"If you have ever seen the real world, you will realize the need for designers to take on new responsibilities. The age of individualism is coming to an end, while the age of commonality and mutual growth is beginning. This is a question of survival, and the transcendence of human nature."Set up in 2006, Wuyong (无用) is the extension of Chinese fashion designer Ma Ke's (马可）work into the realm of contemporary art. Removing herself from the relentless cycle of the fashion business, the garments become the media through which she meditates the value of life and the spiritual place of garments outside of the fashion context.
The garments, pictured here from The Earth (土地) collection and those from the Luxury Poverty (奢侈的清贫), evoke a sense of primal earthiness; the fabrics, looking slightly worn but sturdy, still bear the essence of the natural environment from which they are derived. The garments are at the same time part of the desolate landscape and apart from it, forming a harmonious mediation between human existence and nature, free from the values of modern urban society. The heavy, almost monastic drapery and intricate knits, together with the rawness of the fabrics, reminds me very much of Austrian label Fabric Interseasons of which I am a big fan of (but admittedly, I have yet to experience their garments in person due to their small production and limited distribution). Made in-house using locally sourced artisanal fabrics, the pieces are a clear revolt against the mass produced fashion of today, especially in China, where fast fashion is more readily consumed and appreciated than craft and quality.
"The spiritual qualities which i pursue stand in opposition to the trends of modern fashion. What I find profoundly engaging are the primitive eras of human history, when people held nature in the deepest reverence and made objects of the utmost simplicity, whose craft fashioned out of necessity, and not by the hands of celebrated masters, possess a power that can endure across the ages. These designs may still resonate through the millenia and arrest the values of contemporary fashion... Genuine fashion today should not follow the glamour of trends. It should instead uncover the extraordinary in the ordinary, for I believe that the ultimate luxury is not the price of the clothing, but its spirit."
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