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Some notes about our work and buttons (part 2 of 3)
(continued from my previous reply thread)
Perhaps some of it can be explained with how we look at and work with buttons...
Over the years, our job has been increasingly to develop and create designs that no one else is doing or has done before. To present to buyers who on average see over 500 top international collections per season, something that they have not seen somewhere else before, is not an easy task. But it has become absolutely necessary for us to sell any work and create a viable place for us to continue to participate in the field. As such, every single aspect and element of our designs must be thoroughly researched in an effort to continuously push the envelope of what can be done and what can be possible. Even what normally is viewed as something as mundane as a button, when viewed by a serious artist of the metier, is in fact, a critical visual element and indicator of quality and value, on a garment.
A serious connoisseur (that's our customer) can immediately spot a good button and a bad one, and determine the difference in the total quality of the garment and attention that went into designing and making it.
If we use an analogy of automobiles, my goal is not to make a BMW or Mercedes. I am instead focused on making a Ferrari, or better yet, a Koenigsegg. The most advanced, beautiful, handmade pieces of clothing humanely possibly in the world today--capable of delivering the most outstanding performance: aesthetic, wearing and financial, bar none--with the additional caveat of creating a new leading model of environmental, ethical and economic sustainability for the industry.
Almost every" top" designer today uses plastic mass-produced buttons made from molds. And almost always the same button model is used across the entire garment. That's normal for industrial design, and what is termed acceptable (one of your members mentioned his uncomfortableness with his old CDG shirt which had different buttons, I believe). After some 25 years, however, we began to find this approach both:
a)
albeit much cheaper in time, creative energy, and money to develop and produce--
visually more and more boring, dimensionally flat, and overdone;
and
b)
environmentally- it's a loser, primarlly due to the processes of both the making and disposing of the articles.... plastic requires all sorts of nasty petrochemicals to form and color the product, then ends up in landfills like all poly and synthetic materials, fibres and components, and like all plastics--does not degrade for centuries creating its entire subset of problems including water table runoff disruption and dangerous new malaria growth. There is also increasing scientific theory that many of our growing cancer-related diseases are resulting from our constant exposure to petrochemical plastics in all aspects of our environment. For example, plastic water bottles can only be used once, since the plastic is porous and attracts bacteria. If you refill it, the bacteria and possibly additional carcinogens from the plastic seep into the water that will go into your stomach if you drink it. How many times do you touch your plastic buttons with your fingers? Quite a lot if you need to get in and out of your clothes. Maybe sounds silly to some, but we think about these things. Again, we know a lot of our customers personally, and we care.
In 2002, we started to eliminate and reduce the amount of new plastic buttons in our designs. First, we embarked immediately on one of our fundamental areas of expertise: recycling, and began to use carefully selected vintage and old recycled buttons.
The very nature of using recycled buttons forced us into having to use different buttons all the time on each piece. To make the pieces look great, I had to oversee and make a different design of button combinations for every single piece we produced. Like drawing a picture or painting a landscape, composition and color relationships and combinations were absolutely critical for the end result. The time and work were tremendous, but the results were beautiful. Every piece had its very own vintage button story, and the pieces sold-out very well for our retail store partners. Within a few seasons, similar interpretations started appearing on more publicized avant-garde collections including Jun Takahashi's Undercover and others.
Above, a shot of the extremely successful RK6 vintage cashmere recycle cardigan sweater
with vintage recycled metal, leather, and jeweled button story. The design created a mini-
phenomenon in Japan where some ninety handmade pieces were sold-out in one season by one of
our long-time women's collection retail partners, Journal Standard. Random and odd vintage-look
button stories soon appeared or re-appeared in many Japanese collections.
We also hand painted vintage buttons with quite good results. Here above, an example of a hand dyed pure linen duster with handpainted button story that we presented very successfully in Paris in October 2004.
Working with this medium, we became exposed to a new world of possibilities when it came to buttons. Some of the vintage pieces we found were stunning, exhibiting levels of artistic beauty, workmanship and material quality unseen in at least 2 or 3 decades of industrial designer fashion. I could not help but begin to think that we were missing an entire metier of creativity in our industry that some time ago formed a serious and personalized part of a person's clothes.
Further research during our landmark Napoleonic-period collection development introduced us to museum collections of 18th and 19th century garments still intact, where we were able to see stunning examples of incredible artistry in button design and work, leading us to really rethink about the importance of this part of garment design. While many of these button concepts are still beyond our technical and economic capacity to even try to recreate at present time and labor costs, some more simpler forms were reproduced in our workrooms for our collections.
Here above, double hand covered buttons in Italian black wool jersey (Prato) and natural undyed Venetian pure cotton lace on an authentic reproduction pattern 1778 frock coat that we first developed in late 2005. The design requires no less than 27 of the handmade buttons to complete and has been a very successful selling piece for us in super limited quantities.
