Did I say?  This is about fashion… This is why we’re talking.  But, fashion, maybe it’s not your cup of tea … or … is it?  
Tell me I’m wrong. Still, fashion, I see it in your work, an attitude to it somehow.  It’s not obvious but it’s there.  Especially in the Muslim China stuff where faces , in a sense what your work is about, are completely covered and something else comes to the foreground. —   Fashion….uh….it has been an obsession since we came down out of the trees. I look at that production from Western China in 86, with its (now) long-gone Tadjik, Kirghiz, Uzbek and Uigyur dress codes.  The clothes, they have their own life which will resonate into the future, because among other things we have photographic records of them.  

Sure, I wonder how approaching these shots might have differed from your usual mode of working.  I mean in your “non-burka” works the faces of your subjects are always super animated, even joyous, as you really bring something to them, and they to you. Being literally shrouded, but definitely not face-less, these shots are totally different. Did you come to it differently, in terms of how to make a photo, and how you make a temporary relationship? Or was the gestural back and forth the same, just differently structured? —   My relationship with people, good friends, chance meetings with brief acquaintances, total strangers I may encounter while I’m out on a ride with my camera always begins with eye contact. There is a moment, eyes connect, what happens in those short, intense and silent connections is one of the great unmapped aspects of the human condition. The contingencies people bring to eye contact are so loaded with potential, we read each other, we draw conclusions, we act or switch off, invite or repel. Eye contact with a stranger is super intense. If I’m photographing, normally I’m working with complete strangers, I encounter them in the unstructured freestyle theatre of the street. Ostensibly I’m collecting people, stashing them away on a roll of film and interrogating the works later through a process of proof sheet elimination. Having eye contact with a Muslim woman in traditional attire is particularly intense, the attire really nails you to their eyes, the costume is so riven with the mystery of their beauty, they are so much more conscious of how to work eye contact. …
But yeah, more specifically, the 2 women in Kashgar …a standard August Sander double portrait rip-off….. even today it’s such a pleasure to cite uncle August by stealing his beauty. Only in this part of the world do Muslim women dress quite like that and only very rarely today. So how could I not photograph those women. Everytime I do street photography it’s always the kind of exciting personal experience that suggests I’m never going to bear witness to this event again. The primary weirdness is, of course, as you suggest, the facelessness powering its otherness. I was standing right in front of them, I shot with a wide angle lens. I could have reached out and touched them. They could have told me to fuck off and I would have. Given the absence of a key factor in my m.o….eye contact…I just went with their body lingo which seemed to invite scrutiny. It was a completely new and exciting experience. Because I’m basically a collector of experiences penciled in as photos. Kashgar in 86 is probably best represented by that work…the single image is worth being obsessed with…. but there is a lot of other pencil work that creates a more panoramic and layered understanding, it’s about ensembles of work and how they replay my time in Kashgar in 1986.

That’s it! The ‘fashion photography’ thing. Eye contact reacting in a volatile way with clothing!  And yeah, seeing that other photograph blew me away.  To me  it’s the  quintessential  ‘fashion photograph’   profoundly  and superficially speaking;   profoundly   because  you’ve a total  ‘fashion subject’ facing,   quite fiercely, the camera/viewer through veils and veils of clothing/styling; then superficially, indulge me here , it’s the clothing itself;   it is uncannily  what   Belgian designers would be showing one or 2 years   after you took  the picture: put together a Margiela jacket and a Dries van Noten skirt from the late 80s and that’s what it’d look like, place it in some semi-mythical Gurdjieff-land (ie something Hussein Chalayan or so)  and you’ve  got that whole long moment, arguably the last relevant one in western  fashion - and i’m particularly attuned to this because we’re doing this ‘fashion publication’ and almost everyone we’re talking to is referring to it in one way or another –  in a photo  created in a separate reality. So, now I wonder if by  “only in this part of the world do Muslim women dress quite like that” we’re seeing the same thing. What I’m getting is that combination of floral skirt or dress + masculine ‘power-jackets’ or pea-coats, nonetheless with a feminine cut/silohuette. It’s like something straight from the Antwerp Royal Academy’s graduate show, or JP Gaultier’s atelier or something, yeah, not to mention the Margiela/Magritte-ish face cover. I mean, what is it? You were there . are those actual men’s jackets ? like, the same jackets their husbands or brothers wear? I’m fascinated by what I see as a really intense kind of, and force even, of androgyny. —   Its complicated. Islamic fashion for women operates within the constraints and reactive pressure of a deeply conservative Muslim patriarchy. For instance most of the dressmakers in Western China in 1986 were men. The rough and ready country made sports jacket was a scene among the upwardly mobile men from Tashkurgan to Urumchi. The dressmakers would have co-opted the same SJ pattern and tweaked it to suit the female sensibility. The photo looks at that particular fashion shtick. Of the wealthier married Muslim woman. She owns the street, striding right down the middle, many eyes follow her. Like anywhere else in the world the girls watch the girls and the boys watch the girls. Her allure was powerful. The hand gesture, easily coping with the infidel photographer blocking her way with the camera. Those sexy ribbed woolen stockings disappearing under the hem of the undress me brocade skirt.

