‘The creative mind continues playing with the objects it loves…’

Almost a year after the first presentation of the Reykjavic-based designer Sruli Recht and his awe-inspiring work, Yatzer follows the creator to his next steps with a presentation of his A/W2011 menswear collection “WHEN GRAVITY FAILS” which took place at the Reykjavik Art Museum during DesignMarch 2011 in Iceland.  Having obtained his first creative stimuli from parts of the world with renowned history and culture, referring to his home place in Jerusalem-Israel and Johannesburg in South Africa, the 31-years old creator and Fashion Design graduate of the Royal Melbourne Institute, has involved himself in various forms of design including costume, installation as also as Film and Video.

During the last eight years the designer had landed partnerships and collaborative projects with major fashion labels and individual craftsmen, leading to unique products, garments and artwork, many of which can be viewed in The Armoury (VOPNABÚRIÐ EHF) – Recht’s own ‘private museum' located in the old Fishpacking District of Reykjavik -in the inspiring Iceland.

WHEN GRAVITY FAILS…
“born out of this
and trying to get back in
worn out from bliss
and floating in sin
falling back through this future
and from where I’ve been
sky-born, deliberate
draped raw from within”

This season Sruli Recht chose to enrich the males’ style offering a complete and stirred collection of tailored pieces only for men.  Sticking to his ‘made-to-measure’ creative culture, the designer presents us with his debut men’s line, that is a broad collection of clothing pieces and accessories for the A/W2011 season, mainly based on the idea of horizontal-cut garments and materials.

What is striking about this collection - of course besides the clothes themselves, is the creation story behind the collection.

Based on draping, the collection was literally developed in the designer’s hands rather than on paper. Accordingly, he used the so called Macroscope technique which is a camera trained on the form of the garment, connected to a projector, that throws the image of the half-scale mannequin and garment in progress up on the wall full-scale.  The shaped fabric is then transferred to paper, scanned with a large format scanner, digitized to vector, scaled up, and then cut directly in fabric by the laser cutter.  Then garments were re-draped in full size, corrected, rescanned, re-edited, re-cut until the piece came to its final form.

This implies that every aspect of the collection is laser-cut, which in turn gives great accuracy and feeling on the fabric.

Photo © Marinó Thorlacius, Model: Emil Þór Guðmundsson, Stylist: Arash Arfazadeh
Courtesy of Sruli Recht

Regarding the garments and materials used in this collection, leather has been one of the basic materials used, always coming from Atlantic Leather, an Icelandic tannery specializing in raw skins. In the same manner, wool was also obtained from local suppliers, meaning that an average 98% of raw materials for this collection came from Icelandic supply sources.

Overall, the collection features total looks consisting of coats, cardigans, leggings and trousers complimented by a broad ranges of accessories including shoes, scarves, bags, gloves and silver jewelry. - 55 styles, approximately 130 with material variations.  All shoes and boot samples are produced by Guðrún Edda Einarsdóttir.

Sruli Recht’s introductory men’s line was presented in January 2011 at the Tranoï Showroom in Paris during the A/W Homme Fashion Week, where Mr.Karl Lagerfeld couldn't resist buying his Show Piece One - “Icarus, post-crash”.  However Sruli's collection will always be available in his Armoury !

RIGHT (words by Sruli) >> Show Piece One - “Icarus, post-crash”: 21 Svartfugl [blackbirds] on a hunted wild reindeer base. After meeting a group of hunters, hunting birds and beasts, we struck up a deal: all the birds they could bring me, in exchange for a pound of breath. And birds they brought, bags and bags of them. Hands soaked in feathers and flesh, they were sorted through, sent on ice to my tanner (a craftsman so brilliant I heard he once tanned air). What returned to our studio was not a pile of feathers and feet but rather the full-bodied, beaked husks of those once soft flying blackbirds. And out of their box they were pulled, put onto the stand, and the garment quite literally designed itself. All we had to do was sew it together… by hand and heart, on a reindeer base, body to body to back to wing, to have our Icarus, post crash, sombre and in between.
LEFT (words by Sruli) >> Show Piece Two - “Born out of this”: 27 still born lambs, 3 regular lambs, military deadstock lining. And it was said, during a conversation in the cold, cavernous walls of the tannery, chromium sulphate hanging low in the air, and not a piece of natural light leaking in, “what is that heap over there?” Looking vaguely at the iridescent white pile to his left, said he “That…? They were not meant to be.”  And so it was agreed, I would take those lost souls, and from him to me they came.  Shaken, preferred, and pieced together, these almost once vessels, together now one, and draped as a single square, and a sleeve, and a pleated set/raglan hybrid, with darted shaping. A coat to end all, and begin again.