I'm republishing today a feature I recently did for Zoot Magazine about French knitwear designer Xavier Brisoux.
In Neil Gaiman's novel Anansi Boys, a modern odyssey with mythological gods and demi-gods as main characters, the protagonist Charlie surprisingly discovers after his father's death that his flamboyant dad Mr Nancy was actually the incarnation of Anansi, the West African spider god.
This rebellious spirit and trickster capable of changing the social order, his webs and his spider powers caught the imagination of French knitwear designer Xavier Brisoux who injected in his Spring/Summer 2012 men and womenswear collections a little bit of Gaiman's magic tale.
Entitled "Les Toiles", the collection moves from Brisoux's previous experiments with partial knitting, a technique he employed this time to create a rotational construction around the body, almost a soft architectural shell that, irradiating from the centre, forms a fluid spider web cocooning the body.
While Gaiman created in his story a mythology for a modern age, Brisoux knitted a mythological web symbolised in his collection by two solid shades, black and white, employed as dichotomies to indicate the darkness and the light.
In the Spring/Summer 2012 collection brilliant white seems to prevail over your favourite darker shades, do you feel that this collection marks a departure from your previous ones?
Xavier Brisoux: I wanted to make a real statement for the next season. The collection moves from a dark theme, being based on a quotation from Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys that says “Stories are web, interconnected, strand to strand and you follow each story to the centre because the centre is the end.” I thought that this quote related pretty well to what I do since I work with a yarn, so with a strand, and I liked the idea of a spider's web, the idea of a centre reaching out, going towards a further end. So, being the theme quite gothic, I didn't want the colours to be too dark, but I wanted a lot of optic white. Also the main material employed for the designs hints at lightness. The pieces are made using a fine yarn called “sofcotton”, which is not an easy yarn to work with, in fact it's a tricky one because, while it's very luxurious and perfectly resistant when you wear it, it's very fragile when you knit with it, so this meant I had to find a proper process to work with it.
Behind all your collections there seems to be a story: does the story inspire you the technique behind your pieces or is it the other way round?
Xavier Brisoux: For me there is no point in a collection without a story. This is the first thing that happens in my collection, the story - what some people call their 'inspiration'. The story has a message and for me that final message is very important. Buyers are obviously more interested in the selling power of a product, so they may not be too keen on hearing the story behind it, yet I think that, for me, it is particularly important since it is also the path to find my process. I do think that the story, the process and the design all help each other. In a nutshell, I need my story to understand the technique that I will be using.
Which specific knitwear techniques did you use in this collection?
Xavier Brisoux: For this particular season I wanted to build pieces that reached out towards different directions exactly like a spider web and there was no way that my factory could do that, though on my machines I can do it without any problems.
When you create a piece do you ever set any limits thinking about what your factory can help you achieving?
Xavier Brisoux: I try to think and build the pieces in accordance with my abilities and not in accordance with what my factory can or can't do. In a way it's a hand in hand process that also gives a certain uniqueness and added value to each design because the wearer will then own a piece that has been partially made by hand by the designer himself.
Do you think that in future we will go back to a small-scale production?
Xavier Brisoux: I guess that's what will eventually happen, because we've seen worldwide mass production for a long time and I don't think we want it or need it anymore.
Knitwear has been enjoying a revival in the last few years thanks to young designers reinventing it. Do you think though we can revive the same interest the fashion industry had in the '70s or the '80s when there was always a strong emphasis on knitwear pieces on the French and Italian runways?
Xavier Brisoux: Thanks to new techniques contemporary knitwear allows the designers not to make you realise it's actually knitwear you're seeing at a show and that's something new and exciting that will be instrumental in bringing a revamped interest in this field. A few months ago I did a catwalk show in Russia and for menswear I did trousers tailored in cashmere cloth. I think this attention to detail, innovation and process developing will definitely help us appealing to a new clientele.
Have you been experimenting with any new techniques recently?
Xavier Brisoux: With each collection I develop something different. I've recently tried serigraphy on knitwear, though I'm still at the experimental stage with this technique. I'll hopefully be able to take it further as soon as I find the perfect yarn, because serigraphy allows you to create interesting perspectives. I've been thinking about reinventing the jacket for a while now, and that's hopefully another thing I'll be able to experiment with in future.
All images courtesy of Mathieu Drouet.
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