And again that same picture, how it’s arranged as an entity, well, to me there’s something more erotic in it then say in a Guy Bourdin or Helmut Newton work. And oddly it has pretty much the same elements and tensions . But , yeah , it’s ‘real’, whatever that means. So I really want to know how it felt taking THAT picture? How was it, standing there, being there, in front of her, feeling her and the space, feeling yourself there? How was it to BE that picture? —   Taking the picture was easy. She was so aware that she was on the catwalk of downtown Kashgar. I simply had to photograph her.

So, yes, it’s an energy is what I’m saying, it’s a way that fabric is being mobilised for something that is fashion and beyond it.  Your eye got it.  So, I wonder, have you actually, ever, shot fashion? —   No, I’ve NEVER shot fashion, but you know what, I’ve always thought about it, always had a keen interest for fashion photography that did not simply re-saddle that horse they have been photoshopping to death for well-dressed zombies these past 15 years. I think the Burberry shoots test the waters for control of the bottom feeders in the septic tank of slimeball fashion work out there today. I would LOVE to shoot fashion. I’m very inspired by fashion photography from the 60’s, heavy grain, mid-tones dominated by highlight and scaled-up contrast: black lips, suicide white skin, scimitar eyebrows. Kodak tri x pan push processed to the outer limits to value add the silver halide grain structure. This sort of manipulation is so much more emotive and exciting than using fake orgasm photoshop tools. I’ve been waiting years for someone to ask me to do fashion.

I am not letting you off the hook there.  I want something from you.  Now, though, I’m wondering if  there might be such thing as a ‘primal scene’ in a photographer’s life?  I mean the kind of ( ideal) fashion photography  you’re describing here  is pretty close to  the famous picture of Georgina (your first ‘relevant picture, no ?) you shot in the early 1970s.  For myself, I know there are only 2 or 3 types of photos I’m  taking,  and then i have 2 or 3 strategies of NOT taking those photos…of taking anti-photos.   One of my scenes was at this Sugarcubes concert, late 80s.   I’d just bought my first Nikon F-some-letter with the crappiest 35->200 zoom lens  and the guy at the shop gave me a crappy 2Xconverter as a bonus.  So I’m standing there in the middle of the audience quite far from the stage and for some reason Bjork is staring, and staring intensely, at me and mostly at me while doing her act. So I’m WTF and almost unconsciously reach for the camera,  and put on the stupid teleconverter too (I never used long lenses before and since ) and take a number of pictures.  Now those pictures,  the 2 that survived at least, for sure are a primal photo/primal scene for me.  It’s the intensity of her gaze; I’ve been deflowered, photographically speaking, by that famous icelandic vocalist.  And what I’m trying to say is that even with  my ridiculously long lens i can’t say I ‘shot’  her, and even today i don’t like the expression ‘to shoot’, meaning that, with that as a ‘primal scene’ my idea of taking a photo is that whatever, whoever is in front of the camera must be stronger that what’s behind it so if anything taking the photo is more of a suicide than a shooting. But, yes , this is my ‘primal’ problem … anyway , you start seing things differently. Like looking through these pictures  of yours  in West China several times before  realizing that all the guys are actually wearing  the (same)  Mao cap each styled differently - the brickie, the guy cutting meat, the kid with ‘street cred’ and sneakers, the dude coming out of the manhole, etc – yet there’s nothing typically Maoist about the characters here.  Is this some sort of subversion or had  the revolutionary zeal  died  out by then? —   In 1986 China was on the cusp of a considerable liberalisation.  However, there were still only 2 dress codes possible for the masses, one for the Han Chinese and one for the ethnic minorities. The Han population had a choice of blue, green or grey Mao uniforms. The People’s Liberation Army had a tweaked version of the same outfit, for instance the cap had a red star on it, the civilian cap had none. I noticed each person seemed to have their own attitude subtly imbedded in establishing something of the individual in the totalitarian strip. The ethnic minorities were allowed to dress in their own tradition. 1986 was the first year foreign travellers were allowed independent access to remote areas. So by the time I made it to far west China, where the Han population was then an absolute minority, the ubiquity of the uniform of the People’s Revolution gave way to this really elegant and exciting  and diverse Central Asian/Islamic  couture of the silk road circa 19th century.

