April 6, 2014 |
PETER PILOTTO: STILL IN PRINT
Coco Chanel once stated that only those with no memory insist on their originality. It’s a maxim the fashion industry seems to have taken to its heart, obsessed as it is – and has been for 30 years or so, admittedly – with retro and revival, historical riffing and ripping-off. Of course, Coco could spout that kind of inflammatory bile without worrying too much about what copyright lawyers said. She was a reference, rather than a referee. Plus she lived long enough to tell everyone she invented everything.
But over the past decade or so remarkably little has exploded onto the fashion scene as brave or new, particularly by way of overarching themes or aesthetic movements. There is, however, one thing that strikes you – or at least strikes me – as fundamentally of the 21st century. That’s digital print. Those twirly, whirly, computerised graphics that have invaded every facet of fashion. They’ve been engineered around the human body, first refining it, then redefining it. They’re a runaway retail success, and they make a catwalk impact as well. They are, arguably, the defining aesthetic statement of the 2010s.
The eye of that swirling digital cyclone is to be found in a surprisingly minimal concrete space in east London. Decoration is sparse, to say the least. There are a few sheets of coloured Plexiglas in shades of cerulean, cerise and acidic chrysoprase green, and a couple of fluttering snippets of paper with magnified views of orchid lace. And lots of samples of those Spirograph prints.
It’s the studio of Peter Pilotto, the design duo who have helped lead that digital (print) revolution since they presented their first collection for spring/summer 2008. Peter Pilotto is a bit like Marxism – bear with me. It’s a revolution under the name of one man, but it’s actually the work of many. The two instigators are Pilotto himself, and Christopher De Vos: there were also a few dozen other studious types anxiously slaving away over sewing machines when I visited their workplace. Just as many were crouched over hot iMacs, sketching, stretching, dodging and burning Pilotto’s trademark patterns into existence, the new division of labour in fashion at the start of the 21st century. Work was well underway on their autumn/winter 2014 show. After all, fashion never sleeps – and neither must Peter Pilotto, man or company, with this workload.
On top of the seasonal grind of catwalk and pre-collection, there’s more on the Pilotto plate now: the duo are creating a range for Target, released in February. “We treated Target as almost another range, rather than, ‘Oh, let’s just do a best of’,” says De Vos. “We put a lot of energy into that, but a certain type of energy. For the show we wanted to push it even more. Having the opportunity to play with all those laces – obviously you ended up with something much more exquisite. And a higher price point… ” He pauses, and Pilotto takes over: “It was almost a subconscious thing, it wasn’t really so calculated. It wasn’t, ‘Let’s be strategic about what we sell.’ It was just what we felt.”
What Pilotto and De Vos felt this season was lots and lots of colour, and print, and texture, and textile. The first two are, of course, what their label has become known for. It’s exactly what Target have tapped them to create – half a dozen leaked images of the range suggest succulent, saturated colours and eye-popping mashes of print. You can’t really tell what the clothes are made of, which I guess is the clever part. These frocks pop on Style.com and Instagram, but getting hold of them and examining them inside and out will be a very different experience. Look with your hands, not with your eyes.
That’s definitely what Pilotto and De Vos wanted with their spring/summer 2014 mainline gig. If digi print is often dismissed as, literally, two-dimensional – made for the LED screen rather than for real life – their spring show was all about three dimensions. “We were looking a lot at artists working with light, this whole idea of perspective,” says Pilotto in measured, rehearsed tones. It’s a fair few months after their London Fashion Week show, so they have the explanation down pat. It’s smoothed out, the references as refined as their clothes. “Cinematic perspective, perspective achieved with light and shadow… working with classical patterns, like lace, but liked the idea of adding depth and perspective.” Depth – that’s what people are looking for in fashion. It’s often the accusation thrown at print specialists that the gowns come second to the graphics.
