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Take us through the exhibition’s concept.

Well, this is just a selection I wanted to share with my supporters and my customers: my process together with the product. So the pieces I’m showing to the left of the store are vintage archive stuff that I got inspired by, then to the right are my product, which is the output from that inspiration. So I wanted to put them next to each other to show the process of one thing, and to make sure… there’s actually a kind of self-checking [process] going on – that I’m checking on myself to make sure that the product I’m making has enough strength. I think vintage pieces have a lot of strength and power, I’ve been drawn to them. Through our work at the company, I’m trying to find what these strengths are that draw me towards the vintage stuff, and I’m then trying to make a piece which has a similar strength and power.

Is there a unifying aim in making these improvements?

I do use many different things and take many different approaches. For example, these Navajo Indian Moccasins from 1800 – the time was different, everything was different from when I made this shoe, the FBT Folk, in 2006. The time’s different, everything is different, but I still wanted to take the meaning or the spirit, and then add whatever I can do better in 2006 to them. That’s kind of my goal. I’m not trying to do exactly the same thing, because it’s impossible. I mean, you can spend the time and effort to make an exact copy of that product, but that’s not my goal. My ultimate goal in 2012: I want to make something that I can do better [than they could in 1800].

To maybe one day be seen as classic in the same sense as this vintage clothing?

Yeah, maybe like after a hundred years or two hundred years, when they look back, maybe they can say “in 2012 they were making good products too.” That’s something that I want and it’s a very simple goal.

So what’s set for Visvim in the future?

Even now, I cannot produce some of the pieces even from when I started. I cannot make the same product with the same price as ten years ago when I started. Everything is changing. But I think an important thing is that I want to be real, and I’m just trying to be open to my supporters and customers: “this is what I can do best now.” I think most of my customers understand that, and they’re looking for the same thing.

Visvim’s 10th anniversary exhibition runs until the 6th of May at Dover Street Market, London.
Words: Barny Smith

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All of your collections seem to have a bold theme, what was the particular theme behind your AW12 collection?

Yeah, there’s always such a strong theme. Like this one was everything dark to do with fairy tales. With every kid’s fairy tale, like Sleeping Beauty or Lord of The Rings, there’s always this dark army growing, so I just wanted to create one. This whole collection was truly self-indulgent, my first completely independent line away from The British Fashion Council and NEWGEN. I felt free to do whatever I wanted and it was very exciting. From the elf ears to the crazy war hammer trainers, we pulled out the stops for everything.

So, what was the inspiration behind your theme this time round?

You’ve got to start somewhere. Mine was coming up with the theme and an idea. I don’t know all these things just come to me and I just thought well, I love creating all this sort of mad stuff and how can I tie in War Hammer and Zelder and Dungeons and Dragons.

Did you like all that sort of thing when you were younger?

Yeah, I loved War Hammer. I never played it but I was always looking in windows and all the guys who play it are super nerdy. They literally get a ruler out and they battle and they take it really serious. Obviously, I wasn’t into it that sort of way. Their names are hilarious; there’s one called something shaggeth. It’s just jokes really.

Did you have any challenges with the collection?

Yeah, well this one was extremely couture and made by hand. My whole teams hands are usually covered in cuts and edge-dye and leather, all of the black it goes into little cuts and your fingers so by the time it comes to a show they all look like little goblins and the same with me. This one was even harder considering the materials that we used. I could use whatever I wanted; leather, pony skin, fur. So many textures. You would never usually have a completely pony skin bag because of the sheer weight of it but we just didn’t want to spare anything. The idea was how can we make everything look evil. Probably the hardest we’ve ever dealt with.

What’s going to be happening for you in the future?

I want to work in a big fashion house and I have been approached by one but can’t say just yet who it is. That is like the dream. I feel like it’s happening. I’ve worked for some incredible people already like Kanye [West]. It’s amazing because it means that I can see my dreams form. Money has always been a problem, even when you have good jobs. Things get more expensive season by season so it always feel like you are just coasting and can’t make any more. Where as if you have something like that going on, you can realise your dreams.