Where  precisely  did you go  in China that time? —   China is a really big country, bigger than Australia. I had a brief look at places that simply had to be seen: Shanghai, Xian, Beijing, Guangdong. But the real attraction for me in China was to go as far west as I could, to the Takla Makan Desert, Urumchi, Kashgar, Turfan, to the silk road. It was a time machine. I landed on a dirt strip in the middle of a freezing sand storm at Kashgar in an Antonov24, a sort of fictional aeroplane, cute, funky, with bits falling off it, no door on the lav and you needed a torch to find it, tyres down to the canvas and one propeller misfiring. The airport was a mud-brick fort, the whole city a perfect catalogue of 18th and 19th century Islamo saracenic architecture. I felt so lucky to have been able to make the long journey west  and see that last vestige of history before modernity wiped it out.

And did it  feel different? I could be wrong but I kinda get the feeling  you’re swinging  between something  almost Robert  Frank-ish and  something August  Sander-ish and that dichotomy is hardly resolved.  Personally, I find this inconsistency fascinating and exciting but I imagine you might have felt  somewhat out  of your element? It has a  different feeling, a different flavour all-together to your previous India or SE Asia stuff.    —   Sure you are right, there is so much nostalgia invested in that work.  I couldn’t keep away from it, the trip back in time. The emerging post-revolutionary China is not there.  There is much more Sander in the work than Robert Frank. I was going through my own cultural revolution. At least I was processing that – I needed to ditch the horse that I rode into town on and find a new way of connecting to the world with a camera.   

What do you mean?  What horse did you jump on?   —   That horse is a little hard to define because it took so long to arrive and then suddenly it was there, fully formed. In 1986 I knew I wanted to cease chanting the same old litany, yet it took another 14 years to change-up. I was of course thinking about it all the time across those years. The influences were there: William Eggleston, Kishin Shinoyama, Tadayuki Kawahito, William Kentridge and of course Colors magazine. My students had a big influence over me. So many of them caught in the spell of David Lynch. His seminal film Blue Velvet set the essential fried tone, its mise en scene for under grads through the 90’s and still running. Interestingly through the film Lynch copiously quotes photographers Steven Shore, Larry Clark and Joel Peter Witkin.

At about the same time I started talking to you about these pictures I was reading Roland Barthes’  Chinese journals and he seemed to have a hard time finding both the  codes  of  ‘fashion’ (the ‘fashion system’) as well as the sexual  codes (the  sexuality of the period).  Yet looking through your pictures I cannot help feeling,  if not  sexuality ,    at least  a strong   ‘sensuality ‘ that completely  defies  the typical perception of the PRC at the time  (I grew up in Romania,  which was fairly close to China at the time and even there we had jokes like: what’s Chinese pornography?:  a picture of Mao with his top shirt button undone  etc ) there is definitely style and styling going on, a collar, a couple of  buttons …     —   Sure that’s the thing about fashion the way you can shape it to you own compeling need to make a statement.  If we were all subject to a dystopian splendour that required us to wear black garbage bin liners, we would still find a way to melt the hem, go v neck, backless, add the cod-piece.

Is what you saw, what you shot, because you were at the periphery, and Barthes  went bang to the heart of it in Beijing.   —   Yes of course, I can understand Barthes predicament – Beijing was so heavy, so controlled in that awful Orwellian nightmare way. The further west you went the power of the state waned, individuals entered the experiential mix offering the seduction of  a counter revolutionary moment.

Hmm, counter-revolutionary as revolutionary of sorts … Let’s move.  You  had a big show in Japan, when was it? Late 80s? How was that?    Where was it,  in Nara somewhere?  Was it one of those museums that had been built recently during the bubble?  How did you feel your work was perceived at the time? I mean I feel  Japan goes through these cycles  where  for a short while  there  is a reasonably raw,  straight perception of stuff,     then it moves through much longer  periods where (the same) stuff gets re-framed and re-re-framed    which is to say neutralized.  I know for example  quite a few famous international  ‘street-artists’, in recent years,  complaining that  when they get invited to Japan they’re always asked to do their gig in a  department store and the like rather than how they’d normally do it.   —   I had a big show at the Nara Sogo Dept store, they had a MUSEUM on the top floor. It was organized by a Japanese benefactor friend of mine called DANGERMOUSE…she was dangerous. A Rich girl, never worked a day in her life. She was freakishly good at juicing obligation owed to her family by others in high places. Money was no object in staging the show. I asked how many photos they wanted for the catalogue, she said “all of them, it’s a museum Max”…it was a 250 photo exhibition. They put us up at the old Imperial Hotel, the emperor Hirohito had stayed there. It had the most expensive laundry service in the world. I literally had to hide my used clothes otherwise they would confiscate the and launder them and charge you $500 for 2 y fronts and a pair of socks. I’m so glad I was with Dangermouse, she saved me from the extortion racket by playing very un-japanese hardball with the Manager. Dangermouse lives in a convent now.

