wrists and arms grew as well, causing me greater worry. The old woman and I continued to greet each other, but I no longer sat with her in the evenings, wanting only to take care of myself. After she invit ed me insistently, several days in a row, to join her for dinner, I told her firmly that I wished to be alone and concentrate on my writing. It was the only way, I added, that I could get anything done. She looked at me with surprise. The follow ing morning, she didn’t come out to the garden. * It was late at night. Perhaps it was morning. I woke with a start. I could feel something emerging. The first signs of sick ness, or a bad dream. I got up, went to the kitch en. I poured a glass of water from the jug. I hadn’t brought the glass to my lips when it started again. The sound of in sects from the garden began weaving a dim web around me at the same time as I started to tremble, feeling as if there were doors opening up inside my head, one by one, into dark rooms I’d never entered. I sat down on a chair but got up immediately. I opened the kitchen door.
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daha belirgin oluyor, acımasız son kaçınılmaz hale geliyordu. Arsaya ikiye bölen alçak, taş duvar bitmişti bile. Bazı sabahlar bileklerimde bir ağrıyla uyanırdım. Ağrı gün boyunca dirseklerime, kollarıma, boynuma kadar tırmanırdı. İşime engel olduğu söylenemezdi. Dayanılmaz bir ağrı da değildi, ama canımı sıkıyordu. Öğlenleri yatağımda dönüp durur, uyuyamazdım. Yediğimi, içtiğimi, uyku saatlerimi titizlikle yönetmeye, en ufak rahatsızlıklara dikkat etmeye başladım. Vücudumda ufak tefek değişiklikler de gözüme çarpmıştı. Sağ şakağımda ben farktmeden ağarmış bir tutam saç. Ellerimdeki güneş lekeleri. Bacaklarımda çatlaklar, belirginleşen bir damar. Küçük, zararsız değişiklerdi bunlar ama fark ettikçe tedirgin oluyordum. O anlarda ağrılar da artar, beni iyice endişelendirirdi. Yine de kimseyle konuşulmayacak kadar utanç verici kaygılardı bunlar. Akşamları yaşlı kadınla oturmuyordum. Kendime bakmam, bir an önce iyileşmem gerekiyordu. Beni ısrarla yemeğe davet ettiği bir gün, biraz sert bir tonla yalnız kalmak istediğimi, böyle isteklerinin çalışmama mâni olduğunu söyledim. Bana şaşkınlıkla baktı. Ertesi sabah bahçeye çıkmadı. * Gecenin geç saatleriydi. Sabahtı belki. Birdenbire uyandım. Kalbim hızla atıyordu. Garip bir his vardı içimde. Bir hastalık başlangıcı veya kötü bir rüya. Kalktım, mutfağa gittim. Sürahiden bir bardak su doldurdum. Daha bardağı ağzıma götürmemiştim ki tekrar başladı. Bahçedeki böcek sesleri etrafımda boğuk bir ağ örmeye başladılar. İçimde art arda kapılar açılıyormuşçasına titriyordum. Kapıların ötesinde hiç bilmediğim karanlık odalar vardı. Ağın dışına çıkmaya çalışıyor, bir yandan da karanlık odaları kapatmaya uğraşıyordum. Sandalyeye oturdum. Sonra hemen kalktım, mutfak kapısını açtım. Titreme hızlandı. Ağ daraldı. Koştum galiba. Karanlıkta koşarak yan eve gittim. Mutfak camına vurdum. Ses gelmedi. Çıplak ayağıma bir şey batmıştı. Sıcacık kan tabanımı ıslattı. Yaşlı kadının masasına oturdum, bekledim. Dışarı çıktığında onunla birlikte kahvaltı yapmak istediğimi söyleyecektim. Gün doğmaya başlamıştı. Bahçe ağaç doluydu. Ağaçlar birbirleriyle konuşuyorlardı ama dediklerini anlamıyordum. Ayları tekrarladım. Sonra haftanın günlerini. O gün pazar kurulacaktı. Kasabayla ilgili bir şeyler daha hatırlamaya çalıştım, hatırlayamadım. Hatırlamam mümkün değildi zaten. Orayı yakından tanımaya niyetim yoktu. Gelip geçici bir yerdi burası. Böyle böyle kendimi avutmaya çalıştım. Ama yaşlı kadın hala gelmemişti. Ben ise beklerken olabileceklerden korkuyordum. İlk dolmuşa binip kasabaya, oradan doğru şehre gidebilirdim. Dairemde her şey bıraktığım gibi olacaktı. Rahat, zevkli mobilyalar, dopdolu kitaplıklar. Temizlikçi kadın ben yokken gelmeye devam etmişti. Çarşaflar ütülü, raflar tozsuzdu elbet. Yokluğumda, çalışma odamdaki saksı bitkileri de büyümüşlerdi herhalde. Bazıları tavana kadar uzanmıştı belki de. 71
The trembling quickened. The web grew smaller. I must have run. I went running to the ad jacent house. I knocked on the kitchen window. There was no sound. Warm, thick blood moist ened my soles from something I’d stepped on. I sat down and waited at the table where the old woman sat every morn ing. If she came out, I’d tell her I was waiting for her to have breakfast to gether. Morning was break ing. The garden was full of trees. They were talking to each other but I didn’t understand their words. I repeated the months, then the days of the week. It was market day. I tried remembering other things about the town but there was nothing else. I couldn’t have remem bered, anyway. I had no intention of getting to know this place. I tried consoling myself, little by little, but I was frightened of all that could happen while I waited. I could take the first minibus to town, and from there to the city. Everything in my apartment would be as I left it. Tasteful, comfort able furniture, shelves full of books. The cleaning woman had continued to come in my absence. The bedsheets would be ironed, the counters dust less. In the months that I’d been away, the pot ted plants in my study would have grown. Per haps some of them had even reached the ceiling.
