OHNE TITEL

Text: Renata Espinosa

Right now there are very few designers that one can truly call inventors. While there are those who might push for a return to basics, this strikes one as counterintuitive—no one is suffering at the hands of a t-shirt shortage or from lack of a pair of jeans.  Only the innovators will survive. A burned up economy presents a commercial challenge that hunts for a muse and a torchbearer. Fortunately, the fashion world has Ohne Titel: Alexa Adams and Flora Gill. Their work is palpably new yet prehistoric; recognizable yet purposefully revised. The first thing that strikes you when you first see Ohne Titel's clothes from a distance is how well-conceived the silhouette is—it redefines the body without eradicating it. Anatomy and design intertwine, a sort of futuristic second skin where clothing functions as an extension of and a reference to the body. Their clothes are complex and intellectual—if one were to visualize a mathematical equation as a work of art, it would be one of Adams' and Gill's exquisitely rendered knits—but that's not why they're such design geniuses. It's because they actually succeed in taking the conceptual and turning it into something extremely wearable and flattering.

Adams and Gill met at Parsons and did their first collaboration while in school, showed the collection in a gallery and but ultimately decided to get experience working at other fashion companies first—Adams went to Helmut Lang and Gill freelanced at various companies then came together later at Karl Lagerfeld. "The first time we worked together it was just an idea we had about fabric manipulation," says Gill. "I remember an installation piece by Anselm Kiefer that was almost like a room full of vaguely burned books. It looked like it had been burnt and then sat there for years, getting a patina with age. So we were creating these processes on fabric and clothing and it was a really good experience. When we got the chance to do it again, we just jumped for it." Their name is a reference to Kiefer's untitled works: "ohne titel."

"It's funny, because we're quite opposite," says Adams. "That's what I think is interesting about the line is because we personally in our design aesthetic is quite opposite." Gill has a strong color sense and pattern, an influence of her parents' work in sculpture and pottery—both teach at an art school—while Adams is more likely to take charge of the tailoring aspects of the collection, though they work together every step of the way. "I'm more likely to wear a color and a print, and Alexa's more likely to be in an interesting silhouette but probably in all black," said Flora. "It's interesting to have those opposites and having that push and pull," said Alexa. "In terms of aesthetically, we both come to the same agreement when you see the look or the outfit, but then our starting points are completely different."

One of the signatures of your collections has been the pantsuit. What do you think makes these so attractive to women now and to you?

Alexa: I think we always will put a few in a collection. In this past collection, we broke it up more with combinations of knitting and suiting. I think there’s a certain kind of power in a uniform. It’s really modern and can be totally re-imagined on a woman. I think the suit sometimes is so masculinized, even when people try to take it apart, there’s this overt reference to masculinity, but within suiting, the most interesting thing for me is how it actually is a sculpture for your body and how it actually reflects the body’s proportions. You can have that architecture, but then it references a woman’s body in a much more interesting way.

Flora: It sculpts the body. It’s almost like a corset you put on the outside of the body that holds you up and makes you stand a different way and it makes a better silhouette on almost everybody if it’s a well-fitting suit.

Alexa: Also, I don’t know if it’s socially, or politically, but for me there’s a certain power that comes with suiting. There’s a level of authority that I think we wanted to transmit with our line.

I know your last collection had a lot of skeletal structures, which highlight the body in a way that reveals the nude form as well as functioning as a type of protective armor.

Alexa: That’s going to continue this season in a darker vein. We wanted to combine something that was about the body’s form, but then also revealing the body. There’s this idea of structure, but we also want the lightness so that you see through the structure. Particularly with some of the Swarovski-embroidered pieces and some of these really amazing reconstructed jackets. We used this fabric that was actually a nylon tricot—it’s generally used as a inner lining between parts of jackets and on the inside. It’s kind of a more futuristic, techie fabric and we had the idea of instead bringing it to the outside so it’s reconstituting the whole idea of structure.