Hmm, if Dangermice hadn’t gone to convents when the bubble burst  we might have had been able to produce this publication in Japan as originally intended i guess.   —   Yes, Dangermouse would have been perfect! But she was burned out and bankrupt by the turn of the century.  

But in a sense it’s thanks to this Dangermouse character  that we’re having this conversation now.   Since it was on finding again  your ‘Made in Japan’ book – the rather epic indeed Nara exhibition catalogue (from now i shall call it the Dangermouse book ) – in a second hand shop that got me looking at your stuff in a fresh way sometime last year.  Hey I don’t know if you recall  but i proposed to you in 2000 or so we do an exhibition together and theme it sharply  ‘ The human Eye  vs  the sick eye’   or something like that;  having as key images your famous  ‘Human Eye’  picture (actually  the cover  of the Dangermouse book?)    vs some picture I’d taken at  the time  on crappy APS film – a dead format – of  similar anatomical  casts  but of toracomas and other horrible eye diseases,    and you politely declined,  not the idea of having an exhibition  but having that particular theme/angle  to the exhibition…    So yeah, with my  anti-’human  eye’  rant  at the time  I was going against  something that now i think wasn’t really what you were on about to start with. I mean I was going against some basic ‘humanist photography thing’ that was  I felt  a dominant thing in your work, at least in the way it was edited and presented up to a certain point.  But yeah you’ve amazed me  several times by subtly or not so subtly reinventing yourself,  like in the late 90s or so  when you started  printing  ‘70’s  stuff ,  stuff well known as B&W prints   in color,  because you had actually shot them in color   and all of a sudden  what i considered to be more or less ‘hippy stuff’   looked as  fresh  and ‘now’  as  what say Tillmans  was doing at the time, it was,  like  twenty-something years ahead of its time     and had to wait till  the mid 90s when  color  was re-accepted into (more mainstream) art-photography.
So,  anyway, and this goes back to the start of this conversation, looking at the second-hand  Dangermouse  book  last year one picture struck me ,  it was the one of the 2 aged, i assume,  Muslim women  in China.  They  are standing somewhat  diagonal to the camera, while still facing it, and their faces are entirely covered — I like that tension and have to say, personally, I prefer it to your more resolved ‘humanist ‘  stuff so it struck  me that you must actually have a lot more stuff like that and that   the classic  ‘Max Pam’ kind of stuff was just a way of showing stuff  rather than  what  you were about   –   and you had already shown this with the color pictures…    —   You have that book?!!!. it’s like rocking horse shit, basically only ever made available in Japan, they printed 2000 copies, maybe they sold 200 and the other 1,800 volumes were converted to tofu. Yes Human Eye was the Dangermouse project only she had no creative involvement in. Her creativity was focussed on safe cracking, super steep handling fees and stratospheric consultancy fees. No Dangermouse, no project, she had a take no prisoners approach to dealing with the Japanese Patriarchy. I had 4 different female translators/assistants over the 2 week period in Nara, all of them flung into a blazing suribashi and disposed of for some transgression on Dangermouseworld. I had complete creative freedom on doing the Human Eye catalogue. It was published the same year as Going East (1992) .

But what about that idea of another Max Pam, of many other Max Pams…how does that sit with you?  Is this my imagination?  (And I know it doesn’t matter if it is, we still live textually after all)    —   There are many Max’s and I do work with some of them. For instance with my enduring connection to things, objects, artefacts grew from the comfort and pleasure derived from toys as a child. A model kit of a World War 2 Nazi Air Force fighter plane could keep me occupied for weeks on end. This toy from that era is a perfect example of one of the first flat packaged consumables on the market in the second half of the twentieth century. Like a complex Ikea product it came with a set of detailed and inexplicably vague assembly instructions. The act of assembly with its components of extruded plastic, fixed in place with a clear gel glue that made you high was an early introduction to Narcosis & Sculpture 101. Years later at one of those inexplicable, cathartic emotional crossroads in life which found me searching for direction and validation I went back to the toyshop and bought my ship of love. Months later, my art therapy complete, I had my finished and painted Airfix model of the SS Lusitania. Having collaborated with my children on various photographic shoots of our own making, little adventures with toys really. I recruited the eight-year-old Jack Pam to be my model for the Lusitania photograph. I arranged Jack centred on a manhole cover at the bottom of our very steep street in London’s Muswell Hill. It was an unusually foggy morning, just about perfect for the act of black and white photography. My own unresolved yearning. Jack and the model ship which in life had suffered its own tragic history. The world we sailed through and the car accelerating down the hill fast, threatening to turn Jack into a hood ornament. The lighting and climatic atmospherics of North London all combined for the photograph as theatre finale to the model Lusitania opus.