Noor Tagouri
“Instead of
fighting for
certain stories to be covered and in a certain way, we’re doing it ourselves”
Photography by Mayan Toledano Text by Grace Banks
DRESS: Rosetta Getty TURTLENECK: Commission TWILL SCARF: Hermès VIOLET SCARF: Model’s own EARRINGS: Rainbow Unicorn Birthday Surprise TIGHTS: Falke PUMPS: Rene Caovilla
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As Trump continues to attack journalism, new methods of reporting are coming to the fore. From exposing the domestic realities of sex trafficking in the US to her podcast Sold In America and calling out Vogue on Instagram, Noor Tagouri is using digital storytelling to change the way we get news 72
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My form of journalism is very much a two-way street. I personally don’t go into spaces and expect people to give me their story, give me their truth, and not give back anything in return, because I want people to make sure that, like me, it's a mutual exchange and, like, I see you and I relate to you FEATURES
DRESS AND SHIRT: Prada PILLBOX HAT: Gigi Burris Millinery SCARF: Vela Scarves EARRINGS: Anissa Kermiche
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Noor Tagouri is one of the most hard-working journalists around. In 2012, she began her career as an intern at CBS Radio, and in 2015 she was sent by a local Maryland TV station to cover the protests in Baltimore following the death in police custody of Freddie Gray – where it quickly became obvious that on-camera journalism came naturally to her, and her documentary work began. One of the key aspects of Tagouri’s success is her unwillingness to compromise on the most basic yet fundamental aspect of journalism: the truth. In January 2019, she called out US Vogue magazine for crediting her as the Pakistani actor Noor Bukhari, not Noor Tagouri. “Misrepresentation,” she said in an Instagram
Grace Banks: I was listening to your podcast Sold in America and it’s incredible. What’s obvious is what a great journalist you are. It’s clear you’re very skilled at news gathering, which I think is such a – not an outdated part of journalism, but with small budgets and things, you just don’t get that many journalistic projects like Sold in America. So, well done. What made you want to delve into that topic and look at sex worker rights in the US?
Noor Tagouri: I first heard about trafficking from Nicholas Kristof, while he was on Oprah, he had written this book [Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (2009)] with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn. When I heard [about it] I was really shocked, I couldn’t believe this existed. And I believe that your purpose is combining your skill sets and your talents with the things that pain you. And this is a cause that really pains me and I wanted to pursue it in a way where I was using my storytelling skills for that It’s important to me to always treat the subject sensitively. The thing I really care about is representation in sub-communities in the media … The question I go to when I’m working on a project is, “How is the way that I covered this story going to impact the people that we’re talking about?” If you’re not sensitive to that, you have an instance of like what happens with Muslim-Americans all the time, in which you’re misrepresented and then acts of violence are carried out – hate crimes, a general sense of fear. I believe this attitude to the Muslim faith comes really heavily from the way that Muslims are represented in the media. And so in response to that, I try to tackle different issues from a different way. FEATURES
caption posted moments after she noticed the error, “and misidentification is a constant problem if you are Muslim in America. And as much as I work to fight this, there are moments like this where I feel defeated.” It’s one of the many ways that Tagouri has become someone who, in whatever medium, will get to the bottom of things, always. Most recently, Tagouri’s podcast, Sold in America, saw her take an extensive, two-year look at the sex trafficking trade in America. Although the illicit industry’s brutal crimes are often reported in the US as happening elsewhere, in Tagouri’s series she makes it clear that these crimes are happening outside America’s front doors. How did she get to this place?
GB: What do you think makes your method of storytelling different?
NT: I think that my form of journalism is very much a two-way street. I personally don’t go into spaces and expect people to give me their story, give me their truth, and not give back anything in return, because I want people to make sure that, like me, it’s a mutual exchange and, like, I see you and I relate to you. So I try to find a commonality with people, and I have to do that in general anyway to disarm people. And I think a lot of times, with news, we feel entitled to people’s stories. GB: There’s been a huge attack on journalism from Trump along with the rise of fake news. As a journalist, what do you make of all that?
NT: It’s a double-edged sword in a way. We have a president who’s shouting [about] fake news and [saying] that journalists are the enemy of the people, which is very, very dangerous. It puts journalists in harm’s way every single day. However, we also have depleting resources in newsrooms [where] there’s no money and people are overworked. You’re expected to push out more content and turn out, like, 30 stories a day [rather] than actually focus on developing stories and putting out higher quality journalism. It’s a cluster of mess. I think that’s why, [with] the last project and the projects that I work on, I try to be super transparent in the process of what we’re doing and how we’re
You have laws that work against people, then you have the representation of certain communities in the media that is so poorly executed 76
TOTAL LOOK: Maryam Nassir Zadeh HEADSCARVES: Model’s own EARRINGS: Marco Panconesi BOLO TIE: Robin Mollicone
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STYLING: Becky Akinyode MAKE-UP: Yacine Diallo @ BRIDGE using Chanel HAIR AND HIJAB STYLING: Nai’vasha @ The Wall Group NAILS: Momo @ See Management using Chanel Le Vernis
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
reporting. I want to make sure that we are telling you where we’re getting our information from, who we’ve asked. Doing our own research, doing our own data questing and that sort of thing. GB: Sold in America focussed on women and young girls. When were you first drawn to these issues?