Above, a 19th century made to measure bespoke waistcoat made for Dutch hair designer Jan Fuite in collaboration with Koos Fabre at Nuzyn Amsterdam based upon our MMJ5 model from the January 2006 Toussaint Louverture collection, with 13 hand covered buttons and handstitched buttonholes. The piece was specially triple hand dyed to achieve its very unique mottled patina effect on the heavy brushed pure cotton denim cloth woven for us in Varese, Italy.
At the same time, we began becoming concerned that after finding and using several thousand beautiful vintage buttons, we were having increasing difficulty finding more. Our research led us to discover several of Europe's best artisan button-makers still operating. One is the world leader in Tyrolean-style buttons, a two generation family business working near Freiburg in Germany, another we discovered during our medieval-period collections period (2006-2008)- an expert medieval historical craftsman in Siena who hand casts amazing authentic metal design reproductions from the 8th to the 16th century, and a third who has become one of our closest collaborators...a 3-generation family firm working near Parma who are probably the world's best artisan button-makers still active today. Each one of these resources is a creative and technical master in their own right practicing in an artistic metier that is a world unto its own.
A rare and beautiful button of unusual make and material is like a piece of jewelry. As we continuously search to make our designs more unique, special, and personalized, buttons have indeed become an integral part of our fundamental design elements. Each one is a work of Art, playing its own key visual and tactile role in the total composition of our pieces.
Whether specially made for us by Italy's best artisan makers in Parma, Siena or Padova, or hand picked from dozens of the best vintage and antique suppliers in Europe, or actually refinished, modified or created and made by hand in our own studios, the average cost per button on our clothing now reaches over five euros a piece, wholesale, with many clothing designs having between 50-100 euros worth of buttons sewn into them alone.
Add to that, the incredible amounts of time that such a complex and intense approach, in both design decisions and production efficiency, to a detail that normally is just done with all the same buttons, and the costs go into the stratosphere. Our production goes very slow when it comes to button operations- because visually and functionally it's so critical to achieving our vision of a piece's maximum potential.
For example, the "colored" buttons that are mentioned as "gratuitous" and "detracting" in one of the thread replies on Hobo's 2006 hand dyed PFJ04 pure Varese linen jacket, are actually not colored at all...
(to be continued in my next thread reply)
(continued from my previous reply thread)
Perhaps some of it can be explained with how we look at and work with buttons...
Over the years, our job has been increasingly to develop and create designs that no one else is doing or has done before. To present to buyers who on average see over 500 top international collections per season, something that they have not seen somewhere else before, is not an easy task. But it has become absolutely necessary for us to sell any work and create a viable place for us to continue to participate in the field. As such, every single aspect and element of our designs must be thoroughly researched in an effort to continuously push the envelope of what can be done and what can be possible. Even what normally is viewed as something as mundane as a button, when viewed by a serious artist of the metier, is in fact, a critical visual element and indicator of quality and value, on a garment.
A serious connoisseur (that's our customer) can immediately spot a good button and a bad one, and determine the difference in the total quality of the garment and attention that went into designing and making it.
If we use an analogy of automobiles, my goal is not to make a BMW or Mercedes. I am instead focused on making a Ferrari, or better yet, a Koenigsegg. The most advanced, beautiful, handmade pieces of clothing humanely possibly in the world today--capable of delivering the most outstanding performance: aesthetic, wearing and financial, bar none--with the additional caveat of creating a new leading model of environmental, ethical and economic sustainability for the industry.
Almost every" top" designer today uses plastic mass-produced buttons made from molds. And almost always the same button model is used across the entire garment. That's normal for industrial design, and what is termed acceptable (one of your members mentioned his uncomfortableness with his old CDG shirt which had different buttons, I believe). After some 25 years, however, we began to find this approach both:
a)
albeit much cheaper in time, creative energy, and money to develop and produce--
visually more and more boring, dimensionally flat, and overdone;
and
b)
environmentally- it's a loser, primarlly due to the processes of both the making and disposing of the articles.... plastic requires all sorts of nasty petrochemicals to form and color the product, then ends up in landfills like all poly and synthetic materials, fibres and components, and like all plastics--does not degrade for centuries creating its entire subset of problems including water table runoff disruption and dangerous new malaria growth. There is also increasing scientific theory that many of our growing cancer-related diseases are resulting from our constant exposure to petrochemical plastics in all aspects of our environment. For example, plastic water bottles can only be used once, since the plastic is porous and attracts bacteria. If you refill it, the bacteria and possibly additional carcinogens from the plastic seep into the water that will go into your stomach if you drink it. How many times do you touch your plastic buttons with your fingers? Quite a lot if you need to get in and out of your clothes. Maybe sounds silly to some, but we think about these things. Again, we know a lot of our customers personally, and we care.
