goodbye, Véronique Branquinho

[ittalidaa]

véronique's gestures, pic from encens

[Faust]

I am guessing laika hasn't been browsing SZ lately

Hello, Veronique Branquinho!

[teeteet]

I was in Antwerp when the closure of VB was announced, and they did a "going out of business" sale of all the runway pieces/samples shown for the subsequent season but was never put into production. Amazing pieces, including man bags made in collaboration with a leathersmith in the UK. Keepers!

[michael_kard]

Photos for the archive pls?

[laika]

Nice interview with Ms. Branquinho in Dazed & Confused....
(with much thanks to Flashbang for the scans )

[safeword123]

^ thanks for posting, laika.

and that BAM mag supplement sounds so inspirational.

[laika]

you're welcome. I particularly liked when she talked about how the influence of her inspirations has become far less literal as she's grown up, even though she continues to be inspired by many of the same things. it's a quiet way to evolve, but i wish more designers thought that way.

also, i love markus schinwald...who is quite dark, btw....

[safeword123]

i didn't know who markus schinwald was, so googled him a bit, and i was a bit freaked out by what i saw. it's quite, how should i put it, subverted? and the other artist mentioned in the interview, Chad Wys, is kinda like that too.

but i suppose i could see how VB finds their work appealing, as she said in the interview that she is still very much in touch with dark moods. her two comeback collections seem to be rather light-hearted tho, and she sounded very light-hearted and relaxed in the interview too. and this is probably just me, but her earlier work feels eery. romantic, mysterious, yes, but also eery, ghostly.

[surver]

dA05

i interviewed veronique way back in 2005 in shanghai for this magazine i [guested] edited and designed: dA05.

dA is a billigual design magazine published out of taiwan but circulated worldwide in select stores.

these are images of the magazine layout pages; the actual interview in larger, more legible text follows:


pp34-35

pp36-37

pp38-39

pp40-41
pp42-43

[surver]

dA05

A CONVERSATION WITH VERONIQUE BRANQUINHO @ SURV, SHANGHAI

V: Veronique Branquinho
R: Raissa Verhaeghe
A: Alexander Moh

A: In view of the entire fashion industry, you’re still very young. But you’ve gained an edge, an edge that not many designers are able to attain that quickly. Your collections tend to be more about ambience and mood than the clothing themselves.

V: It’s a combination. You look for certain emotions to show. Clothes can be cold… it’s such a big industry out there… I think it’s much more interesting to have a certain emotion about it.

A: How do you see this in sponsoring mood in a larger sense - when we see your clothes, we feel a specific inclination towards a certain kind of spatial presence, can you elaborate a bit on this?

V: It is very abstract but I’m glad you noticed and you can feel it. My work is very subtle; you either feel it or you don’t… It’s really on this edge that we are working on…

A: I’m looking for a more encompassing attitude… does your shop talk about this attitude?

V: I think so… it’s a really nice building. for me it was very important to have the shop in that building; it’s a building that was built in 1969… we were ready to open a shop but for me it was very important to have it there, otherwise I was not so interested because I really love the building. The building is about a certain mood; it’s a combination of the materials that I really like - the [otherwise considered] cheap aluminum windows with the stone and wood… it was very clear that the shop had to be there. We tried to keep as much of the original as possible in building the shop… if I were to open a second shop it wouldn’t be a copy of this because everywhere there is something authentic. That’s what I like, something that is real with history, made with nice materials, etc..

A: You’re talking about creating dialogue and being specific to each particular context rather than repeating the same ‘brand image’ everywhere, like everyone else…

V: Yeah, it’s very alienating when you go anywhere in the world and you see the same Louis Vuitton and the same Gucci stores and you go one street away and it’s a completely different world.

A: Actually this is one of the issues we’d like to explore in our issue - is this good or is this bad. On one hand, this proliferation of the brand campaigns heightens people’s sensibilities and perceptions in many ways. For instance, Tom Ford spearheaded very clear attitudes towards ‘living’ (that is so prevalent today) in Gucci’s campaigns; he actively used architecture and space to tell stories and therefore impacting certain perceptions, in this case the nostalgia for the past glamour of high modernism… in its totality.

Your work involves a certain romanticism, a certain darkness that exists under the surface…

V: It’s very difficult to translate into architecture…

A: I’m trying to explore veins, parallels… with certain designers you can find direct correlations between their clothes and the possible spaces they occupy or talk about…

V: I’m a person that likes very different things…

A: But there’s a very controlled aesthetic, or mood, that is very constant throughout your work, from the very beginning to now…

R: It becomes apparent when you see the shows…

V: It’s controlled but there are lots of influences… but it’s not me to say “this collection is Africa-inspired”; for me it’s more about what I feel, the sign of the times… and a combination of all the things I like.

A: Okay, Shanghai. What’s your feeling of Shanghai?