NT: When I was 13-years-old, my mom and I were at a convention and we met a woman who ran and lived in a shelter for women and children who are survivors of domestic violence. My mom started talking to her and asking, “What can we do for you?” and the woman was like, “Well, people always drop off canned food and things like that but we really need toiletries. These women need shampoos, conditioners, pads, tampons.” And so from then, my mom and I started doing a toiletry drive at our school. Eventually they started needing like fresh groceries [as well]. So when my mom would get groceries for us, we would start getting groceries for them. And we started making it like a weekend routine every other weekend where we would drive up to Baltimore and we would go and send stuff to the shelter. The woman who ran the shelter would tell us the stories of the women who were coming in, because people were always coming in and out. And I remember just, like, being really quiet and listening to the story. And that was kind of like a light bulb moment for me because this was before I even really knew what trafficking or exploitation or anything like that was … And I think it was from then – and I mean from since then – [that] we’ve worked with the shelter, [that] we’ve worked with people who are experiencing homelessness, and people in need.
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NT: Well, that was literally what we found with Sold in America. The entire point was that we have a lack of a social safety net for people at the margins of our communities. GB: What do you think are the biggest adversities working-class women in America face today?
NT: The biggest challenge is that it’s all rooted in cycles that are hard to break out from if you’re within them. You have laws that work against people, then you have the representation of certain communities in the media that is so poorly executed. In my experience with the communities I’ve spent time with, many laws are proposed and passed without talking to all of the stakeholders. This blanketed approach puts diverse communities – that are in different circumstances – in difficult positions to survive. This perpetuates many of the stigmas and stereotypes we see, and poor media representation doesn’t get to the root of these “issues”. GB: What do you want to do next?
We have a president who’s shouting [about] fake news and [saying] that journalists are the enemy of the people, which is very, very dangerous. It puts journalists in harm’s way every single day FEATURES
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NT: That entire experience was really kind of what put me onto focussing on women and children and just, like, people who are at the margins of our communities. Actually, just two days ago it was the one year anniversary of our foundation, I See You. We founded it last
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GB: The story you tell of the woman turning up with just a small bag of things … I mean, that story is American politics and it seems to me that there is not enough discourse about the huge poverty and class problems in the US at the moment.
NT: We’ve just started a production company called At Your Service in partnership with Pulse Films, a UK production company. I personally really love the UK media and documentary scene, it’s just way better so it was an awesome fit. The reason we’re starting to pursue stuff independently is because I see where the holes are in the way that media is being covered. Instead of fighting for certain stories to be covered and certain stories to be covered in a certain way, we’re doing it ourselves. We’re working on an investigative series [called In America with Noor]. It’s about the way that we see certain topics and issues and the way that we love to debase them, but [also the way] we don’t actually like to see the full picture, see the spectrum. You’re the first person I’ve told about that.
GB: Those childhood experiences are so informative.
TOTAL LOOK: Sies Marjan HAT: Albertus Swanepoel SCARF: Vela Scarves HOOPS: Jennifer Fisher BELT: Maryam Nassir Zadeh
summer. The name of it comes from this experience my mom and I had at Franklin Square Park in Washington DC. My mom went up to this couple and asked them what they needed and the woman looked at her and just held her shoulders and said, “We just need to be seen.” And so we decided to call the foundation I See You as a response to that woman.
FASHION FASHION 86 82 86 GO GO (SOUTH) (SOUTH) WEST WEST PH. PH. MARTIN MARTIN PARR PARR ST. ST. ELIZA ELIZA CONLON CONLON 104 102 104 KNOCK KNOCK OFF OFF PH. REBEKAH REBEKAH CAMPBELL CAMPBELL PH. ST. RACHAEL RACHAEL WANG WANG ST. 120 120 BACK 116 BACK AND AND FORTH FORTH PH. PH. ANDREW ANDREW NUDING NUDING ST. ST. KIERAN KIERAN KILGALLON KILGALLON 80
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Martin Parr shoots Autumn’s new looks in hilly Bristol – at Convoy Espresso, located in two Airstream trailers, at the Paintworks creative quarter and Parr’s own photography foundation – lending his epocal eye to this season’s luxury fashion
MAGGIE JACKET AND SHIRT Bottega Veneta TROUSERS Fabrice Delvaux de Marigny @ 1Granary GLASSES Oakley SANDALS Teva
SYLVIE FLEECE AND TIGHTS Miu Miu SKIRT Ganni SHOES Acne Studios BAG Susan Fang @ 1Granary
Go (South) Martin Parr
Styling by
Eliza Conlon
West
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The Paintworks, Bristol, England, 2019
Photography by
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MAGGIE SHIRT Hillier Bartley SKIRT Louis Vuitton
Martin Parr Foundation, The Paintworks, Bristol, England, 2019
SYLVIE SHIRT, DRESS AND BELT Fidana Novruzova @ 1Granary
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Martin Parr Foundation, The Paintworks, Bristol, England, 2019
MAGGIE JACKET AND BELT Junya Watanabe BAG Fidana Novruzova SOCKS AND TRAINERS Adidas vintage