This season, Pilotto and De Vos took a bold step forward, pumping out their silhouette into short, swingy mini-crinis that flared sharply from the waist, like light beams refracted through prisms. “It was a hard collection, getting those shapes right,” says De Vos. “They had to be convincing,” states Pilotto emphatically. “And modern and light. It had to be light, not like a heavy, historic thing.” They were light. And of course, they were rainbow coloured, a reflection of the art of James Turrell and Ken Price, who were key reference points for the dazzling hues that coloured everything from lips to toenails. “What we do is always about the technique and the colours,” reasons De Vos. “The colours always come from artists… And the other aspect is what textiles, and technologies in textiles, are available to us.”
It hasn’t always been quite so clean-cut. Pilotto’s collections have referenced everything – literally. Their influences have spanned everything from standard fashion fodder such as 1970s Yves Saint Laurent, to the Japanese, LED-festooned monster trucks dubbed Dekotora – a combination of Bob the Builder and Blackpool Illuminations. Technology, however, has always been key, the power behind those prints, Photoshopped to the nth degree.
But technology isn’t what immediately leaps to mind when you do get a handle on this collection’s surfaces, all fluttering lace, intricate boning and seaming and painstaking hand embellishment. “Exquisite,” was the entirely accurate adjective De Vos used to denote layers of embroideries and laces that create a trompe l’oeil of trademark Pilotto print. It feels handworked, but it’s actually a triumph of technology. “This season we were so excited because we could work with lace in a way that is very similar to the way we work on prints. A much wider way of working with lace. Having not the restrictions that you classically have, with the small repeats. That’s exciting,” says De Vos. “They even call it digital embroidery!” interjects Pilotto excitedly. “It’s quite important to see this collection up close. There were so many different ways things were made – print underneath, organza screen-printed then embroidered in another colour… ”
The mind boggles at that litany of technique. It also boggles at the back-and-forth notion of a staccato Peter Pilotto conversation, both Pilotto himself and De Vos excitedly adding, interjecting, contradicting. It’s less a tennis match, more like a game of squash, the conversation ricocheting around in every different direction, with yours truly scrambling to catch up. It takes a while to get the names right: Pilotto is the slighter, shorter one with close-cropped dark hair; Christopher De Vos is taller, blond hair swept to one side. Both sport chins tastefully speckled with designer stubble. They sort of look like two-thirds of a boy-band Belgium might enlist as their entry for the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest.
Belgium, incidentally, is where Pilotto and De Vos met, at the esteemed Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. It’s also where they were first introduced to the print medium they would come to master. “It was a good way to find oneself,” says Pilotto of the education system in Antwerp, which is notoriously rigorous, churning out stars including Haider Ackermann, Martin Margiela and the epoch-defining Antwerp Six. It was a member of that ever-influential half-dozen, Walter Van Beirendonck, who first showed Pilotto how to print. “Van Beirendonck was one of our professors, and he introduced us to a digital printer,” begins Pilotto. “He was one of the first ones to do it,” adds De Vos. “The problem at the time, when he started, was that you could only print on super-synthetic fabrics. You could only do catsuits, basically.” De Vos grins widely.
Maybe he can see the Deee-Lite visions spiralling through my head, perhaps the misconception many people still hold about digital print. Namely that it’s for Global Hypercolor-ed cybergoths and Lady Miss Kier. It actually was for early adopters such as Van Beirendonck, whose label W< (standing for Wild and Lethal Trash) was known for a brash, colourful aesthetic that chafed at the boundaries of received good taste. “That almost dictated what he did in the 1990s,” continues Pilotto, as if justifying Van Beirendonck’s flights of fashion fantasy. “He introduced us to this one printer in Belgium… ” – then De Vos – “…and by that time technology had evolved, so they could actually start printing on silks and different bases… ” – then back to Pilotto – “…so it was exciting for us to explore. It was never during our studies the main thing, it was just an exciting task. We did a lot of embroideries, too. We had separate collections, but both a certain richness of textile.”
