MANY OF THEM [issue] #3 [title] THIS MUST BE THE PLACE – 35,00 € - SOLD OUT
35,00 € – SOLD OUT ︎
“THERE’S NO REAL OBJECTION TO ESCAPISM, IN THE RIGHT PLACES… WE ALL WANT TO ESCAPE OCCASIONALLY. BUT SCIENCE FICTION IS OFTEN VERY FAR FROM ESCAPISM, IN FACT YOU MIGHT SAY THAT SCIENCE FICTION IS ESCAPE INTO REALITY… IT’S A FICTION WHICH DOES CONCERN ITSELF WITH REAL ISSUES: THE ORIGIN OF MAN; OUR FUTURE. IN FACT I CAN’T THINK OF ANY FORM OF LITERATURE WHICH IS MORE CONCERNED WITH REAL ISSUES, REALITY.”
AND FINALLY, ARTHUR CLARKE (MINEHEAD, SOMERSET, ENGLAND, THE UNITED KINGDOM DECEMBER 16, 1917 - DIED MARCH 18, 2008).”
In Issue #3 of MANY OF THEM, French designer and current creative director of HERMÈS , CHRISTOPHE LEMAIRE, talks about how spending part of his childhood in Senegal influenced him, and reflects on the cultural obsession with images, that nowadays are very one-dimensional and pervert the work of numerous fashion designers. Founder of PELICAN AVENUE, CAROLIN LERCH, expresses the values behind the Sierra Newon collection, which was inspired by the idea of radiation and how light reacts and spreads. LERCH also mentions how the collection’s imagery, made with 3D modelling software, has something very “Vegas” about it, as it’s commercial but also spiritual and mystical. Avant–garde tailor GEOFFREY B. SMALL writes the essay titled The State of the Fabric Industry Today in Fashion, which examines how fabric is a lot like food nowadays, as it has become an inescapable reflection of the ominous and dangerous realities of the accumulative effects caused by the corporate way of running the world, affecting everyone’s lives, health and safety. Head of menswear at ISSEY MIYAKE, TAKAHASHI YOSUKE, guides us on an adventure around Morocco, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan, through a selection of images he shot that inspired his latest show. In his most recent collection presented in New York, Out of My Mind, MIGUEL ANDROVER reflects about “repurposing”—a concept that HAROLD KODA referred to as something beyond customisation, recycling or upcycling. ADROVER also presents a personal portfolio containing intimate memories from Luxor, Cairo and West Bank–Sudan from his years in Egypt. Self–taught designer, MAURIZIO AMADEI, deliberates on how industrialisation is causing the homogenization of fashion businesses and states that small artisans are key in maintaining originality amongst labels. AMADEI also chats about his love for discovering new things, like Notu Iofu, a fabric made from bananas used to make kimonos in Japan. “Right now I would say I am an artist. Plain and simple. That’s how I feel”, declares SUSAN CIACIOLO in a conversation where she explains how she got her start in fashion assisting KIM GORDON and DAISY VON FURTH while doing collections for X–GIRL at the end of the 90s. At last, after having to stream the presentation of his 2012 Spring collection due to the tragic nuclear disaster of Fukushima, JUN TAKAHASHI, explains how his label UNDERCOVER has recovered and is ready to return to show in Paris. TAKAHASHI also reminisces on the correspondence he has maintained with COMME DES GARÇONS’ founder REI KAWAKUBO, which began when she contacted him after his first show in Japan in 1994 and has now been uninterrupted for over ten years.
In this edition, the publication develops special projects on art, gardering and an editorial perspective, MANY OF THEM also travels to the French commune of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, where co-founder and former editor of Purple Magazine, ELEIN FLEISS, recounts how she met OLIVIER ZAHM when she asked him to write a text for a petition against a Libération art critic, and delves on how they started their publication without any knowledge of graphic design, printing or advertising, but simply started talking about a group of talented artists they had around knew. As part of the PURPLE team, MANY OF THEM speaks in Paris to artist LAETITIA BENAT, who remembers how she began to work for PURPLE MAGAZINE after MAKOTO OHURI—who was doing the graphic design at the time for the publication—showed OLIVIER ZAHM and ELEIN FLEISS her drawing book, and reveals she is very happy of to be involved with her again on her new exciting editorial project, LES CHRONIQUES PURPLE. On the other side of the world, founder of COSMIC WONDER and Japanese artist, YUKINORI MAEDA, presents his lastest art projects Universal Reception, Universal Wavelength and Prayer created for the Inujima “Art House Project”, at the 2013 Setouchi Triennale. From his home in La Vallée de la Creuse, French gardener, landscape designer, botanist, entomologist and writer, GILLES CLÉMENT affirms that ecology has made us more conscious about the finitude of resources and assesses how a dictatorship of the market has transformed agriculture into an ecologically devastating machine. Lastly, American fashion designer and artist SOPHIE ANDES GASCON, attends COSMIC WONDER RESTAURANT, a project by YUKINORI MAEDA located at Jefferson Market Garden, in New York.
