SOME/FASHION : DEEPTI °016-017 "BROKEN FORMALITY"
Suicide Party: Sharp Glass Will Cut
'Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tension, like that of the bow and the lyre.'
Heraclites
Suicide Vest
Technical challenge, the Suicide Vest is the masterpiece of the collection. Made out of broken glass, it convenes some of the essential actions of a couturier: cutting through a material; stitching it together; moulding it to the shape of the human body. But glass is a stiff material, not a supple textile; safety glass is renowned for being uncuttable; it is furthermore impossible to stitch glass panels together. Through the power of art – or should we say the violence? –, the rigid and brittle material becomes smooth and ductile.
Yet, this technical success can’t be an end to itself: the object is the emblem of the collection, its totem. Much better: a manifesto. The Suicide Vest is altogether a piece of clothing that one can wear and an autonomous object, which states that the garment is an object per se and, as it happens, analogous to the body. Or even a body itself.
Body
If the object is a body, what kind of body is it?
A body which does not function, or which dysfunctions: rigid, crashed, pulverised.
Broken on the outside and empty inside. An armour without a knight. A body without organs. A vehicle without a soul.
When it is worn, things get worse. The Suicide Vest hinders the movements of the wearer and its sharp edges threaten to cut his flesh.
Inclusion
He who enters the showroom is invited to visit – to inhabit? – that container without a content, to give flesh and blood to it, to animate it. The exhibition space is nothing more than a Suicide Vest enlarged to the dimensions of a world: the obscure, underground cave of a Parisian workshop.
On the ceiling, an antique, narrow glass roof, and a few lightbulbs that give off a faint glow.
On the ground, juxtaposed, jagged slabs of broken glass.
All around, the nagging noise of a soundtrack, playing the sound of glass being broken in a loop.
Halfway, the Suicide Vest lies. What the visitor thinks he perceives there, in front of him and from the outside, is actually what he is already included in.
A body within a body.
Matrix
Emblem and manifesto, The Suicide Vest is also the matrix of the collection.
In their construction, the clothes incorporate glass and its fractures, its breaks, its cracks. The revers of the tuxedo jackets as well as the stripes of the pants are covered in broken glass: splinters to break formalism (“Broken Formality”). Other clothes incorporate in their 2 construction a seam shaped as a broken line (“Crash Seam”), which opens with the tension of the body and reveals the lining or the skin.
The break is thus ubiquitous: it reveals itself to the sight on the surface of the garment, it shapes it from the depths and even gives birth to a new kind of fabric (STITCH), the irregular stitching of which gives the impression that the fabric, transparent in some parts, is threadbare, or even torn : a new kind of non-woven fabric.
Suicide
The Crash Seam lets itself open up, the continuity unravel and the body appear – through cracks. The garment seems thunderstruck: the force and the shape of its effect echo. Because it tears itself apart, the piece of clothing looses what is supposedly its primary function: protection. Suicidal piece of clothing indeed, ruin of its purpose and structure. But that opening seam is also vital, as it opens in order not to break. The Crash Seam is a dysfunction that functions.
Continuity
There is an antidote to the suicide, the dereliction, the death carried by the Suicide Vest and embodied by the Crash Seam. It incarnates itself in another material, symmetrical to the broken glass, which is natural beeswax and technical wax: it covers, partly or entirely, some of the clothes. The revers and the stripes of the tuxedo jacket and pants can thus be covered either in broken glass or in wax.
Wax inverses the characteristics of glass: it is a continuous surface, that unifies instead of shatters; it is ductile instead of rigid; it is of animal and vegetal origin, not mineral; it is the product of a secretion, and not a combustion.
The relation between these two materials is also dialectal, as the couple formed by Zeus (thunder) and Hera (wax): they are as opposed as they are similar. Just like glass, wax makes the fabric more rigid; just like glass, wax makes the fabric shinier, more transparent and reflects light.
This dialectic is also that of the Suicide Vest. As well as a body collapsing, it is as an armour, a shield, a shell, which gives a feeling of might and strength. We wonder of what kind of body the Suicide Vest was the emblem: a body of a mighty frailty.
Broken Formality
Deepti breaks formalism both punctually and globally. Punctually, through the integration of unusual materials to her creations (glass/wax), and also because the wax used instead of satin on the tuxedo revers and stripes will fade away with time: Disappearing Formality. Globally, through the reconfiguration of the traditional tailoring silhouette, in which she finds inspiration – even though she distances herself from it – most notably in the emblematic lowering of pant crotches. Obvie meaning of the title of the collection.
The association of these two words (“Broken Formality”) must also be understood as the conflictual encounter of two antagonistic yet complementary movements. Formality is broken, certainly, but formality is also the antidote to fracture, to dismemberment. It is an exoskeleton that keeps one standing up, that holds together what never ceases to unravel, to fall apart, to walk the road to ruin: the human body.
'Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tension, like that of the bow and the lyre.'
D E E P T I °016-017 'Broken Formality'
Photography by James Cheng Tan for SOME/THINGS
Text by Christian Michel for SOME/THINGS | Translation by Solenne Blechet