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Martin Parr Foundation, The Paintworks, Bristol, England, 2019
MAGGIE JACKET AND HOODIE Valentino SKIRT Vintage from the National Theatre Costume Hire TRAINERS Camper
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Martin Parr Foundation, The Paintworks, Bristol, England, 2019
MAGGIE BLOUSE AND TIGHTS Gucci TRAINERS Adidas vintage
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MAGGIE BLOUSE AND TIGHTS Gucci TRAINERS Adidas vintage
SYLVIE JEANS Aries TOP Fabrice Delvaux de Marigny @ 1Granary
The Paintworks, Bristol, England, 2019
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MAGGIE PANTS Vintage, stylist’s own TOP Nina Ricci
MAGGIE DRESS Celine
The Paintworks, Bristol, England, 2019
Convoy Espresso, The Paintworks, Bristol, England, 2019
SYLVIE DRESS Christopher Kane BOOTS Bottega Veneta
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Convoy Espresso, The Paintworks, Bristol, England, 2019 Convoy Espresso, The Paintworks, Bristol, England, 2019
MAGGIE DRESS Celine SOCKS Stylist's own SHOES Adidas Vintage
SYLVIE DRESS Christopher Kane BOOTS Bottega Veneta
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MAGGIE HOODIE Valentino SKIRT Vintage from The National Theatre Costume GLASSES Oakley BOOTS Stella McCartney
The Paintworks, Bristol, England, 2019
SYLVIE JACKET Salvatore Ferragamo SKIRT Sarah Balmont SHOES Gucci BAG Susan Fang
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ALL PHOTOGRAPHS © Martin Parr / Magnum Photos MAKE-UP: Kristina Ralph Andrews @ D+V Management HAIR: Alfie Sackett @ LGA Management HAIR ASSISTANT: Nick Jones STYLING ASSISTANT: Rudi Edwards TALENTS: Maggie Mauer @ IMG, Sylvie Markes CASTING: Nicolas Bianciotto for Ikki Casting
THIS PAGE
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SYLVIE JACKET Salvatore Ferragamo SKIRT Sarah Balmont BAG Susan Fang
SYLVIE DRESS Aries SKIRT Y/PROJECT BOOTS Bottega Veneta GLASSES Oakley
Convoy Espresso, The Paintworks, Bristol, England, 2019
SPECIAL THANKS: Martin Parr Foundation, Paintworks, and Convoy Espresso
MAGGIE JACKET Craig Green SKIRT Sarah Balmont BOOTS Stella McCartney
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Knockoff
Hyper-feminine looks shot in Clifton Township, Pennsylvania
Photography by
Rebekah Campbell 102
Styling by
Rachael Wang
LEFT DRESS Kenzo GARTER BELTS Only Hearts UNDERWEAR Agent Provocateur SHOES Christian Louboutin SOCKS Stylist’s own
THIS PAGE DRESS: Moncler x Simone Rocha GLOVES: Wing & Weft SHOES: Reike Nen HAT: Kelsey Randall TIGHTS: Wolford
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LEFT DRESS: Simone Rocha UNDERWEAR: Gap SOCKS: Stylist’s own BOOTS: Kenzo
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THIS PAGE JUMPER AND BOOTS: Boss UNDERWEAR: Calvin Klein GLOVES: Wing & Weft
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RIGHT BRA: Eres SKIRT: Fendi UNDERWEAR: Araks SHOES: Gray Matters SOCKS: Stylist’s own
THIS PAGE TOTAL LOOK: Prada
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RIGHT DRESS: Christian Dior TOP: Ralph Lauren LINGERIE SET: Only Hearts TIGHTS: Wolford BOOTS: Brother Vellies HAT: Eric Javits
THIS PAGE SHIRT: Only Hearts EARRINGS: Chanel UNDERWEAR: Agent Provocateur SHOES: Oscar de la Renta
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LEFT COAT Chanel TOP Zimmerman SHOES Jimmy Choo TIGHTS Emilio Cavallini
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THIS PAGE DRESS Preen EARRINGS Chanel GLOVES Stylist’s own
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LEFT DRESS LRS TIGHTS Wolford SHOES Christian Louboutin
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THIS PAGE TOP Zimmermann UNDERWEAR Eres SHOES Daniella Shevel TIGHTS Stylist’s own
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THIS PAGE BIKINI Araks RIGHT BODYSUIT Collina Strada BRA Agent Provocateur EARRINGS Chanel
TALENT: Myrthe Bolt @ NEXT HAIR: Shin Arima @ Home MAKE-UP: Linda Gradin @ L’Atelier PHOTO ASSISTANT: Mariah Postlethwaite STYLING ASSISTANT: Raziel Martinez PRODUCTION: Home Agency SPECIAL THANKS: Pilar Secada and Todd Crider for location
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Andrew Nuding alters the shape of the body through layering and movement in AW19’s new looks
Back and Forth Photography by
Andrew Nuding
PINK DRESS Molly Goddard GREY ROLLNECK Christian Dior WHITE SHIRT proposition SILVER JACKET Toga HEADPIECE Sorcha O’Raghallaigh
Styling by
Kieran Kilgallon 116
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DRESS Rejina Pyo JACKET (TIED TO WAIST) 3.Paradis BOOTS Tenants of Culture SLIP DRESS Stylist’s own
BALACLAVA Molly Goddard SILK SHIRT proposition GREY SCARF, POLO SHIRT AND PANTS Daniel Crabtree TRENCH COAT Wonder Anatomie FEATHER TRIM Toga
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DRESSES Female Forever SKIRT Vinti Andrews SKIRT (WORN UNDERNEATH) Bernhard Willhelm HAT Proposition SHOES Flat Apartment BAG Steve O Smith
JUMPER Toga ARGYLE JUMPER Pringle of Scotland TROUSERS Xander Zhou TIGHTS (WORN OVER SHOES) Tights Dept. SLIP Stylist’s own
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JACKET, TROUSERS AND JUMPER (ON BACK) Toga TIGHTS (ON SHOULDER) Stylist’s own
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DRESS Steve O Smith SKIRT SUIT (ON BACK) Chanel BELT Christian Dior NECKLACE (USED AS BELT AND BRACELET) Christian Dior BOOTS Tenants of Culture
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DRESS Dom Sebastian BRA, BODYSUIT AND TROUSERS Isosceles LINGERIE (WORN UNDERNEATH) Stylist’s own SHOES Miu Miu
TOP AND LEGGINGS Henri Viskov DRESS Edeline Lee JEANS Alex Mullins BOOTS Tenants of Culture
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BALACLAVA Molly Goddard CROCHET DRESS Miu Miu WHITE DRESS Renata Brenha JACKET Toga SHOES Tenants of Culture
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BALACLAVA AND SCARF Molly Goddard POLO SHIRT AND SHORTS Daniel Crabtree T-SHIRT Per Götesson TIGHTS (WORN OVER SHOES) Tights Dept.
