I'm closing today the Academy of Art University special (that started on Tuesday and) that I did for Zoot Magazine, republishing an interview with Jeanette Au.
Jeanette Au grew up in New York City as a second generation Chinese-American and graduated from the Fiorello H. La Guardia High School of Music and Performing Arts where she studied painting and drawing. She left New York to study performance, printing, video and digital media at the San Francisco Art Institute, but ended up training in knitwear design at the Academy of Art University’s MFA programme.
The strong colours - including sapphire, silver blue, garnet, ruby and copper - intricate 3-D patterns and textures characterising her collection are inspired not only by the nuances of the Ballets Russes’ costumes, but also by musical compositions that accompanied the corps de ballet's choreographies, such as Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”.
You started as an artist, but then decided to train in knitwear, what prompted this decision?
Jeanette Au: I decided to train in knitwear design when I realised that knitwear could blur the boundaries between art, craft and fashion and be a medium where a dialogue could be pushed and challenged. Contemporary women artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Yayoi Kusama, Janine Antoni, whose work deal with the body and who use sculpture or fabric as mediums, were also influential in my choice. These women created pieces suspended between the grotesque and the beautiful and challenging traditional notions of beauty always inspired me. The work of Turkish artist Pinar Yolaçan, her depictions of elderly women dressed in tripe and chicken heads or her S&M Leigh Bowery-esque Venus of Willendorfs, recently had a profound influence on me. While I design, I am always aware of this duality and contradiction, of this fine line between these two different moods, plus I enjoy having a sense of humor in fashion.
Can you tell us more about your creative process?
Jeanette Au: I start off researching my inspirations that usually come from different sources, from watching a film or reading a novel to seeing a contemporary art exhibit, taking photos or hearing a musical score. Once I have the direction and the mood, I choose the colors and source the yarns and materials I want to use. Then I start experimenting with various techniques to create the textures that reflect the mood and inspiration.
How did you feel at showcasing your collection at the Academy of the Art fashion show?
Jeanette Au: I received a lot of positive responses from the audience and the press at New York Fashion Week. I felt that my work resonated with people on an emotional level because the colors and textures were overwhelming and reached out to all the senses. I felt that my audience “got it” and that my communication through fabric and form was effective and this was very important to me.
Can you tell us more about your collection, is there a theme behind it?
Jeanette Au: My collection took root in my fascination with the Ballets Russes and Serge Diaghilev’s collaborative efforts with artists such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Léon Bakst and Igor Stravinsky, who helped constructing an exotic and imaginary “other”, a fantasy created for Western desire and consumption. Thinking about dance, music and visuals converging, I tried to translate this type of multi-sensory decadence with rich, shimmery, sensuous and textural knits. "Le sacre du printemps" (The Rite of Spring) ballet and score was also a major theme and inspiration, as I imagined the patterns reflecting light, moving and changing colour according to Stravinsky’s dissonance and Nijinsky’s pigeon-toed staccato movements. My muse was the heroine from the film “The Red Shoes”, a ballet dancer whose personal and professional struggle imitates the tragic ballet that she performs based on the Hans Christian Andersen’s cautionary fairy tale. She’s asked why she desires to dance and she answers “Why do you want to live?” For her, living is equated with being able to create her art form and I related to this feeling and struggle while I was working on this collection.
What kind of materials did you use for this collection?
Jeanette Au: I used mohair, wool, synthetic and metallic yarns to create the knitted fabric. I wanted to focus on the craziness that could be accomplished only through knitwear, so I only used materials that I could knit with.
What are your future plans?
Jeanette Au: I have plans to design accessories for an eco-sustainable company and I will be working on custom orders from my collection. I would love to work with Kenzo or Rodarte one day because both brands produce strong knitwear.
All images by Randy Brooke/WireImage
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