W you not feel like you were quite controlled working In House?

This is an adventure. I have no idea how it’s going to work. All I know is that I have a vision and they approached me because they love what I do so hopefully, there shouldn’t be too much of a problem. They’ve pulled me in for a reason. They need rejuvenation and that’s defiantly something that I can give.

Words: Millie Cotton
Images: Amina Nolan

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After working in the textile industry for 10 years, what drove you to start designing your own clothes?

After completing my degree in fashion design at Esmod Paris, I initially decided to work in the fashion and textiles industries so that I could gain enough experience and maturity to create my own brand. I was only 21 at the time, and, in my head, I’d set myself the target of launching my own line by 30. Working with textiles gave me a real insight into the importance of materials and fabrication, but it was at Solstiss (a French company renowned for its production of lace) where my obsession with lace, which is central in all my collections, began.

Who or what inspires your designs?

My main sources of inspiration come from street style, classical ballet, the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements, intricate lacework, and, of course, travelling. Above all though, I design clothes so that women can feel themselves in them; so that they feel both feminine and comfortable.

What sort of person do you aim your clothes at then?

Yes, the woman in my head is between 30 and 50, and not only appreciates fashion, but is willing to source out more exclusive pieces to mix in with her wardrobe staples. This woman could go crazy for a lace-infused sweater by me, for example, and then team it with a basic pair of trousers.

Which celebrity would you most like to see wearing one of your designs?

I’d love to dress a celebrity like Gwenyth Paltrow, Cate Blanchet, Meryl Streep, Natalie Portman, Eva Green, Audrey Tautou or Aung San Suu Kyi.

So tell us about this season’s SS12 collection. What do you love about it?

This season’s collection is heavily based on Art Deco architecture. All the pieces from the collection are named after a building, designer or painter of the Art Deco style, such as the Chrysler top, which recreates the triangulation central to Art Deco designs.

And how important are sportswear influences to your designs?

It’s ballet that most inspires me, but I don’t feel that I’ve fully explored all it has to offer yet. I started dancing when I was 6 years old, and carried on until I was seven months pregnant. I haven’t danced since I gave birth, and I do miss it… I just love the elegance of principal ballet dancers: their capability and the movements and expressions they use to tell us the story they’re portraying. That’s what I want to recreate when I design, a story behind my clothes that the person who wears them takes on and can mould to themselves.

Who are your favourite designers at the moment?

I really love Jean Paul Gaultier – there’s always a definite focus to each of his collections. You either like it or you don’t, but I like that he never leaves people indifferent. Also, Alexander McQueen’s Haute Couture collections completely enthral me.

And what plans do you have for the future?

I’d like to expand the brand’s presence in department stores and indie boutiques. And then perhaps open my own store, and create a range of shoes and maybe a childrenswear line.

Words: Samantha Southern

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Tell us a bit about your background and how you came to be a designer.

The influence of my family has been important. Both my parents have regular jobs but they have always been into art and design. I also have two older brothers who are really into music. As a kid I got to travel quite a bit with my parents and go to exhibitions all over the world. This made me want to become an artist, but as a teenager I got really into clothes and fashion. Back then during the grunge phase I was buying all the clothes that I could. It was then that I figured out that design could be something creative – so I went onto study fashion.

What have been the key influences on your work?

Lots of different things. One of my first favourite designers was Vivienne Westwood. I am also influenced by punk and other subcultures from the nineties. There were also lots of movies, too, like Lost Boys, Blade Runner, Grease and Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan. Twin Peaks has also been influential.

What would you say to someone who hadn’t seen your work before?

The pieces are all handmade and knit from bamboo, cotton and wool. I dye most of the yarns myself. I have been concentrating mainly on the knits that have become my trademark.