Yeah, there is definitely something very ‘physical’ though about a photography itself, the more digital we go the more we feel it it seems so i can see how you’d work with that Max. Now, since we’re back on the street, how are you actually approaching people you don’t know?  You’re not talking, I assume. You’re moving, you’re gesturing.  How does this feel?  How is your body working in these relationships?  Are you even aware of it? —   In answer to this I need to go back in to the beginning of the real photolife. My first photographs of any significance were made at art school in the London of 1970-71. In early 1971 I discovered the work of Diane Arbus in the school library for the first time. I was totally taken by the raw forensic style of her work and the loaded quality of her subject matter, all perfectly balanced in square format. I knew I had to trade in my Pentax Spotmatic for a Hasselblad as soon as I had the funds. You pick up the camera and know this is the camera you’re meant to have. There’s no intellectual thing at work here. You pick up the camera, it fits, it’s waist-level, you can compose; it just feels right, you immediately have that connection with Diane one of the truly great artists of the 20th century. Right away I discovered this new camera offered me the test site for my own search for identity. I was in love with the lover of my roommate. She was majoring in fashion at the same art school. The beautiful Georgina (you mentioned that shot before), she was the first real portrait for me, it happened very quickly, that serve and return thing you get when you meet someone and what passes between you is a silent agreement, often but not always sealed by a smile. That mobility and negotiation used on my first good photo is still unfolding for me today.

I love that description! Beautiful! Is love a part of all your work? Love in a weird, transient, temporary sense?  Is your work a history of passing loves?  In a broad sense of course.   I mean you are never a mean or a critical photographer. You photograph what you like, what you love, what you want more of.  And, well , here’s my answer about that ‘primal scene’, i guess. … Related to this …have you ever had the feeling, the rightness, taken a shot and then had something happen, half way through, once you shot was taken maybe, that made you rethink your initial feeling?  … I also wonder what the fact that you shoot film does.  I imagine if you were shooting digital there’s that thing of being tempted to check the camera to look at the pic, and then you’d lose the person, and whether that would matter?   —   Shooting film is such a different process to working with a digital camera. When I shoot film I’m completely reliant on that first thought best thought mindset, it locates me fully in the experience. It’s a very satisfying way to work. You don’t know what you are going to get, but who cares, its all about the moment, the excitement and drama of being in the moment. Working with a digital camera degrades the immediacy of experience. The moment you press replay, you lose the moment, its gone forever. Reviewing work on the screen the moment after you have completed an act of photography suggests you don’t back yourself.  It invites you to become more anal and less inventive as a photographer. If the picture is seemingly not quite perfect you can flog it to death by shooting another 52 versions of a moment that has already gone. Also intimacy is often removed as you show the other players around you the results of your unique brilliance on screen. I dunno, It may suit some people. I know people who like watching themselves make love in the mirror, filming it as they go, on the I phone. If I’m slobbing it I’ll shoot digital. I’ve been a slob quite a bit lately.

Let’s go back again to the beginning of the end, the end of the beginning… What about   your own  relation  to fashion ?    There’s one self-portrait of you in front of the Taj Mahal or something like that  and you look  quite the stunning young Yves Saint Laurent . —   You mean the mirror self-portrait at Ajmer, at the Amber palace in 1971. There was a very particular kind of look I cultivated then, about belonging to a sub-culture. When I think about the travellers to the East I most wanted to connect with then, visual recognition was important. There were lots of guys wearing mascara, pencil line moustaches, the cumberband, the bandanna, the puffy shirt, camel riding footwear, fair bit of ethnic bling. Refugees from a Pirates of Samarkand movie. There was no Lonely Planet guide, there were no back packers, no globalisation, no BIG aeroplanes, no mass tourism. When you travelled to the east you vanished into another world, you dressed like the locals who all seemed to dress like pirate movie extras. Maybe you didn’t see or meet someone from the West in weeks, but when you did, you could see right away they were playing the same escapist game. Yes the young YSL, it’s the glasses I wore. They were his.

