Designer Highlight: threeASFOUR

Fashion that demonstrates "how the visual world binds these cultures to one another...”

 (From exhibit "Insalaam Inshalom")

A Palestinian, an Israeli granddaughter of Auschwitz survivors, and a German all join together to start a fashion line in the name of unity, in the cosmopolitan city of New York, as a technology for human unification and healing. Need I say more?

threeASFOUR is an inspiration. It is an avant garde brand that, like many brands that have undergone changes and transformations, re-emerged on the NYC scene in 2005 as a fashion line less interested in producing fashion for commercial means and more interested in life-changing meaning making. They make use of technology to re-engage sacral geometry and other age-old shamanic wisdom, creating garments seek to project a silent cry for peace and unity beyond difference through the textile hieroglyphic effect of their design.

More than simply a brand, they are a team of visionaries. In this amazing styleLikeU interview, Gabi Asfour, Angela Donhauser, and Adi Gil drops some knowledge that is truly inspiring me as I write this post in my studio, and hopefully you as well.

• "Using tiling was a representation that the whole comes from the unit and the unit creates the whole. By using tiling, we felt like we could also deal with things that are outside humanity. It's not just about religions but the connections of humanity to animals and to plants and to the planet and to other planets and to other solar systems and galaxies. As a message of unity we feel like geometry is the essence of it."- Gabi Asfour

"I look more for the unity between everybody because I think we are the same in the end."- Adi Gil

• "To be able to make clothes and to have some kind of a message behind it means so much because, at the end of the day, nobody needs more clothes. Nobody needs another dress, but if we do something and there is a meaning behind it [that] brings people together, for me this is like a dream come true."-Adi Gil

"We are becoming more wise and we are healing ourselves from all of the shit that we went through."- Gabi Asfour


It is not surprising that their dedication to peace and unity has extended into history-making artist collaborations, such as Spring 2010 collaboration with avant-garde peace activist, Yoko Ono.


Let's give peace a chance.

Peace, love, and fashion human-culture-art-actvist history,
T*

The Most Brilliant Lookbook I've Ever Seen...

In my quest for other amazing people who are truly dedicated to using fashion as a vehicle for real social justice, I came across the incredibly informative blog of non other than Otto Von Busch and his graduate design students at Parsons. I've blogged about Prof. Busch quite a few times, as he is BRILLIANT!, and am so glad to have found this digital, blog database of all things fashion and social justice.

One of the "case studies" featured was of Retrofit Republic, a vintage and recycled fashion retailer, style agency, and event planner started by two amazing women who started a company from their love of fashion, social justice for LGBTQ and communities of color, and outreach to make the world a more fashion and cultural energy-efficient bohemia (play on word "retro fit").

In the advent of video lookbooks, this is the most brilliant one I've seen yet. Their lookbook manages to not only showcase their amazing Fall 2012 looks but highlights some powerful people dispelling and conquering the myths that haunt our fashion, aesthetic, cultural, and sartorial worlds. The fashion industry needs a lot of social healing- imagine if every design house used their look book as a platform for activism.

Watch and-with conventional fashion magazine in hand-take notes:


The Real Bodies Manifesto Lookbook Video, Fall 2012 from Retrofit Republic on Vimeo.

Happy Sunday
T*

Africa Fashion Week New York!

So here in the big apple, Africa Fashion Week, a microcosm of the cosmopolitan fashion weeks that take place in New York and around the world, will highlight here in this dandy city the talented fashion designers and luxury brands born and/or bred in the African continent. We have all seen the beautiful fabrics that have either originated or been traded through the African continent, which have then been transformed into beautiful works of wearable art by the generations of tailors, style icons and visionary designers. Now the city of New York, as sponsored by luxury brand company, Adiree, will be paying homage.

Festivities, having started yesterday, will continue to take place at the Broad Street Ballroom. But if you have time, please check out tomorrow's panel discussion at my second home, the Fashion Institute of Technology, on how African designers are giving back, being eco, and supporting sustainable, restorative and social enterprises in their home countries. Details here.

But today, perhaps very timely, during my Ethical Fashion II course, I also met another company that works within Africa, Rwanda specifically, based here in the Americas, New York specifically: Indego Africa. While the entire team may be not African or explicitly fashion backgrounds, Deidre, the creative director of this New York-Rwandan based social enterprise, said something that I will never forget:

(Very much paraphrased): We are a company built to take ourselves out of business. Our hope is to one day build up our cooperative partners so that they can take over our place and start communicating with major retailers on their own.



So this week for me marked two very important truths for me: 1) It is essential to acknowledge in the midst of Western- whatever that means- focused views of fashion to highlight the visionary designers, brands, and fashion cultures that truly don't get enough time in the limelight and 2) it is equally essential to acknowledge and support-in an authentic and meaningful way- local economies and cooperatives in cities and nations rebuilding themselves through local artisan talent. The designer and the artisan, the visionary and the craftsperson, the law student and the cooperative, we can all work hand in hand in redistributing the wealth and limelight a little bit closer to equilibrium. It's been time.

Africa Fashion Week in NYC begins, transatlantic healing and partnerships never ends,
T*