What elements inspired you your latest collection I Know Why No?

It’s about aesthetic destruction and I take that to mean that things don’t have to be so perfect. I was looking for the beauty of imperfection where things are a little bit rusty and falling apart. It is also inspired by friendship and love, which came from my friends and the people I enjoy working with. Movies and music remain a constant source of inspiration. I had Waterworld, Mad Max, Lost Boys and the cover of the Velvet Underground & Nico album in mind for my latest collection. My friends and I meet up as part of a film club every week, where we watch lots of Jim Jarmusch, who I also find inspiring.

Some of your items have been worn by Finnish popstars like Jenni Vartiainen. What other celebrities have worn your clothes?

Mainly Finnish people at the minute. The popstar Manna, Finnish TV personalities Maria Veitola and street style photographers and fashion journalists like Liisa Jokinen and Sally Raeste.

Who would you most like to design for?

Anyone could wear my stuff, but have to have strong personalities to carry the knits off well. A lot depends on the styling, too, of course. I have already sent knits to Björk and Juliette Lewis – PJ Harvey, Patti Smith and Kim Gordon are also on my list. I’d like to see some men wearing my knits. Musicians like Iggy Pop, Dave Gahan and Thom Yorke would be good.

What can the fashion world expect from Aino Vainio in the future?

I aim to have a different and more commercial range and have my pieces knit by others. I would also like to collaborate with a bigger brand, such as the Finnish company Marimekko. I will be participating in the Helsinki Fresh show with other young Finnish designers in Berlin. I would also like to make more jewellery and do some costume design for films.

Words: Gareth Rice

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In fact, it’s hard to think of designers of any nationality that have so single-mindedly dissected, pastiched and reinvented the sartorial mores of a nation. Or have been so successful in doing so. The company’s annual turnover now stands at more than €1 billion, thanks to more than 116 Dolce & Gabbana stores that are dotted in stylish locations around the planet, not to mention diffusion line D&G.

So what’s the secret? To put it simply: sex appeal, combined with a heartfelt devotion to the impeccably chic heroines of Italian cinematic history (particularly Visconti’s girls) and an ongoing obsession with the simple, old-fashioned lifestyle of rural Sicily. Much of Dolce & Gabbana’s work plays flirtatiously with traditional Italian values: Roman Catholic rosary beads become chic necklaces, classic black cocktail dresses are sassed up with sheer lace panels, impeccable black tailoring is worn over bare chests.

Italian movie star Isabella Rosselini summed this up powerfully back in 1995, in the introduction to the brand’s book 10 Years of Dolce & Gabbana, describing her first Dolce piece – a “chaste” white shirt “purposefully cut to make my breasts look as if they would burst out of it.” “It was Domenico [Dolce] and Stefano [Gabbana] underlining and revealing a very Italian way of seduction,” she continues, “the inexplicit message of the women that states, ‘No matter how hard we try, our bodies are so voluptuous they cannot be contained in any clothes.’”

So, pretty racy stuff, then. And a fine demonstration of this kind of innocent come-on came in Dolce & Gabbana’s collection for spring 2011, inspired by the traditional wedding trousseau of a Sicilian bride. The predominantly white silhouettes, some made of homely textiles such as bed linen, towels, and tablecloths, could hardly seem more pure, more simple. But the flirtatious undercurrent is always there, manifest in this collection in the flashes of leopard print, sensual sheer laces and négligé-like hemlines.

Is your Dolce & Gabbana girl this spring a blushing virgin or more “Like a Virgin”?
Stefano Gabbana: More “Like a Virgin”…! Joking aside, our starting point for this collection was the contents of the traditional hope chest, that brides used to receive to take away with them on the day of their wedding… There is definitely an appeal to purity and innocence, because the collection is basically all white. But at the same time it’s still very sensual and ultra-feminine.