MANY OF THEM goes on to present a selection of the most important and influential film projects of the year. Upon winning best screenplay in 2012 at the Venice International Film Festival for his film Après Mai, OLIVIER ASSAYAS discusses how historical events, like May 1968, are difficult to represent in cinema and argues how for him movies are a meta-writing process, starting with the initial hint of an idea until the completion of the film. Thai artist and filmmaker RIKRIT TIRAVANIJA, talks about his film Lung Neaw Visits his Neighbours, a movie he conceived to be placed into the context of cinema rather than art and installation. TIRAVANIJA also introduces a portfolio titled Chiang Mai: Notes on the Sets and Other Characters based on photographs taken during the shooting of the film in the North of Thailand. Director and producer respectively of Le Capital, COSTA-GAVRAS and MICHÈLE RAY-GAVRAS, reveal that the idea for their film came from an eponymous novel by STÉPHANE OSMONT published in 2004, which they adapted and transformed into a script in collaboration with JEAN-CLAUDE GRUMBERG and KARIM BOUKERCHA. Also, the French cinema duo point out Nouvelle Vague as one of the main problems in France, especially now that we live in another era and in a different model of society. Mexican auteur CARLOS REYGADAS expounds how his film Post Tenebras Lux, shot in his own house in Tepoztlán, was made as a reaction to the excess of definition he finds in many digital images that surround us nowadays and elaborates on how painting gradually became something else when painters stopped recreating the world as it was, and saw that their aim was not to embrace graphic perfection. After a residency at the Contemporary Museum of Art in Moscow, filmmaker ANDRÉS DUQUE tells us how he decided to film Oleg y las Raras Artes, a movie about Russian composer OLEG KARAVAICHUK’s creative process, that takes place in San Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum, where the artist is allowed to access when it is closed to the public to play a piano created specifically for him. French director and artist, JOANA PREISS, inspects her first full-length feature film Sibérie, co-starring BRUNO DUMONT, and ponders on how she felt she was addressing the universal subject of a complicated couple’s story between a filmmaker and an actress such as, JEAN LUC GODDARD and ANNA KARINA or JOHN CASSAVETES and GINA ROWLANDS. Regarding her film Un Amour de Jeunesse, MIA HANSEN LÖVE explains how making fiction helps her understand destiny better and describes her process of writing as non-digital and chronological because her films are about the passing of time and the succession of scenes. And last but not least, Filipino filmmaker KHAVN DE LA CRUZ, delivers an essay titled This is not a Screenplay based on his latest film Ruined Heart: Another Love Story Between a Criminal and a Whore, illustrated by a series of photographs taken in Manila by SAM SAMORE which feature actress NATHALIA ACEVEDO wearing BERNHARD WILLHELM’s most recent collection.
MANY OF THEM also includes a dossier with five fashion stories encompassing varying fields of work produced in collaboration with the following artists; ELEIN FLEISS writes an intimate note on how she met the artist YUKINORI MAEDA and reveals how the first time she saw one of their presentations at the Centre Pompidou in 2000 she felt as if a new world was born. Also, she is photographed wearing The Solar Garden collection by COSMIC WONDER at her beautiful house in Saint–Antonin–Noble–Val, in a remote corner of the South West of France. From a correspondence initiated in August 2012, the Filipino filmmaker RAYA MARTIN puts forward a chapter–based structure as the starting point for a photographic series with COMME DES GARÇONS Fall 2012 collection by REI KAWAKUBO, entitled How to Disappear Completely. Meanwhile in Paris, accompanying a text by KARL LAGERFELD, French actress and filmmaker JOANA PREISS is snapped in COCO CHANEL’s apartment at 31 rue Cambon, the place where the legendary couturier spent some of the most important moments of her life. Not far from there, French musician CLARA DESHAYES visits La Gioconda at the Musée du Louvre in Paris wearing SAINT LAURENT by HEDI SLIMANE menswear Fall 2013 collection. To conclude, as a form of presentation for their collection titled Nº 48 Presuture, DESIREE HEISS and INES KAAG, from BLESS, share a selection of recipes by their close collaborators and friends including: JENNEFER ROSSI’s Cherry Cherry Cake and MATHILDA SÖDERBERG’s salad.
Additionally, with a subject closely related to this issue, SUSAN CIANCIOLO releases a documentary film, produced by MANY OF THEM and filmed and edited by SOPHIE ANDES GASCON featuring HAYA MARAKA, MARY BARONE, PATRICIA MEARS, CASSI GIBSON, WILLIE NORRIS, KIVA MOTNYK, SONIA STAGG, MARYAM NASSIR ZADEH and LILAC SKY CIANCIOLO.
Plus, multiple fashion stories presented in collaboration with: COSMIC WONDER, COMME DES GARÇONS, JUNYA WATANABE, ALAÏA, CHRISTOPHE LEMAIRE, SUSAN CIANCIOLO, CHANEL, DRIES VAN NOTEN, SAINT LAURENT, YOHJI YAMAMOTO, LIMI FEU, ISSEY MIYAKE, PELICAN AVENUE, UNDERCOVER, FINAL HOMME, MAURIZIO AMADEI, MIGUEL ADROVER, DANIELA GREGIS, PAUL HARNDEN, GEOFFREY B. SMALL, BERNHARD WILLHELM, HERMÈS, EATABLE OF MANY ORDERS and BLESS.
560 pages, 215 x 155 x 34 mm, softcover, printed in Spain, 2014.
Cover, YOHJI YAMAMOTO. High-tech green jacket, stripped long white cotton shirt, blue cotton trousers and black leather shoes, YOHJI YAMAMOTO. Photography, ANTONIO MACARRO. Stylist, PEDRO CANICOBA. Model, SEONGHYUN BYUN at Blow Models. These YOHJI YAMAMOTO pieces were photographed in March of 2012 in Paris, France
Back cover, COMME DES GARÇON SHIRT Spring-Summer 2014 campaign