And any advice  you might have for fashion photographers ?? —   For the questing young fashion photographer the advice is no different to the questing young artist with a camera. You need to mine your own particular sets of weirdness. We all have them. Take the lid off, grab a few issues and work with them. Pretty soon you will find authenticity and originality flow into your work. For a how to do it guide simply begin by ripping off photographers you admire and then gradually ease onto your own authentic horse and ride it without regard or favour to any fashion mag editor. Never forget it’s your horse, not theirs to command.

dec. 2011 // all photos Max Pam

You design for Hermès in China and you also have your own brand, Boundless. What is your background? I entered Northwest Textile College (Xibei Fangzhi Xueyuan) in 1986 to study fashion design, and after graduation in 1990 I stayed in the college working there for 7 years. In 1999 I got offered to work in Shanghai for Chen Yifei clothing studio, so I moved to Shanghai, where I have lived until now. From 1999 to 2002, I worked for Chen Yi Fei studio, then became freelance for a while, and in 2005 I started my own studio, Parallel, and set up my brand, Boundless.
Did you have much international experience before joining Hermès? Our school in Xi’an has a partnership with the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, and they helped us set up the training school and sent teachers to China. I assisted the Belgian teachers, helping them teach and prepare their classes; it was a good experience. After that, I interned for 3 months in a haute couture clothing company in Rome.
How is it to work for a European brand? Shang Xia Hermes is based in Shanghai, and most of the people working there are Chinese. I feel that what interests me most is sourcing original material and researching handcrafting skills. There are challenges too, since in China we still lack experience in dealing with luxury products. We need French designers or consultants to direct us.
How does it feel to design for somebody else? I started my own brand before joining Shang Xia, and I’m trying to keep it. Shang Xia has certain codes that must be followed. It is interesting researching new fabrics and material and visiting handcrafting shops. For designing, we have some freedom but we also need to listen to the art directors, and I don’t mind that I don’t have my name on the brand. I have my own brand to realize my own ideas. I think that is an OK balance. I need something from Shang Xia and I need something from Boundless too.
In general, is there a lot of European influence in your work? Yes. Firstly, I think that I was influenced by Europe from working with the Belgian teachers. That was very important for me. Then my three months internship also influenced me a lot.
You mentioned Martin Margiela as an important designer. Martin Margiela is one of my favorite designers. He is so important to me because he changed the way I view clothes. He has a unique approach to clothing. He finds inspiration from the very idea of clothing itself beyond any specific clothes as such. This deeply inspired me. Besides, his design is grounded in his daily life in Belgium or Paris, while at the same time concerned with philosophy. That is interesting and inspirational.
Where do you look for inspiration for your own design outside Hermès? Boundless’ main inspiration is from two sources: one is the Chinese way of looking at things; the philosophy. Also the techniques of Chinese cutting, very flat cut, no draping or darts… it is interesting to see how the Chinese make clothes. Also traditionally we have different mentality of how we look at the body. Both Chinese and Japanese, we think the body should be covered, not shown to people. From ancient times Chinese and Japanese clothes were very loose. You cannot see the body directly. The materials were quite soft, normally made of silk cotton or linen. You can feel the shape of the body but you don’t actually see it. That enables more imagination. Sexiness is expressed that way but not through the act of seeing. It is a different mentality and that is why we make clothes different from Europeans. Europeans tend to think that people should be proud of their body, so one function of the garment is to help show the form of the body, hence they make the hip part or the breasts look bigger, and invented cutting and sewing skills and techniques to realize these effects. Another inspiration is ordinary life. It is interesting to see how everything is mixed: western things, Chinese things, old things, new things. Actually, it is quite a mess. Beijing is a mess. Sometimes I like this mess. It is bad taste, but interesting, and has much power.
I agree. Things are still arriving to this country so everybody is figuring out how to use what styles and all. In Europe we have a proper context for everything. Certain people wear certain garments. Here you see for example people with totally different backgrounds wearing the same garments. It is both funny and it makes you think of the meaning of things. How do you feel about design in general in China? Can China be the next Japan? The general situation now in China is active, full of chances. The economic boom generates more demand, which enables more opportunities for designers, but the general design level is not high. So far it is not comparable to Japan. The current situation of fashion designing in China is more or less similar to the contemporary art in the 1980s and 90s… Artists at that time tried all kinds of styles from the West; now the fashion designers are doing the same. They copy every style from London or Milan or Paris… All styles can be found in China except their own style. I trust that in 10 years this will change. Besides the designers’ influence, there is the customers’ influence. Chinese people are into big brands like LV… Even big name avant-garde designers may find it difficult to sell their products. Many