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DRESS AND TOP WITH STUFFED SLEEVES Christian Dior
CARDIGAN, JUMPER AND SKIRT Erdem SKIRT (WORN OPEN) Celine LEG WARMERS Molly Goddard GLOVES Sorcha O’Raghallaigh BOOTS Tenants of Culture
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DRESS Proposition BALACLAVA Molly Goddard SLEEVES Marieyat SHOES Flat Apartment TIGHTS Stylist’s own
TOTAL LOOK Burberry Prorsum
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HAIR: Tomi Roppongi @ Saint Luke using Bed Head by Tigi MAKE-UP: Mattie White @ Saint Luke using skyn ICELAND SET DESIGN: Mary Clohisey TALENTS: Athena Wilson @ Premier & James S @ Supa PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANT: Ellen Egan STYLING ASSISTANTS: Gal Klein & Caoimhe Murphy
T-SHIRT AND SKIRT Bernhard Willhelm TOP AND SKIRT (ON BACK) Renata Brenha GLOVES MM6
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ART FAIR 7.10 NOV 2019 GRAND PALAIS
SLEEK likes UNIQLO
DOUBLE UP
Photography by Jorge Perez Ortiz
Styling by Adrian Bernal
We took Uniqlo’s new Cocoon trousers to the Ebro Delta on the Mediterranean Sea in Spain, and asked dancers Candela Capitån and Rocki Salam to dance in them, proving their curved wide-legged seams create flexibility, art and community 140
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MAKE-UP ARTIST: Itziar Nzang @ Kasteel Artist Management TALENTS: Candela Capitรกn, Rocki Salam @ Uno Models
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FLOWER FREAK SHOW
Photography by Felicity Ingram
SLEEK likes JEAN PAUL GAULTIER
Styling by Lorena Maza
The verve behind Jean-Paul Gaultier’s iconic Eighties’ campaign imagery is having a renaissance. From his Fashion Freak Show to a revival of his corsets made famous by Madonna, the style he pioneered is back in vogue. To launch his new floral scents, La Belle and Le Beau, we decided to create a tribute to JPG’s enduring sensual aesthetic 148
LEFT ILIJA: BODY: Spanx CLARA: UNDERWEAR: La Perla THIS PAGE DRESS: Joseph
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UNDERWEAR: Ron Dorff
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Jacket: AMI Paris
PHOTOGRAPHER: Felicity Ingram @ Visual Artists PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANT: Zac Dinnage MAKE-UP ARTIST: Anne Timper HAIR STYLIST: Berenice Ammann
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FLORAL STYLIST: Daniel @ Mary Lennox MODEL: Clara Thorndahl @ The Claw, Ilija Osborn CASTING: Kyra Sophie PRODUCTION: Emma Hughes
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LEFT FACE: CHANEL Ultra Le Teint Velvet - BR 22 EYE: CHANEL Rouge Allure Ink Fusion No.41, CHANEL Le Volume Révolution Mascara LIP: CHANEL Rouge Allure Ink Fusion No.4 THIS PAGE FACE: CHANEL Ultra Le Teint Velvet - BR 22 EYE: Le Volume de CHANEL 10 - Noir LIP: CHANEL Rouge Allure Ink 140 - Amoureux CHANEL Le Crayon Lèvres 98 - Séduction
PINK SUEDE
Photography by Max vom Hofe
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Make-up by Anna Payne
Using Chanel’s new Rouge Allure Ink Fusion collection, make-up artist Anna Payne creates a pink petal mood out of its matte textures 155
LEFT FACE: CHANEL Ultra Le Teint Velvet - BR 22 EYE: Le Volume de CHANEL 10 - Noir CHANEL Le Volume Révolution Mascara LIP: CHANEL Rouge Allure Ink 170 - Euphorie THIS PAGE FACE: CHANEL Ultra Le Teint Velvet - BR 22 CHEEK AND EYE: Rouge Allure Ink 164 - Entusiasta and 170 - Euphorie CHANEL Joues Contraste Powder Blush 430 - Foschia Rosa and 270 - Vibration LIP: CHANEL Rouge Allure Ink 156 - Lost
MAKE-UP ARTIST: Anna Payne @ CLM using Chanel Autumn/ Winter 2019 Collection HAIR STYLIST: Attila Kenyeres STYLIST: Lorena Maza PHOTO ASSISTANT: Michael Klaus MODEL: Soekie Gravenhorst @ Paparazzi Models CASTING: Julie Sinios CREATIVE EDITOR: Marta Wilkosz
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Stefan Dotter shoots the Autumn timepiece collections by GlashĂźtte, Wempe and Audemars Piguet
Photography by Stefan Dotter Styling by Cathrin Sonntag
WATCH IT
CODE 11.59 by Audemars Piguet
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TOTAL LOOKS: Dries van Noten
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Wempe Chronometerwerke Automatic Aviator Watch Limited Edition
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LEFT Glashütte Original Senator Chronometer Tourbillon - Limited Edition
RIGHT Glashütte Original SeaQ Panorama Date
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STYLIST: Cathrin Sonntag @ Nina Klein HAIR AND MAKE-UP: Patricia Heck @ Nina Klein MODEL: Layla Ong @ MGM, Yannick @ Kyra Sophie PRODUCTION: Emma Hughes, Keano Anton SPECIAL THANKS: Café Am Neuen See
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TOTAL LOOKS: Louis Vuitton
Photography by Craig McDean Styling by Marie-Amélie Sauvé
Craig McDean shoots the Louis Vuitton Monogram Classic in Paris 164
