With a series of interviews with young designers. who showed at last year’s Fashionclash Festival, we’d like to explore what their dreams, hopes and positioning are. Today with Wuethrichfuerst.
Hello Karin and Matthias, how are you today?
We are fine, thank you.
How does your own description of your designs differ from others’?
Our designs try to express the clash of elegance and carelessness with a touch of humour. Moreover, we are not only developing garments but other things like objects and installations that makes us different.
What is the most important aspect in your design process?
We do focus on a strong or precise idea of how we develop our designs. Basically we try to define a quote, a statement or a little story to build our universe of details which in the end results in a collection. Another important part is the dialogue. As a team of two coming from different fields we have a very intense exchange during the design process.
What are you most proud of?
To get out of bed every morning and doing something we like. It is definitely a privilege being able to cut our own path.
We see a lot of change happening in the fashion industry at the moment – brands are going from a men’s and a women’s to a single collection and with the ‘see now, buy now’ strategy sales and distribution is affected heavily. Where do you see all this going and how do you position your brand within the changing system?
First of all we try to define ourselves as designers and not as fashion designers in particular. We see fashion as a field that combines many different aspects and possibilities to express ideas. In our opinion, the fashion system will evolve into different directions. Many young brands cannot afford to play by the fashion industry’s rules, thus a lot of them will develop new strategies. Our focus for example lays on the development of a continuous collection, which shall grow by adding non-seasonal series of pieces and accessories.
If you could give the younger you advice, what would that be?
Karin: Don’t push things to hard. Stay cool.
Matthias: Don’t get real.
Where do you see your brand in the future?
Our label is quite young therefore it is not easy to predict how things will turn out in five or ten years. We believe in our concept of creating smaller series so we try to push this idea further.
You participated in last year’s Fashionclash Festival. What was this experience like for you and what benefits were you able to derive from it?
Being part of the Fashionclash Festival was a great opportunity for us. We were very impressed by the diversity of it all, the nice organisors and all the other designers. The festival’s concept, which has a quite unique approach, is what we liked. It was an exceptional chance to show our work to many different people like journalists, shop-owners, buyers and photographers.
What are your life goals, your biggest dreams and high hopes?
For us the most important thing is to stay hungry and naive. If the day comes when we believe to know how things work we have to retire.
Thank you for your time.