Who would be her ideal husband?
Domenico Dolce: A virile, confident man; in other words, the Dolce & Gabbana man, the one we have always designed for..

And what would be your fatherly advice to her before giving her away?
SG: No advice; today’s women know what they want, and they are very strong, at times even more so than men. The extremely feminine image is not an indication of fragility and it does not exclude a determined personality; it’s simply a way of being.

You’ve said this collection is about taking it easy – do you think living has become more complicated since you launched Dolce & Gabbana 25 years ago?
SG: It definitely isn’t like it was 25 years ago; everything happens at a much faster, frenetic pace. There are so many things to do that the time we have at our disposal is never sufficient. Our [designs in the] past few seasons have, therefore, been about relaxing and taking it easy.
DD: This can be seen in the way we present our fashion shows. We are transforming them into personal, almost intimate moments. We want to take all the necessary time to enjoy things.”

With this predominantly white collection do you feel you have wiped the slate clean? What’s next?
SG: Actually, for us the past is very important. The last thing we want to do is forget it. We created the last collections with three themes: Sicily, tailoring and tradition …
DD: As we have often said in these past months, it’s not about nostalgia or about recreating the same things, on the contrary. We have revisited traditions and our heritage with today’s eyes and experience; we worked from our memories and not from the archives, whilst thanks to technology we revisited shapes and materials. But the atmosphere of these collections is reminiscent of our first collections.

Are the simple things in life the best?
SG: It sounds like a cliché, but yes. Ultimately, the things that count are the same for everyone: family, friends, and seeing your work appreciated.

Describe each other in one word.
SG: Wow, that’s difficult … .if I had to pick just one adjective to describe Domenico I would say thoughtful.
DD: … and for Stefano, instinctive.

Photography: Grant Thomas
Fashion: Anthony Unwin
Words: Adam Welch

This Article first appeared in Wonderland #25, February/March 2011

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WONDERLAND: Your latest menswear collection features a Geek meets Jock look. But you are the most un-Jock-like men…

ROLF: [Laughs] Yes, but that’s why it works. To have two clichés clash together creates a tension.

WONDERLAND: The new collection made me think of an American tourist in Hawaii in the 50s.

ROLF: [Laughs] For us it started with the fact that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. We just felt the need to go back to this positive time. American-inspired, but from an era when we still all believed in it.

WONDERLAND: So how do you feel now he is President elect?

ROLF: Incredibly happy. Happy and relieved.

WONDERLAND: Do you have a different approach when you design for men and women?

ROLF: They are both about something bigger than clothes but the menswear is more practical and less linked to a show.

WONDERLAND: And there is an autobiographical element to your menswear…

ROLF: Absolutely. When we launched the collection we did a show with just the two of us. It’s the clothes we want to wear; so it’s rooted in something classical twisted with something more ironic.

WONDERLAND: How do you want to be perceived: as fashion designers or conceptual artists?

ROLF: As fashion artists! We started by doing things that were about fashion but not necessarily about clothes. With the dolls’ house [at The Barbican retrospective] and some future projects we are going back into more art installations but it’s difficult to say what’s art and what’s fashion.

WONDERLAND: Your fashion shows are always thought-provoking…

ROLF: We regard our real work as the show. The shows are the performance and the clothes are the actors. A show is a way to tell a story and is so much more than just presenting the clothes for the season. A show is the reason why we went into fashion; it’s the way you can present your dreams.

WONDERLAND: What drew you to each other when you were studying at Arnhem Academy?

ROLF: First of all our shared vision of fashion and our shared taste and I think we also had the same level of ambition. We both wanted to become a fashion label. When we work together there is this extra strength that we don’t have separately. There was never a question to work alone…

WONDERLAND: Your first collections were very conceptual.

ROLF: Even though for the first five years we didn’t get so much attention, we always say that these years were the most important in our career because we could experiment and find ourselves.

WONDERLAND: The fashion industry has an obsession with new, new, new. Is it difficult for young designers to get attention so quickly?