rich people like to consume big brands from Europe. It is a fact. Even not so wealthy people who cannot afford big pieces would rather buy small items from big names. Many tourists and students studying overseas, buy lots of those during discount season. Also many online-shops act as a middle man for European products and charge fees. All in all it shows that when consuming fashion, Chinese consumers are not considering design or shapes or material but the brand name or their faces or social status. I do marketing for my own little brand and at the same time work for Hermès. I can see the difference. My brand sells in some private shops in Beijing and Shanghai; it has a small number of products, but I do feel that more and more people are interested in such products made by Chinese local designers. On the other hand, Shang Xia Hermès is a luxury brand and only sells in Shanghai. And it is directed to wealthy people only. These customers don’t consider the money they’re spending when buying Shang Xia Hermès… I don’t expect this to change in the near future, I am afraid. It is not a mature consuming attitude; it is worrisome. Maybe in five to eight years something might change.
Everything in China is moving quickly… in 5 or 10 years it will be incredible. And many students go aboard to study fashion. Altogether, there are more than one million Chinese studying abroad. It is true that many students go abroad. I think it’s good. One reason is that their parents have more money to support them while studying overseas. At least they will learn about techniques and the procedures of the fashion industry. It helps to improve the level… In my opinion, the most important thing is that they find their own way of viewing things. Personally I wish students can find themselves, form their own attitude to fashion design. Second important thing is to pay attention to the quality.
How would you describe your work? There is the type I called flat, learned from Chinese cutting and the mentality of how we look at things. Flat cutting is the trademark of traditional Chinese and East Asian ‘couture’. I also got influence from Japanese vintage, like how to set the positions of neck and arms, because in this way when people wear the clothes they got the twist or turning of the fabric, so when you create the proper form and the positions, even if you don’t make a twist shape or sew it in a certain way, you still get the effect. That is the Chinese way of thinking – you don’t make the finished garment itself, you make the system to generate it; the thing is not fixed but naturally comes out of the environment that you create. In Europe you can use the draping technique to make the form – you shape it perfectly the way you want it – even you take off it to hang it on the rack, the shape is still there. But for my clothes, if you take it off from the body, it becomes flat.You don’t see the shape or plissé any more. That is very Chinese – we don’t make the plissé or the form, we just use different position of the neck and arms and let the body do the turning of the fabric.
Did Issey Miyake inspire you? Yes, I got much influence from Issey Miyake and I need to work hard to get away from him. Otherwise I will be in his shadow. In general now I try to find first hand material rather than look at other designers’ work.
What about other Japanese designers? Comme des Garçons and Yamamoto are my favorite designers. I learnt a lot from them. They really set up Japanese fashion style which is really great. Before them, there was only one standard from Paris, after them there was two standards, and later came another standard from Belgium. I went to Japan three times, though very briefly, but I could feel the Japanese are strong at design. Maybe it is to do with their character. They are organized. They like to control things… even nature. Japanese do like nature, but under control. Look at the bonsai, the trees they plant in the backyard, are all controlled, height and shape. It is not like in America where they would just let the trees grow.The difference is that in Japan they take good care of trees and garden plants and keep them looking impeccable, while in China, they just leave them there without any care. It is so dirty.There’s a big difference between Japanese and Chinese. That is why Japanese make everything organized, everything is controlled by humans, and everything is designed. Somehow it is a bit too much and don’t feel relaxed. Of course the environment is really clean, but maybe for certain things it is too much. But due to such character, they have great fashion and graphic design.
At the UCCA shop they were selling a skirt you had made from an IKEA towel. As a Swedish person I know this kind of towel well: every family has it in their kitchen. When I was a kid, we also had it and saw it every day. When I saw it in the UCCA shop, I saw something out of place. The IKEA tag was still there on the skirt. I had been looking for something like this in China, more than just the surface and the look, something more conceptual… Though IKEA is originally from Sweden, now it is in China, so it’s also meaningful for us. My studio uses lots of IKEA furniture. It is important for Chinese life, especially for young people. It helps us make life look nice. So IKEA is also part of our life now even if it is from Sweden. That is why I choose things from IKEA, like a towel or the print fabric. The towel is often used in the kitchen to clean and dry the bowl. I think it is perfect for summer to make a dress or top, because it is cotton and it is easy to wipe the sweat off with it. Also I like cheap and low tech things. When I made the skirt, I kept the tag. I found that interesting.
Lots of fashion people like to buy branded things and they are proud of those brands, and would like to show the brands. But of course they are not proud of IKEA or cheap things. When someonebuys an LV bag they want a big label to show it is LV, but if it is IKEA they don’t want to show it is IKEA. That is the interesting twist of the whole branding part. So you left the tag on. I wanted to joke about those people, to tease them. I want to keep the IKEA tag on the dress and if you don’t like it, then just don’t buy IKEA.
