Blank name tag loose military fatigues
This is an interesting presentation by No Editions at the Maison de Métallos in Paris pretty deep unto the Rive Droit close to Belleville, but you really have to read between the lines before you understand the various concepts behind the showroom presentation.
Blank name tag escapee prison garment in Japanese denim
For one No Editions is a brand that is used to its ‘logo and word (name) to express negation, dissent, denial, or refusal’ as our press paper reads, and key topics in the SS16 collection are the global pollution of oceans as well as global data retention. Designer activism if you will. We noticed a similar social activist topic earlier in the week with Walter van Beirendonck who named his show Electric Eye, and in London with Vivienne Westwood, but here at No Editions the devil is in the detail. We’ll explain it.
For each of the models is wearing a doggy tag, a soldiers tag, but the tag is large and bland and blank and shiny and holds no name, so as to indicate the nameless state of people in the age of total internet surveillance and data retention and registration. Each tag is made of solid silver, gold, platinum and other alloy which is used by Silicon Valley to harness, conduct, and store all our personal data. We no longer have a name, but we have become superconducting materials ourselves in the form of just a pretty large and visible nameless gold tag, so that someone can hold all our information, somewhere in a data warehouse in some far off and well–cooled and unknown region of the globe.
But that is not all there is to it, because interestingly where all individual identity has been erased, style and fashion makes up for this total recall at No Editions. For each individual item on display is actually completely unique, yet not couture. Each individual item exists in unique series of 60 to 90 different pieces, all adjusted, not individualized or personalized, but each one different than the next or the former, so that our individuality is no longer expressed through personality, but through our numbered prison wear and garment. A serial number has been assigned to us, by grace of our choice of style and fashion, and indeed, each item on display carries not only an individual serial number on the inside of the fabric, but actually a complete description of how the item was designed and made.
All sandals for No Editions made by Xero Shoes
Wow, that’s heavy, but the French would say ‘touché’ because the No Editions designers have made a serious point. If prêt-à-porter was the beginning of democratization in fashion, perhaps this new design MO (modus operandi) of serializing our identities through unique style items in different series is the scope and vision of the future.
And this is precisely why any self-respecting person today needs a serious stylist. Not so that you can show character and personality- this is so passé, so very 20th century, – or even your own style, but so that you can fit well into the series in which you are currently playing and moving around. Let the identity wars begin.
Post by Sandro and photos by Mous.