ROLF: Absolutely. In our case that would have been devastating. It takes time to find your own voice.

WONDERLAND: And being able to make mistakes…

ROLF: Our mistakes have been our biggest lessons.

WONDERLAND: How does reality live up to the mini-world of Viktor & Rolf? You haven’t done badly have you?

ROLF: [Laughs] Have you heard of The Secret? It’s this book that is an absolute hype right now. The secret in The Secret is just visualising your dreams. When Viktor and I read that book we thought, ‘That’s exactly what we did!’.

WONDERLAND: You enjoy collaborating with musicians and actors. Why?

ROLF: We are never so interested in celebrities – the nicest thing is to be able to work together with someone you admire, like Rufus Wainwright or Tilda Swinton, to create something new. It’s beneficial for our growth.

WONDERLAND: Swinton’s career mirrors your own – the way she mixes art-house and big bucks mainstream blockbusters.

ROLF: By doing both you create a very rich world in which everything is possible: you don’t want to choose. She knows how to reach a big public.

WONDERLAND: And it stops it from being elitist.

ROLF: Yeah, but if you want to be elitist you can be as well…

WONDERLAND: Did you enjoy seeing your work in an art gallery situation at The Barbican?

ROLF: Absolutely. You know fashion is so much what you said, about newness, and it goes so fast. This season’s ideas are thrown away next season… What is enjoyable when you see all your work together like that, is that you see you have a body of work that you can cherish. We are romantic because we always want to hold on to what we are doing, in that sense we are almost anti-fashion. In our collections we often work with the idea of trying to hold onto things instead of going too fast, like when we dipped everything in silver, it was a wish to freeze a moment.

WONDERLAND: Why specifically dolls and a dolls’ house?

ROLF: You can easily control dolls. They do whatever you want! Recreating the work in a different scale makes people look at it differently, and that’s what we try to do, to look at the world we all know from a different angle. We almost preferred the dolls to the clothes in real life.

WONDERLAND: In your S/S 2009 virtual show with Shalom Harlow you appear like puppet masters looming over the set.

ROLF: Yes, that was the idea.

WONDERLAND: Do you enjoy being in control?

ROLF: [Laughs] Yes, it’s very important for us.

WONDERLAND: Another recurring theme in your shows is dance –

ROLF: It’s very strange because we never dance ourselves. I think it’s about trying to escape the rigid form of a fashion show where models are walking like robots on a catwalk.

WONDERLAND: Which designers do you admire?

ROLF: We admire designers who really have their own style whether it’s very artistic or not, from Margiela to Yves Saint Laurent. In the end that is what lasts. You can lose yourself in trends but its important to really keep it close to yourself.

WONDERLAND: How do you work together as a duo?

ROLF: We do everything together. Every business decision, every idea. That is why we play with our image, the same glasses and the same clothes: to show that we act as one designer; we feel as one designer.

WONDERLAND: Do you never disagree?

ROLF: We don’t always agree but we never fight. We just talk until we find consensus and when we both have a different opinion it means the idea is not yet polished, or finished.

WONDERLAND: Will Viktor & Rolf always work in the fashion arena?

ROLF: Yes, but maybe not exclusively in the fashion arena. But fashion is, let’s say, the love of our lives.

WONDERLAND: Where is Viktor today?

ROLF: He is making sketches. That’s the good thing about being two people.

Photographer: Tom Allen
Fashion: Way Perry
Words: Iain R. Webb

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #16, Dec/Jan 2008/09

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There’s a new feeling in fashion at the moment where the designers are the stars. It’s like in the 80s; I think it’s a very old vision that doesn’t relate to the world I live in. I don’t feel famous.

I’m a perfectionist, but up to a point: I know when there’s no hope, when it’s too late and then I just leave it and walk away. It’s only fashion. It’s not like it’s fucking cancer, is it?