I’ve never seen anything else like it, with the opaque pieces of fabric outlining the essential construction of the jacket with the sheer pieces revealing another structure, the body itself.

Alexa: It makes you wonder, what is the body, and what is the garment. The Swarovski pieces refer to the spine and ribs and different body articulations. It’s quite soft, but it’s also very geometric. It sections your body off, giving it structure.

Flora: It’s a graphic representation of the elements of your body. The muscles, the ribs.

Alexa: Now, for us, we’re not really interested in representing a particular time period. What we think is a way forward, something that works for the future is referencing the body and how it’s put together, and thinking of new shapes that relate to how our actual body forms are.

You’ve said that you have been inspired by the work of sculptor Naum Gabo. I was reading about how he was really interested in looking at art in four dimensions, time as an element. This seems to carry over into fashion. The garment isn’t just something that sits on a rack, but the way someone moves in it is just as important.

Alexa: That’s something that is really important to us. The process of how we design the clothing is that even though there’s a sketch, so much of what we do is based on the fitting, when we actually see it on the body and see how you move in it.

Flora: A lot of times if you put it on and you originally saw it as one particular thing in the drawing, when it’s on the person, the person adds a whole different element. They add a sculpture underneath—the body to put into the interesting shape.

At what point do you figure out how it’s working on the body?

Alexa: Early on! Immediately, and repeatedly.

Flora: Even though you have an idea of what it’s going to be, it’s important to see it on the body.

[Just then, Alexa and Flora’s neighbor shows up at their door with his chihuahua sitting in a miniature military tank. Everyone erupts into laughter.]

Flora: Across from us are architects and a costume studio. It’s a really interesting mix of people.

Do you ever cross-reference each other’s stuff?

Alexa: No, mostly we just use their facilities...they have washing machines, we do fabric development. A lot of what we do is thinking of the garment quite sculpturally, so that involves actually manipulating the material and doing something new, whether it’s combining stretch with something that doesn’t have any stretch in it.

Flora: Sometimes it’s in the new knitting techniques that we do. Like we have some hand-braided and knotted pieces that were really referencing the shapes of the body. It creates a body on the person, like these round shapes form around the shoulder, then it sculpts the body into having strong shoulders. If you’ve ever seen the way the muscles come together on the center of your back or your abdominals, they braid together almost like this.

How did the braiding technique come about?

Flora: Something that’s always inspiring us is when we look into very new techniques and technologies, but we’re also very interested in taking an older craft that has somehow maybe been forgotten and bringing it to a different level with a modern application of unusual combinations of fabric. Like I’ve never seen anything hand-braided like that, then sewn and cut together. In previous collections we’ve done things with crocheted raffia, and it takes it to a completely different level. That’s just something we’re interested in for fabric development, and also creating new shapes with a strong fabric.

What are some of the new fabrics you’ve just discovered?

Alexa: I think for the coming fall, we’re definitely doing something with body protection and a sense of armor, but it’s going a little bit harder, a little bit darker, a little bit more protective. But we’re breaking it up by adding lycra, or washing it so that the whole texture of the fabric changes and it gets even more stretchy—a four-way stretch. It’s going to have very strong shapes. It’s quite pointed in a way.

Flora: There are interesting sculptures, but then there are softer drape-y elements that will combine with very strong armorial shapes.

Do you think there’s a reason we’re going back to this body conscious yet body morphing design? I mean, even Beyonce is wearing these extreme sculptural looks now! Who would have guessed she would ever wear something by Gareth Pugh.

Alexa: I know! It something that’s completely hit culture in a way. It’s not something that exists on its own—I don’t really think of what we do is a design sense that exists on its own, we’re a part of culture. One way that we’re doing it, and you’re seeing this from quite a few different designers, is going into that body connection, and that stronger body shape creating an exoskeleton, or creating a new body on top of your body. Whether it’s economic or a feeling in the air, we’re seeing these opposite sensations. There’s a feeling of constriction but then at the same time there’s a feeling of freedom.