In Sweden, if you visit a 20-something’s home, most of the furniture you see will be from IKEA, from second hand shops or from their parents’ house. You can recognize the furniture. If you use too much IKEA, we think it’s boring; it shows a lack of personality. What does IKEA mean in China? I think maybe it has a higher status here? I think in China it is a bit different. Normal Chinese from small towns or cities would still think IKEA is expensive. People from Beijing or Shanghai, white collar, can easily afford it. So most young people in big cities buy furniture from IKEA because in China there is no nicely designed and low priced brand for the massmarket. IKEA sells well just because it is low priced and nicely designed. In China, low price always means bad taste.
In China when you rent apartment, it will come with furniture. But things in the apartment are always really ugly and of low quality. Even if they look good when they’re new — sometimes they copy some designer’s or big label’s work — in a month or so, they will have broken or started to rust. So after living in China, I begin to really appreciate IKEA and understand its value. IKEA is important for young people because they care about style now. Also in Chinese big cities, people move fast. In a year many people would move two or three times. If they buy expensive furniture, then when they move to next place the furniture may not fit. With IKEA, at least it looks good even if it’s cheap. That is why they want it. Uniqlo is the same. Muji is a bit more expensive.
You live in Shanghai. In China most art and creative things are in Beijing. Why have you decided to live in Shanghai? When I moved in 1999, Shanghai was a good choice. Compared to Beijing then, it was easier to find fabric and clothes factories. Pattern makers were also better than in Beijing. In those years, the most important reason was Chen Yifei who gave lots of freedom to his designers, and his brand had a really good image. I didn’t have second thoughts deciding. Of course now for creative things like art and music and film, Beijing is a much better place. Shanghai is more commercial. But Shanghai is good for fashion because the business environment is good. And the central city area has narrow streets where individual designers can rent small shops. Individual designers firstly appeared in Shanghai, since they could rent a small shop for about 2000rmb, and start designing from there. They could live there and at the same time made money. It was a completely new way of thinking compared to before when all we could do is work for companies. Only in those years in Shanghai did people find that they could live and work in that way. Beijing had this later because it has wide roads and not so many narrow lanes that allow people to walk slowly and appreciate those individual designs. Recently though, fashion designers are more active in Beijing. The reason is that when they finish studying in Europe, they come back to Beijing and considering that here they have more media and more opportunities. That is how Beijing got more active recently.
Ai Weiwei recently said that Beijing is a dirty and inhumane city… if you were to make the choice today, what would it be? It’s a difficult question. I have been thinking about this for a few months. This is a very personal thing. Different people have different feelings about a city… But I agree with Ai Weiwei. If you live a normal ordinary life, Beijing is not convenient. But if you like music and art, or you like to meet different kinds of people, then it is a good choice. If you want to have a more relaxed middle class life, then Shanghai is a nicer choice.
Let’s talk about design again.. For me the three most important designers are Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto and Maison Martin Margiela. However they are all gone now. MMM is Diesel now. Yamamoto is bankrupt. CdG still has this anti-fashion image, but they are making purses and this Play thing… I think it is normal though. CdG, Rei Kawakubo… they are old, and it is natural that they don’t make their collections as fresh as they used to. Everybody will have that day. Time moves on. I respect these three designers. But if they want to stop working I understand. Actually it may be better to stop. Especially for Yamamoto, I didn’t like his last collection much.
Maybe we are looking for something else. We don’t want just famous names or labels anymore; maybe we want something that’s personal too… How do you see the future of design? It is a big question! One thing for sure is that everybody is waiting for a surprise. Japanese fashion is gone, Belgian fashion is gone, the Antwerp six, anti-minimalism. That’s why people are all waiting. I can think only for China, but here we can’t put our hopes on the big companies. They make lots of money, but the only thing they can change is to have a better working place and better wages for workers. Some of my friends own companies, they also had harsh years in the past 2 or 3 years because they had to pay higher salaries to workers and they had to make their prices higher. For individual designers, they still need to find a way to work better. There are four ways to improve. One is to go abroad, like Uma Wang. She did well, she’s from Shanghai, now she has shops in Milan and London. Joyce is also doing well in Beijing, finding her own way. The second way is to open their own shop to sell their stuff, like me. The third way is those who do well and in 2 or 3 years start to make enough money and go to department stores to open shops. The last way is to use the Internet to sell. Decoster just opened a concept store, Vera Zaishi Wang… Everybody is looking for the right way to work.

jan. 2012