My goal is to not be mediocre. To not become such a business machine that it’s only about a pair of slacks.

I’m an emotional retard. I cried the other night watching a young boy singing on that TV show Britain’s Got Talent. He believed in what he was doing so much and was getting picked on at school. He got really upset because he didn’t win.

The earliest memory I have is of being at Pontins holiday camp in Camber Sands. It was 1977 and there was a big swarm of ladybirds on the beach. They went in everyone’s mouths. It was really weird. I’ve been scared of ladybirds ever since.

My first crush was some blonde boy on a campsite in Cornwall. He was there with his brother. It was an innocent crush – the best kind – not a three-way. I was seven years old and was too afraid to speak to him. I doubt he would have lived up to my fantasy anyway.

I got where I am today by relying on my skill, not my personality. I’ve never been someone to cheese-ball my way to the top. That can get you there but it won’t keep you there. You can have the gift of the gab but if your work doesn’t speak volumes, then you’re not going to stay around for long.

My mum keeps me grounded. She always calls me up and says, “I haven’t seen much of your work in the papers recently. You’re not doing so well, are you?” I send her all my press clippings and she’ll say, “I didn’t like that dress very much… What’s going on with those shoes with the square front?” It’s our biggest seller mum! “Well, I wouldn’t wear them.”

I get bored easily. I have the attention span of an ant. Always have had. I spent more time in the coffee shop than at school. The only school activity I enjoyed was doing synchronised swimming with 40 other girls. I like diving now – I’m a water-baby really.

Fashion can sometimes get monotonous because you feel like you’re on a treadmill and have to keep churning out this shit. To get inspired I become aware of everything around me: a billboard, a pattern or a news report. I stay alert and that’s when it comes. That’s why I don’t panic because even if it leaves me just a week to do a collection, that’s enough. I just have to keep looking and it’ll come. It’s always worked.

I don’t think I can live in England forever because the violence is too much. There’s a lot of knife crime and England seems to be falling apart a bit at the moment. There’s too much of a divide between rich and poor – it’s getting more like South America. Right now the government is doing a shit job of unifying the country.

I tried to live abroad a couple of years ago but it only lasted two weeks. I moved to New York and it was fucking awful. I sorted out a whole office there and moved everything but after a few days thought, “What am I doing here? It’s evil!”

I like making mistakes even if it means getting bad reviews. If you don’t make mistakes then nothing new can come. I like people around me at work to make their own mistakes as well, but only once. I don’t have the time to give them more than that because it’s all done under my name.

I’ve been a Buddhist for seven years. I don’t see Buddhism as a religion; It’s a way of life. It’s just there all the time: in the way I treat everyone from a receptionist to a CEO. I love what Buddhism stands for but I don’t really want to come back as a slug!

My biggest regret is not finding compassion earlier in life. But I don’t think I could have made head or tail of it when I was younger. The more I work and the bigger my company gets, the more compassion I need because I’m dealing with a lot of people’s personalities. But I’m not a fucking martyr.

Incompetence makes me angry. If I’ve asked someone for something and they come back and offer me something different that just fucking freaks me out. It means they went down the easiest route. To me everything is about editing. You start off major and then you edit it down to something acceptable. Go for the maximum.

I wouldn’t want to be anyone else. Everyone comes with their problems and I’ve got enough of my own. And I wouldn’t do anything differently because I learnt from it all. I had to fight to study at Central St. Martins because my father, who was a cab driver, didn’t understand fashion. It’s been an education for him and for me. It makes me respect what I’ve achieved.

I love getting older. You start to reflect on the stupid things in your past and you never want to go back, only forward. I’m not scared of aging – I think you become wiser and more distinguished. Now I’m 39 years old I can handle situations that 10 years ago would have made me kick off. The oik and the hooligan is no more, the man is now.

Photography: Tom Allen
Fashion: Anthony Unwin
Interview: Ben Cobb

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