Threeasfour. Couture 2023
There isn't many Avant-garde designers left, an early 2000 trend which reached its peak in 2015. Experimental fashion held a niche within the fashion world, with Rick Owens currently holding the mantle as the stalwart avant-garde designer. And of late, there has been a renewed interest with some of the newer designers and established brands of the risque. To invigorate the trend, through lookbook presentations and runway shows.
The New York City fashion designers Gabriel Asfour, Angela Donhauser and Adi Gil with their collaborative brand ThreeASFOUR have maintained, regardless of fluctuating trends, their enthusiasm for the avant-garde and the boundary pushing aesthetics which they've achieved, since their first show in 2016 at New York Fashion Week. The trio of creatives, utilizing the futurists imprint, more so 3D printing to create textures and intricate arrays for their collections, have grounded the collections within the metaphysical, science and natural construct in formulating their distinct looks. And it is nature as a creative engine, with its patterns and configurations, seen through our own humanistic imprint, as we, human beings, transcend through nature. And there is no doubting that at the same time, we are undeniable having an impact on its foundations. To our detriment.
From time to time, although not of late, I had inserted into the many fashion reviews that I have written over the years, of my own art manifesto titled XENOSTRUCTURALISM. To which, I have four catalogues that have documented my art over the last 10 years. I do try not to equate my own art with the art and design, that includes fashion, of others. But, I do sometimes see, coincidently or not, similarities of my own artistic concepts within the ThreeASFOUR template.
I am fascinated with the idea of redefining our humanistic construct, and thinking back to the COVID pandemic in 2020, I wrote an article at the same time which appeared on CHIASMUS, that a virus is not alive, but an organism that borrows and takes life. It does not attend to kill us, but if we cannot find immunity to its invasion of our biology, the virus can destroy its host and kill itself. Viruses are indeed killing machines that in theory, bacteria and vriuses work hand in hand in reshaping their biological hosts. In other words, they change our DNA. The vaccines were simply our version of COVID to give us immunity, which we will need for future pandemics if we are to survive viral waves onto the human race.
So, this present time, that is our future. Then why not define it as manifestation of change? To which the human body, to survive, may need to change too. Can we borrow from nature? Without destroying it? Ultimately humanity may find it hard to destroy the natural construct, but rather we will eradicate ourselves. Nature, the Earth was born from Hadean (Hell) and in our short period of time on this planet we may indeed make our existence short lived. Our biogenics will have to change to survive.
ThreeASFOUR being the experimental fashion designers that they are, have presented for Couture 2023 an absolutely groundbreaking collection, which in its lookbook presentation called "Parallel Universes", has brought into its couture template, elements of the human devised science fiction and biomechanical. Whilst, thankfully, leaving out the overhyped so called artificial intelligence learning programs. However, the designers did offer an open possibility that the collection could be based off an AI imprint, yet created by humans as a tantalizing possibility that AI should be controlled as a helpful tool, not as a replacement for human ingenuity
At 23 created garments with ThreeASFOUR benchmark 3D printing for their debut Couture collection, Asfour, Donhauser and Gill have been able to set the avant-garde pieces of allowing the viewer to be immersed into the styles that are offered. And yes, these Parallel Worlds, that sometimes enter our dreams, may hold an answer in how to manifest our waking reality.
It is the imagination that sets us free.
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(A.Glass 2023)
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