Pilotto’s graduation in 2004 kick-started the brand. “When I graduated there were stores that wanted to buy my collection – Maria Luisa and some Japanese stores,” he casually states, intoning the influential, career-making Parisian boutique easily and breezily. Although said boutique closed in 2010, it still sells online. And it still sells Peter Pilotto. “The few printed things in that collection were the ones that I focused on producing,” continues Pilotto. “And somehow I was like, ‘Ah! That’s such a good way to personalise a collection.’” That pinpoints the appeal of digital print for the current generation of designers: it’s an accessible, feasible way to create a stand-out product. Lesage embroidery is rarely something a green-eared, barely graduated name can afford to lavish on a collection; ditto the cash it takes to weave up metres of custom-designed fabrics. But with Photoshop, ingenuity and a printer cable, a designer can create something unique to them.
Pilotto was still working alone – although he and De Vos first crossed paths in 2000. “As students our work was always very motivating… There was almost a healthy competition between us,” says Pilotto today with a smile. “We advised each other throughout our studies… ” he pauses, reconsiders – “We criticised each other!” Pilotto began his label in 2004, De Vos graduated the year after, moving to London, where Pilotto followed. More of that ricochet action. Then in 2007, they began to collaborate. At least initially, the idea was for Pilotto to focus on the prints and for De Vos to work on silhouettes and fabrications. “Theoretically, what we explained in the beginning was that Christopher concentrated on shapes and silhouettes, dealing with pattern cutting, and me more the prints and colours,” says Pilotto. “But it is a constant dialogue.” “I think we ultimately decide everything together,” asserts De Vos of that peculiar dynamic that marks out these types of creative partnerships. There is a lot of sentence-finishing and synchronised arm movements, the idea of two minds designing together as one. Which is accurate: after all, it’s difficult to engineer a print to a silhouette if you don’t know what that silhouette is going to be. “It is very much collaborative,” emphasises Pilotto again. “And a dialogue, all the time.”
Pilotto is half-Austrian, half-Italian; De Vos, half-Belgian, half-Peruvian. That’s an exotic mix and the obvious question is if – or rather how – it influences their work? De Vos wrinkles his nose and considers. “We’re not afraid of sexy – maybe that’s the southern thing… We don’t like obvious sexy… We do like oddly sexy!” “We like things to be interesting. But we like them to be real,” deadpans Pilotto. Which nails it, oddly. Because real women don’t want to look like walking pieces of installation art, however cleverly printed the fabric or highfalutin the art references. They want to look well dressed and sexy. Pilotto and De Vos are very good at that – and they’re nailing a hole in the market. In London, there aren’t many sexy designers: London designers want clothes that look cool, not hot. Peter Pilotto’s work is hot and sexy, glowing with colour, clinging to the body. They’ve done souped-up, printed swimsuits, cinched-in, hyper-sophisticated cocktail dresses, slashed and diced ruffled numbers. There was even something sexy about the transparency of those crinolines for spring, cut higher in the front.
It’s all incredibly technically complicated – the prints, sure, but also those shapes. “We would never want to do a shift dress just with a print,” says De Vos – understandably, as he’s the hand that focuses on the shapes. “Since the start it’s been about the shape and the print, and how to make it look good on the body. That’s why we created certain systems to distort the print, make it look good on the shape. It’s something more interesting than just a printed dress.” “Sometimes the print files are quite simple,” allows Pilotto modestly. “The dress does the work.”
The trouble is that the label’s trademark cyber graphics can easily distract attention, at least in the eyes of the press. But the Peter Pilotto boys don’t seem too concerned. “Often the customers talk about different things than people who haven’t worn it. They get to really experience us,” says Pilotto. “You don’t see[itals] what’s corseted or not. It’s fascinating to get a reaction to how a garment can make a woman feel. We love that.” De Vos leans in, grins. “We’d love to try it on! I think that would be so helpful!”
Cue an explosion of laughter. And, possibly, an entirely new direction for autumn/winter 2014.
Photographer: Maria Ziegelboeck
By Alexander Fury