In 2002, we started to eliminate and reduce the amount of new plastic buttons in our designs. First, we embarked immediately on one of our fundamental areas of expertise: recycling, and began to use carefully selected vintage and old recycled buttons.
The very nature of using recycled buttons forced us into having to use different buttons all the time on each piece. To make the pieces look great, I had to oversee and make a different design of button combinations for every single piece we produced. Like drawing a picture or painting a landscape, composition and color relationships and combinations were absolutely critical for the end result. The time and work were tremendous, but the results were beautiful. Every piece had its very own vintage button story, and the pieces sold-out very well for our retail store partners. Within a few seasons, similar interpretations started appearing on more publicized avant-garde collections including Jun Takahashi's Undercover and others.
Above, a shot of the extremely successful RK6 vintage cashmere recycle cardigan sweater
with vintage recycled metal, leather, and jeweled button story. The design created a mini-
phenomenon in Japan where some ninety handmade pieces were sold-out in one season by one of
our long-time women's collection retail partners, Journal Standard. Random and odd vintage-look
button stories soon appeared or re-appeared in many Japanese collections.
We also hand painted vintage buttons with quite good results. Here above, an example of a hand dyed pure linen duster with handpainted button story that we presented very successfully in Paris in October 2004.
Working with this medium, we became exposed to a new world of possibilities when it came to buttons. Some of the vintage pieces we found were stunning, exhibiting levels of artistic beauty, workmanship and material quality unseen in at least 2 or 3 decades of industrial designer fashion. I could not help but begin to think that we were missing an entire metier of creativity in our industry that some time ago formed a serious and personalized part of a person's clothes.
Further research during our landmark Napoleonic-period collection development introduced us to museum collections of 18th and 19th century garments still intact, where we were able to see stunning examples of incredible artistry in button design and work, leading us to really rethink about the importance of this part of garment design. While many of these button concepts are still beyond our technical and economic capacity to even try to recreate at present time and labor costs, some more simpler forms were reproduced in our workrooms for our collections.
Here above, double hand covered buttons in Italian black wool jersey (Prato) and natural undyed Venetian pure cotton lace on an authentic reproduction pattern 1778 frock coat that we first developed in late 2005. The design requires no less than 27 of the handmade buttons to complete and has been a very successful selling piece for us in super limited quantities.
Above, a 19th century made to measure bespoke waistcoat made for Dutch hair designer Jan Fuite in collaboration with Koos Fabre at Nuzyn Amsterdam based upon our MMJ5 model from the January 2006 Toussaint Louverture collection, with 13 hand covered buttons and handstitched buttonholes. The piece was specially triple hand dyed to achieve its very unique mottled patina effect on the heavy brushed pure cotton denim cloth woven for us in Varese, Italy.
At the same time, we began becoming concerned that after finding and using several thousand beautiful vintage buttons, we were having increasing difficulty finding more. Our research led us to discover several of Europe's best artisan button-makers still operating. One is the world leader in Tyrolean-style buttons, a two generation family business working near Freiburg in Germany, another we discovered during our medieval-period collections period (2006-2008)- an expert medieval historical craftsman in Siena who hand casts amazing authentic metal design reproductions from the 8th to the 16th century, and a third who has become one of our closest collaborators...a 3-generation family firm working near Parma who are probably the world's best artisan button-makers still active today. Each one of these resources is a creative and technical master in their own right practicing in an artistic metier that is a world unto its own.
A rare and beautiful button of unusual make and material is like a piece of jewelry. As we continuously search to make our designs more unique, special, and personalized, buttons have indeed become an integral part of our fundamental design elements. Each one is a work of Art, playing its own key visual and tactile role in the total composition of our pieces.
"It's a fact:
We spend more for our buttons, than most designers spend for their main fabrics.
To us, it's a serious part of our Art."
We spend more for our buttons, than most designers spend for their main fabrics.
To us, it's a serious part of our Art."
Whether specially made for us by Italy's best artisan makers in Parma, Siena or Padova, or hand picked from dozens of the best vintage and antique suppliers in Europe, or actually refinished, modified or created and made by hand in our own studios, the average cost per button on our clothing now reaches over five euros a piece, wholesale, with many clothing designs having between 50-100 euros worth of buttons sewn into them alone.
Add to that, the incredible amounts of time that such a complex and intense approach, in both design decisions and production efficiency, to a detail that normally is just done with all the same buttons, and the costs go into the stratosphere. Our production goes very slow when it comes to button operations- because visually and functionally it's so critical to achieving our vision of a piece's maximum potential.
For example, the "colored" buttons that are mentioned as "gratuitous" and "detracting" in one of the thread replies on Hobo's 2006 hand dyed PFJ04 pure Varese linen jacket, are actually not colored at all...
(to be continued in my next thread reply)
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