{"id":41003,"date":"2016-11-15T15:13:43","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T14:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/?p=41003"},"modified":"2016-11-15T15:13:43","modified_gmt":"2016-11-15T14:13:43","slug":"ryohei-kawanishi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/ryohei-kawanishi\/","title":{"rendered":"The New York designer inspired by Marcel Duchamp"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Vitall
\n 
\nMarcel Duchamp once said he forced himself to contradict himself, in order to avoid conforming to his own taste. Seventy years later the adage still stands up as a worthy insight into the artist\u2019s plight as well as an apt fashion maxim, too. And one designer whose work conveys this sense of constant reinvention \u2013 as well as a healthy admiration for the French conceptualist \u2013 is Ryohei Kawanishi.
\nNow based in New York, the young Japanese designer completed his BA at London\u2019s Central Saint Martins before graduating from the prestigious Parsons MA programme last year with a collection named after Duchamp\u2019s work \u201cThe Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even\u201d, after seeing the piece at Philadelphia\u2019s Museum of Art. Kawanishi\u2019s collection takes its cue from the readymade, transforming banal household objects like shower curtains, coat racks and rolls of toilet paper into nine playfully extravagant looks \u2013 one for each of Duchamp\u2019s nine bachelors \u2013 in an offering reminiscent of Maison Margiela or Miguel Adrover. It follows two similarly playful collections made at CSM, one in response to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake tsunami and the other to the 2010 Arab Spring.
\nSo why is he suddenly making strippedback utilitarian menswear? For that\u2019s the mood of his latest project, LANDLORD, a collaboration between Kawanishi, stylist and regular Hood By Air collaborator Akeem Smith, and Daniel Huang. The trio debuted a first collection of unpretentious staples at New York Fashion Week: Men\u2019s earlier this year to loud fanfare. Intrigued, SLEEK quizzed Ryohei about his new-found faith in commercial fashion and how he\u2019s juggling brands, babies and new ideas.
\n <\/p>\n

“I like creativity that makes me think.” – Ryohei Kawanishi<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 
\n\"Vitall
\n 
\nSLEEK: How did LANDLORD come about?<\/strong> \nI met Daniel Huang, the manager of a US military contract factory in NYC after I showed my graduate collection in 2015, and he asked me if I wanted to start a menswear label with him. I didn\u2019t have a job at the time and had just found out that my girlfriend was pregnant. So I said yes, and brought Naoki [Masuda] on board, the pattern cutter for my Parsons\u2019 collection. Thereafter we started to experiment with Daniel\u2019s factory\u2019s capabilities, and I began to think from more of a production perspective.
\nWe read your feature in W magazine, where you talked about your love for Isa Genzken. What is it about her work that you relate to?<\/strong> \nI saw her sculptures when I was studying in London, and also at MoMA after I\u2019d moved to New York. She uses so many different uniforms and garments for her sculptures, particularly the ones at the David Zwirner show in 2015. They remind me of daily life in NYC. There\u2019s endless construction going on in the city and I like to use that as a reference. My father is a construction worker, so I\u2019ve been surrounded by workwear uniforms since I was little.
\nThe collection we\u2019re featuring is also influenced by the Duchamp work that sparked your MA show. Why are you so fascinated by it?<\/strong> \nI chose that specific work because I saw garment references in it. But generally, I love the way he pushes concepts while examining the relationship between artist, audience and the work. I like creativity that makes me think.
\nThese references seem to position your clothes in the realm of critical fashion, i.e., fashion that has an awareness of its wider cultural context. But does that really have much pull for consumers?<\/strong> \nI\u2019m still looking for new ways to break through that barrier. Fashion is getting more commercial and, you\u2019re right, critical fashion doesn\u2019t really matter to many audiences. That\u2019s the problem I had with my old work, there just wasn\u2019t the clientele for it.
\nYou\u2019ve used fashion to comment on current affairs. But are there any contemporary issues that you think people in fashion aren\u2019t talking about loudly enough?<\/strong> \nEverything! There are too many issues to list and I think ultimately fashion isn\u2019t the right medium for all of it, especially in America. American politics is theatre in it itself, we don\u2019t need to dress it up.
\nFinally, you studied at both Saint Martins and Parsons. The students there have a reputation for being pretty fierce. What was the major difference between the two?<\/strong> \nCSM students come to school with IKEA bags, but Parsons students come to school with a Louis Vuitton.
\n <\/p>\n

Fashion & Text ELLA PLEVIN
\nPhotography VITALI GELWICH<\/p>\n

Taken from SLEEK 51 – order here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ryohei Kawanishi is the Japanese designer whose menswear is shaped by French Modernism and the American Military<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41006,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[6718,6712,1496,6713,6714,1346,402,6715,5042,3283,6716,6717],"class_list":["post-41003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fashion","tag-the-bride-stripped-bare-by-her-bachelors","tag-akeem-smith","tag-central-saint-martins","tag-daniel-huang","tag-even","tag-hood-by-air","tag-japan","tag-kawanishi","tag-landlord","tag-marcel-duchamp","tag-parsons","tag-ryohei-kawanishi"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\nThe New York designer inspired by Marcel Duchamp The New York designer inspired by Marcel Duchamp<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/ryohei-kawanishi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The New York designer inspired by Marcel Duchamp The New York designer inspired by Marcel Duchamp\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ryohei Kawanishi is the Japanese designer whose menswear is shaped by French Modernism and the American Military\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/ryohei-kawanishi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sleek Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sleekmag\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-11-15T14:13:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@sleekmag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@sleekmag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Verfasst von\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"sleek\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Gesch\u00e4tzte Lesezeit\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4\u00a0Minuten\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/\",\"name\":\"Sleek Magazine\",\"description\":\"Sleek is Germany\u2019s leading independent media house\/brand for creativity and innovation located in Berlin the creative capital of the world. 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