During the last two days I’ve looked at two knitwear designers creating women’s wear using innovative techniques. I’m closing the thread today with an interview with Xavier Brisoux, a men and women’s wear knitwear designer who has been experimenting with what may be defined as architecturally minimalist techniques.
There are fashion designers who use their inspirations in such a strictly literal way that it becomes easy to spot where a specific garment came from as soon as you see it on the runway or in a showroom.
Then there are more complex designers who hide details, ideas and inspirations in such subtle ways that, when you discover their original starting point, you somehow feel like smiling in surprise and realise that, after all, not all is lost in fashion.
Xavier Brisoux is definitely among the latter: the French knitwear designer has so far created both men and women’s wear collections moving from disparate inspirations, such as mythology, the 1949 Short Code language and Neil Gaiman’s books.
In his Autumn/Winter 2012-13 collection Brisoux explored his fascination with mangas and in particular with the Saint Seiya series, yet he left behind the shining armours of its main characters, to analyse the theme of the quest, metaphorically transferring in his knits the results of his own personal quest as a designer in a fast and furious fashion industry.
Taking further his partial knitting technique, Brisoux designed architectural and geometric shapes based on triangles and rough diamond facets on cashmere jumpers in which the stitching and seams were eliminated to create innovative silhouettes.
In which way does the Saint Seiya story relate to this collection?
Xavier Brisoux: The core of the story was the very first inspiration for this collection. In the manga a group of teenagers find themselves engaged in different fights and in their quests they have to collect pieces of a puzzle to make the picture whole again. The puzzle aspect really interested me, because that reflected the mood I was in when I started working on this collection. I felt that I myself was onto a quest of some kind and also wanted to question myself, to question what I am and what I do. I do think indeed that the role of the fashion designer is questioning things. Coming to the conclusion that there’s not just one layer to each of us, but there are different facets and different aspects, I also started exploring triangles and diamond facets.
Did you use your “partial knitting” technique also in this collection?
Xavier Brisoux: I’ve been working with partial knitting for three seasons and I’m making further studies on it. Sometimes it takes weeks, days and nights to come up with the results I want. In this collection there is a design that starts from the bottom of the sleeves on one side and it goes around the body, ending on the other side, so it’s just one piece with no seams around the sleeves at the front as I’m trying to get rid of as many seams as possible.
In your previous designs you often used greys; in your A/W 2012-13 collection you widened your range using colours such as taupe grey, brown, raspberry red and old rose, do these shade reflect a change in your personal mood?
Xavier Brisoux: I realised that the grey option was in some ways a safe choice. I love grey and wear it all the time, but that’s just personal taste. Opting for subtle colours in this collection is somehow part of my search, it’s part of my process of questioning things. When I started working on this collection, I actually moved from the colours rather than from the construction and I found it a real challenge, but also a statement. The other statement was the yarn that is 100% cashmere and it reminds us that we should look at quality rather than quantity and stop buying just for the sake of buying.
How did you choose the colours for this collection?
Xavier Brisoux: Even when I work with greys I tend to build my own charts. I did the same with colours, trying to come up with my own charts by picking yarns from different catalogues of yarn producers and first started playing with raspberry tones.
Are there any garments from a man’s traditional wardrobe that you’ve tried to reinvent in this collection?
Xavier Brisoux: I’ve been looking into tailored jackets a lot and when I started working on this season I decided to look at the denim jacket and reinvent a garment that is half denim jacket/half tailored jacket. When I reinvent a traditional piece I try to see it through my eyes. In this case I wondered for example what is a “diamond” V-neck, and, by looking at this design, you will realise that, while superficially it may look simple, it’s technically very difficult to make.
What kind of accessories did you design for this season?
Xavier Brisoux: Hats and hoodie scarves that you can play around with a lot. Hats are actually the fun part of a collection as they sum it up. I have buyers who keep on coming back to buy a different hat every season, and while these accessories may be seen as appendixes to a collection, they’re actually quite important as they are seen through the main themes of that collection. Besides, if there’s no hat in a winter collection of mine, then you will know that I’ve been uninspired!
In some cases your men and women’s knits could be considered as unisex, would you agree on this?
Xavier Brisoux: When I design, I just produce a piece and then I wonder if that’s for men or women, but I never think with men or women in mind. When I was doing only menswear it was a problem because some pieces were deemed as not acceptable for men, which is something I don’t understand and that’s why I started doing also women’s wear. While you have to keep in mind the difference in terms of body types and shapes, I also think that we shouldn’t really care about what’s strictly men and what’s strictly women’s wear.
As a young knitwear designer, would you consider branching out and collaborating with professionals from other fields?
Xavier Brisoux: Yes, but that depends on the project. I think you always have to find people you feel in synch with and a project that suits you. Two years ago I met an architect and we wanted to work together, but, unfortunately, that didn’t happen. I guess at the time we also got scared about what medium we may have used between knitwear and architecture or about how we could have expressed ourselves. In the end it didn’t happen, but I’m open to such possibilities.
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