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Text by Henry Lifshits
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While many children fly the nest and never come back, Berlin-based restaurateur Chi Cao Hanh left her family’s famous restaurant business in Berlin only to come back shortly after. For Chi, who emigrated to Berlin from Hanoi at the age of two, her work is a family affair. She helps run the Asian-fusion restaurant DUDU, founded in Mitte in 2008, along with her brother, Nam, and their mother. Although the business’s success is a testament to Chi’s abilities, the culinary industry wasn’t the path she’d anticipated – and definitely not one she expected to stay in for so long. Once upon a time, aged 18, Chi had a flourishing – albeit brief – venture into fashion with her own label. Despite its success, Hanh returned to the family business. Subsequently, in 2016, the Hanhs opened a new premises, DUDU 31 in Charlottenburg, managed by Nam and catering to a mature West Berlin audience, while Chi has taken
the reins in Mitte. Much like Chi’s unexpected but triumphant trajectory, the CUPRA Ateca is an unconventional but expertly crafted hybrid of an SUV and a sports car, combining sophistication and quality assurance. With its unique and edgy design and user-friendly interface, the CUPRA Ateca is the perfect car for a creative forging their own path. Behind the wheel of the CUPRA Ateca, Chi steers us through the Berlin spots that drive her imagination.
STYLIST: Francesca Schliephake HAIR AND MAKE-UP: Rocco Kowalski TALENT: Chi Cao Hanh PRODUCTION: Emma Hughes SPECIAL THANKS: DUDU Berlin, FrischeParadies, % Arabica Coffee Berlin
ON THE ROAD WITH CHI CAO HANH
Photography by Marc Krause
Berlin restaurateur Chi Cao Hanh of the iconic Asianfusion DUDU franchise takes the CUPRA Ateca for a drive around her favorite places in the German metropolis 168
CUPRA Ateca (Kraftstoffverbrauch kombiniert: 7,4l/100km; CO2-Emission kombiniert: 168g/km; CO2-Effizienzklasse: D) Abbildung zeigt Sonderausstattung 169
% ARABICA COFFEE BERLIN While DUDU’s two locations are great places to hang out and eat, Chi’s also found a home away from home where she can zone out, unwind and people-watch – % Arabica Coffee in Kreuzberg. Run by two friends, the cafe is near Chi’s house and is where she gets breakfast every morning before heading to Mitte. If you’re lucky, you might see her enjoying coffee with oat milk and eating scrambled eggs before diving into business at DUDU – if she doesn’t spot you first.
CERAMICS While she enjoys working with her family, Chi needed a personal creative outlet. So, in her downtime, you can find her behind a pottery wheel at her private ceramic studio in Friedrichshain. She prefers to work by hand, though, as she finds it cathartic. Chi makes her own natural glaze mixed with gold and copper fragments to create pieces reminiscent of wood or mussels. Just like the menu at DUDU, Chi’s ceramics are inspired by tropical travels as well as her affinity for nature. She’s also found a way to integrate her passion into the family business. The DUDU cookbook, DUDU Kitchen, published last year – another of Chi’s personal projects – features food from their restaurants served on her elegant plates. So, if you happen to be at DUDU on a special occasion, you might be lucky enough to have your meal on one of her creations.
DUDU
FRISCHE PARADIES When work is your life and you work with family, it can be difficult to find time to spend together. In the midst of all the chaos, Frische Paradies, the food market where DUDU sources fresh fish and vegetables, is a welcome respite from the daily duties at the restaurant, and an opportunity to look for recipe inspiration. The luxury supermarket is the place Chi and her mother like to meet, a chance to indulge in nostalgia as mother and daughter as they used to shop together when Chi was little. A gastronomic goldmine with a diverse and seasonal selection of wares, DUDU often alters its menu depending on what it’s stocking, although some dishes remain the same, such as Chi’s personal favorite, pho, a beef noodle soup. 170
If you’ve flipped through any food guide to Berlin, odds are you’ve stumbled upon DUDU. It’s often cited as serving some of the best sushi in town, and while certainly true, the menu goes well beyond California rolls. Although their background is Vietnamese, Chi grew up in Berlin, so their food board is influenced by a variety of cultures and culinary traditions, inspired by Chi’s family’s extensive travels. The hip destination is based on Torstrasse in Mitte, the same street as the Hanh’s family home, and only a 30-minute drive from their other restaurant on Bleibtreustrasse in Charlottenburg. Although running a business with family isn’t always a walk in the park, Chi says that everyone trusts each other blindly, encouraging one another to work harder, ensuring mutual success.