V: I’m quite shocked. In Asia, I’ve been to Tokyo, Kyoto, and Bangkok. This one is the first that I find quite ‘hard’ – the huge contrasts and discrepancies between high and low…

A: How are you positioning your work and development? For instance, do you think China is ready for your work?

V: We were just talking about this yesterday; I think for China it is still early. At this moment, what I see is that everyone is very greedy; they want everything. It’s not making any sense because you see a Louis Vuitton next to an Esprit store; it’s very mixed and I cannot place things correctly.

3-on-the-Bund is a very new kind of project. I think it’s great somebody’s trying…

The clothes we make are very much about individuality… it’s still early for China… the choices are too big and they cannot place the things rightly yet…

… that’s what I really hate, you know, me as a person, I cannot stand to be in a niche… or categorized… that’s why I try to work with mood – that’s open to interpretation. That’s where it’s interesting because as an individual you can make your own interpretation of the work.

A: How do you feel when you’re grouped within this whole Belgian thing?

V: It’s depressing. I always have a laugh at it because they always think we’re together and having fun drinking coffee, where in reality we never see each other… we’re all Belgian but we’re all so busy with our own work that we never see each other…

A: Yet there is a certain ‘quirkiness’ that permeates throughout all Belgian designers… certain ‘off-ness’ and twists in interpreting the world… not in the utopian sense, but in the sense of very peculiar views.

V: Maybe because we are from Belgium, we are so small that we have to adjust ourselves… we don’t want to rule the world… but make it more interesting. It’s nice to adjust to certain other people or countries and not be all the same, unlike what Louis Vuitton or Tom Ford is doing – they want to make everybody the same and I think that is wrong because everyone has different roots and cultures…

I don’t expect people to wear a full complete look from my collection… who wants to look like everybody else?

A: China?

I think with Belgian designers, the work involves a much sharper perception of things… that’s where the quirkiness comes in… although it does involve a certain sophistication and sensitivity to understand the work.

R: Through our trip Tokyo we visited about 16 different shops selling our work and it was very interesting to see how each shop interprets the work differently, ending up with very different and individual ways to display the collection but still talking about the same general mood… it became very clear for us which is good and which is bad.

A: That would actually be an interesting thing to do, to document the different interpretations into a collective…

V: … Our project for Pitti Uomo; very David Lynch. We involved dancers and did a complete performance with the collection…

It’s always interesting to show through the work…

It’s important to stay open and lucid… I never do anything that is very heavy or closed.

[michael_kard]

I've unfortunately never owned anything by VB. Her men's line was discontinued shortly before I got into fashion, while the garments that are resold on eBay are usually filler pieces that probably ended there after remaining on a dusty sales rack for years. This does make sense, why would anyone sell their good VB stuff?

Still, I couldn't help but notice that all the redundant designs available share one really beautiful feature that makes me love her work even more, even if I've never handled it. The goddamn buttons. So exquisite.

[safeword123]

^ i hear you, and i am in a similar vein. the only piece i own is a pleated skirt, and it is, as you say, exquisitely made.

her work is hard to penetrate, as she doesn't want to be too literal, too obvious and be in a specific category. it certainly didn't grab me instantly when i first started checking out her stuff. i am only slowly learning to appreciate her work. it is a process, for me, and it takes certain level of understanding, but it is also part of the fun!

[laika]

^If you happen to be a size 36 or 38, I have at least one VB skirt I need to liberate...I have a rather large amount of VB in my closet.

Funny you both mention the buttons...Faust and I totally bonded over them on one of our first joint barneys excursions.

I think it was 2007 and a woman's trench coat...the buttons were reinforced with leather backings, which is such an old fashioned and uniquely VB thing to do. I don't know if there is a name for that practice?

safeword...cool that you looked up Schinwald. He is definitely very dark and indeed somewhat perverse, but the way he uses that darkness/perversion to work with something very classical is a nice analogy to VB's work. If you haven't seen it already, Picnic at Hanging Rock really embodies that eeriness that animates her earlier collections.

[safeword123]

aw, so sweet of you laika! i wish i was your size, but alas, no i am bigger than that

i also quite enjoyed this little interview VB did for her lingerie pieces for Marie Jo L’Aventure.

http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/10663/1/veronique-branquinho-x-marie-jo-l%E2%80%99aventure

she hit two points that i am particularly fond of: that "use of padding is not my(her) personal choice" and that " it (lingerie) has to remain underwear – and I don’t want my underwear to disturb my outerwear."

knowing this, i don't even need to see the final products, i just know its going to be awesome.

will def' check out the Picnic at Hanging Rock, sounds interesting!

[Faust]

And hello, Veronique Branquinho! More on StyleZeitgeist magazine

http://www.sz-mag.com/news/2015/07/veronique-branquinho-to-be-free/