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IVAN GETTE, The Inner Samurai, 2017, Berlin 173
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IN PARIS WITH YOU
Photography by Wilfried Wulff 174
The stately boulevards of Paris play host to the new BMW i3s Edition RoadStyle - rendered in black with the new and exclusive colour shade E-Copper, this sporty car sets the agenda 175
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Simon Lohmeyer goes on location in Iceland with the new Porsche Cayenne Coupé
Photography by Mario Voit Artist: Simon Lohmeyer 180
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A T E C A
Photography by Nadia Morozewicz
Text by Madeleine Fletcher
WE BELIEVE IN DESTINATION, NOT DESTINY. When we created a sport SUV with 221 kW (300 HP), DSG Automatic Gearbox and 4Drive, we were not following the crowd. When we crafted each detail inside and out, we were not taking an easy road. When we chose to have 19-inch alloy wheels in copper1, we didn’t settle for the standards. We only knew. Not what we would find along the way, but exactly where we wanted to go. And here we are. Made for those who create their own path. 1
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Fuel Consumption CUPRA Ateca 2.0 TSI 4Drive, 221 kW (300 HP): urban 8,9, extra urban 6,5, combined 7,4 l/100 km; CO 2 Emissions: combined 168 g/km. CO 2 Efficiency Class: D. CUPRAOFFICIAL.DE
#CreateThePath
As Instagram becomes oversaturated with images of houseplants, the art of horticulture is fast coming back into style. Dotted all over mood boards and popping up in people’s weekend plans, it might be easy to dismiss our piqued interest in botany as a millennial fad. But a trip to Berlin’s Gärten der Welt (‘Gardens Of The World’) shows horticulture’s rich and intricate cultural history – and why it’s becoming popular once again. “Houseplants have been around for many centuries,” says the gardens’ Park Ambassador, Beate Reuber, reflecting on the public’s growing interest in horticulture. “There are many reasons why gardens are important in a city.” For locals, the gardens act as a form of escape from Berlin’s heavy industry. Tucked away in the German capital’s northeast district of Marzahn, and boasting more than 40 hectares of wildlife, the gardens are a visual feast. From the golden-leafed amber tree (which also harbours powerful medicinal properties), to the iconic frangipani tree (whose flowers decorate Hindu ceremonies), the garden’s sumptuous look keeps visitors entranced. Aesthetics aside, these gardens are more than just a jumble of flora and fauna. They are a series of “cultural ambassadors of individual countries”, Reuber explains. Take the Japanese garden, for instance. While others seem to flourish wildly, the stony zen garden in the Japanese area is refined and understated. In Japan, these gardens have traditionally been kept by Buddhist monks as an aid to meditation, and this articulation is similarly tranquil – a testament to the diversity of gardening.
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Fashion Index Walls Issue Printed Hoodie
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A Black or white editions S, M or L in M/F fits €59
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Balenciaga Belvedere Vodka Bernhard Willhelm BMW BOSS Bottega Veneta Brother Vellies Burberry Prorsum
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G-SHOCK Ganni GAP Gigi Burris Millinery Glashütte Golden Goose Gray Matters Gucci
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Actor and musician Janelle Monáe, is bringing female voices to the cinema by commissioning A Beautiful Future, a series of films directed by women, sponsored by Belvedere Vodka. Here, she talks about Val From Purchasing, a film by Janicza Bravo about a woman of colour triumphing at work, and the importance of bringing lesser-represented women into film
A BEAUTIFUL FUTURE
Janicza Bravo is hilarious. I loved her film Lemon (2017), she has such a unique voice. We need more black women like her in cinema who have a vision and know what they want to say. I was looking for someone like that who had a strong perspective or vision. The A Beautiful Future project means something to me because when women are empowered, everyone is empowered. You know, I don’t believe we’re free when women are oppressed or repressed. Living in America, there is a war on women's rights rights now and I am not going to sit back passively and allow that to happen. I have a voice and just shining a light on myself isn’t enough, I want to shine it on more women. Women have so much to contribute in politics. We have so much to contribute in education but so many women don’t have those opportunities, so I’m doing my best to create them. For me, it’s crucial to bring in the voices of black women and LGBTQ+ people. Until their voices are included in society, I don't feel good. I’m a queer black woman as well, so it’s a personal issue for me. This is something I’m striving for in my production company Wandaland, too, we’re producing film and music. And in the film category, it’s essential to have the stories of women of colour represented. That’s something that’s important in my own film career, too.
I’ll be playing Dorothy Pitman Hughes in the new film about [American feminist] Gloria Steinem called The Glorias. Gloria reached out to me personally and asked for me to be in it. Dorothy helped bridge so many gaps between Asian, Hispanic and black women, it was an honour to play her. We’re now dealing with a Vice President, Mike Pence, who believes in conversion therapy. That says to me that our existence is abnormal. It sends a message to me that says who I am at the core is abnormal and that I don’t deserve to be here unless I become a cis white Christian man, and that’s just not going to happen. So for me, until we, as a group of free thinking and living people, are accepted, I won't stop talking about LGBTQ+ perspectives. I think at this time of political crisis, artists are crucial. I’m thinking of people like Lizzo, who is doing such a good job at being an ally and using her voice for good. If you have something important to say in the entertainment world you should do it, because we’re in a very privileged position. The responsibility platform I have comes with a lot of responsibility. There is a lot of pressure. People expect a certain thing. But I allow myself to not have the answers. When I do, I will let you know.
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Image courtesy of Belvedere
Text by Janelle Monáe
Film stills from Val from Purchasing, directed by Janicza Bravo
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A fresh partnership between Japanese watch brand G-SHOCK and rapper OG Keemo shows the historic relationship between music and design
The Rise of Luxury Utility. Konstantin Grcic’s latest collaboration transforms perceptions of practical clothing
Text by Madeleine Fletcher
Konstantin Grcic does not want to be called a minimalist. The German industrial designer, best known for his iconic chairs, prefers the labels ‘simplistic’, ‘functional’ and ‘practical’. Indeed, his reluctance to embrace this tag has shaped much of the Munich-born designer’s career. As he indicated in a 2013 interview about his awardwinning May Day Lamp (“It’s not a pendant lamp, it’s not a floor lamp … it has no fixed destination”), his work is dynamic and defies easy categorisation. Grcic’s desire to create practical objects without fanfare is at the fore of his latest collaboration with BOSS, a partnership between fashion and industrial design harvesting impressive results. The range, BOSS x Konstantin Grcic, consists of a jacket and coat as well as three t-shirts featuring sketches of Milan, New York and Shanghai by the designer, each item underpinned by his trademark style. The designs appear simple and streamlined, but their features are far more complex. Take, for example, the jacket. At first glance, its clean lines and minimal decoration seem
straightforward and understated. However, inside are see-through pockets – practical yet discreet. And then there’s the unconventional button pattern, a nod to Grcic’s nonconformism. Finally, the outer pockets, almost invisibly blended into the seams, tie together a piece that is smart and surprising in equal measure. The range, Grcic and BOSS say, is “closely connected to travelling”. “Travel has become dominated by travelling for work, and being perfectly equipped is just a necessary thing. It is all about efficiency,” the designer says, describing the inspiration behind the collaboration. “It was important for me to find the right balance between practicality and elegance.” The word ‘practical’ sometimes conveys the idea of mere reliability, but for Grcic, it’s also concerned with desirability. Moreover, as other brands begin to release luxurious yet utilitarian ranges, a cultural reassessment of what functionality means is taking place, and Grcic is leading the charge. As such, this collaboration with BOSS is both timely and important, the stylish results confirming Grcic’s success – an ode to practicality. 192
Text by Madeleine Fletcher
Hip-hop and fashion have a long history of collaboration. Not only does the music genre have an indisputable influence on the industry, but hip-hop artists themselves have recently emerged as some of the most discussed and applauded voices in fashion. As the meteoric success of Rihanna and Kanye West’s respective labels demonstrate, hip-hop’s relationship with fashion is big, bold and here to stay. Enter timepiece brand G-SHOCK, whose recent collaboration with German rapper OG Keemo adds a new chapter to this saga. Named the #NEVERGIVEUP campaign, the musician and the watchmaker have teamed up to celebrate OG Keemo’s renowned grit and determination, as well as the enduring appeal of G-SHOCK’s DW-5600BB-1ER, an iconic model that’s been in production for 35 years. “Overnight success is granted to very few rappers,” OG Keemo says of the project, “the way to the top is tough and filled with struggle.”
G-SHOCK were natural partners, explains the 26-yearold rapper. Although OG Keemo’s route to the top hasn’t been easy, he’s remained true to himself and is reaping the rewards. Speaking candidly about his songwriting around topics such as mental health and grief, his music has shattered the trope of toxic masculinity that rap is sometimes unfairly associated with. Indeed, G-SHOCK has stayed true to itself, too, manufacturing its legendary DW-5600BB-1ERs using the same design since day one. Transcending trends and fads, the timepiece is a testament to endurance, an instantly recognisable watch whose dimensions have stood the test of time. As part of the #NEVERGIVEUP campaign, OG Keemo has also starred in a video series for G-SHOCK alongside his producer, Funkvater Frank. “I always want to outdo myself, that is my constant motivation,” he reveals in one video, a statement perfectly encapsulating the collaboration’s ambitious ethos. 193
CABINET
Photography by Francesca Allen
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For me, the images feel more about breaking down boundaries between myself and Tin, getting to know each other through the medium of photography and becoming friends through that. A story of two strangers who would not otherwise be friends, meeting and learning about each other. I like to explore the idea of whether a photograph can be a true representation of someone. Tin styled herself using her own clothing, and also a few items from my own wardrobe. I feel like we got to know each other very intimately and in a very quick period of time 194
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The Last Word
Palexpo / 30.01-02.02.2020 / artgeneve.ch
Nova 1965–1975 compiled by David Hillman & Harri Peccinotti and edited by David Gibbs is published by Batsford.
Grimaldi Forum Monaco / 01-03.05.2020 / artmontecarlo.ch
David Hillman is the art director behind dozens of Nova magazine covers from 1969 to 1975. Hillman describes Nova as a “women’s magazine for everyone” and through his role there created covers that were starkly at odds with the rest of the women’s magazines on the newstands. The work of the Nova editorial team is celebrated is the book Nova 19651975, compiled by Hillman and photographer Harri Peccinotti, who worked on Nova as art director between 1965 to 1967. Here, Hillman talks about one of his favourite covers for the magazine. Nova wasn’t a fashion magazine. It was a general read for women, we used to consider men as being part of our readers anyway. Something I always tried to do was shoot a special cover. So whenever the magazine’s fashion director, Caroline Baker, was doing a fashion shoot, we wanted to shoot something specially for the cover from that, not just take one of the images from the shoot for the cover. Hans Feurer, a brilliant Swiss photographer, shot it. For me it’s a very beautiful cover. And I thought it would be nice that as a minority magazine we shoot something that would look different on the magazine stall, we never went for a smiling face or something like that. So on the day of the shoot I said: instead of the face, let’s have the bottom legs on the cover. I was LAST WORD
lucky as I had one of the best fashion directors around, Caroline, who styled the image. The picture was pinned on the wall of our offices and the editorial director came in and said, “What’s that?” I said, “That’s the cover.” And he said, “You can’t put legs on the cover.” As that conversation was taking place, the CEO of IPC and The Mirror Group came in as part of an informal walk around, and he said, “What a fantastic cover.” And I told him that I’d been told I couldn’t use it. And he just said, “Well I think you should do it.” And that was that. It made the cover.
Nova 1965-1975, compiled by David Hillman & Harri Peccinotti and edited by David Gibbs, is published by Batsford. 210
City of Geneva / 05.06-10.09.2020 / sculpturegarden.ch