Eckhaus Latta
Want to know what you should be wearing right now? You should be wearing anything, everything from the design duo Eckhaus Latta. Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta are fresh young things that
graduated from RISD and are making interesting clothing/ interesting shapes and
textures that can be worn as clothing, out of their Brooklyn studio. I was introduced to their work when I helped
a friend out with a project and there were people bedecked in these uniforms of
cotton waffle layering. I kept
asking who made them and where I could get them and were there any extra lying
about that I could take with me, sadly there wasn’t. Later that day I emailed the studio directly as the pieces
from their line via their website seemed hard to locate and was responded to
with enthusiasm and I now eagerly anticipate my studio visit with them.
What makes Eckhaus Latta not your run of the mill new design
trend? It’s a mix of
experimentation with function that is elegant yet not trying too hard. You can view their Autumn/Winter 2013,
Spring/Summer 2013 and Autumn/Winter 2012 on their site. Each collection is varied although a
clear aesthetic vision can be traced throughout. This is a feat and reassurance to see, evolution versus mere
one-upmanship. I especially love
their A/W 2013 line. It’s like a
wearable future being proposed.
There is a mix of minimalism, futurism, Asia, Bauhaus all combined in
subtle and form creating ways. This
is perhaps the thing that makes Eckhaus Latta so interesting to me. Their clothes are not merely about
projection of a lifestyle (although it certainly does), it’s more about how the
body is the walking summation of parts and that fabric, cuts, folds and color
can accentuate and liberate one’s body, movement and presence within
space.
Fashion and art is a funny thing. One that I have remarked on in mostly tones of
dismissal. Maybe I spoke too fast
though, or maybe Eckhaus Latta’s clothing has visually excited me more then
most art I have been seeing of late.
All I know is that the pile of art money that I have squirreled away is
definitely justified in the purchase of a few of their pieces and when I wear
then around town I will feel like a moving sculpture that has potential to
change the mood within and around me just by standing there.
Heather Guertin, MODEL TURNED COMEDIAN, 2013
(Publication Studio/ Social Malpractice Studio)
This is a sliver of a book that can be read faster then a
load of laundry but damn was it fun to read. This shy novella of under 70 pages is a quick telling of an
unnamed women, told in first person, and how she was a model who pretended to
buy clothes in LA to increase store sales, how she became a comedian, the end
of her ten year marriage, her love affairs with The Swiss and Kas and how she
almost karate kicked David Letterman in the face on air.
Guertin is an artist and comedian based in New York. I don’t know too much about her
paintings but the bio section on the back of the book says that she uses comedy
and her other forms of art making in incorporative and referenced ways. After reading this, it makes me want to
see as many formations of her practice as possible. The book is very much a women’s tale. It has this crisp reflexivity and the
sentence structure and tone make reading it a breeze and also had me laughing
out loud, literally at the laundromat at some parts. The honesty of the character’s thoughts, insecurities and
indifference is refreshing and hit a nerve with my own brain/thought
patterns. Things that would seem
important or somehow altering are brushed off in a few sentences, such as:
That same day I made a pact with myself that I would be a
standup comedian.
I realized that I could do anything. Running on adrenaline I
bought two tickets to New York City.
I only needed one ticket, so I had to do some negotiating
with the airline to get my full refund for the second ticket. I succeeded but
ended up paying a fee of $175.
After that was settled, I arrived in N.Y.C.
New York was cold and dirty so I flew back.
This made me wish I hadn’t refunded my second ticket but
rather just kept it and changed it to a flight back to L.A.
Then it would have only cost me $50 to change flights plus
the difference in the ticket price, which I can’t imagine would be much.
Anyway, L.A. was the place for me.
So yeah, that is a sample of Guertin’s writing style,
which is like reading an episode of Seinfeld but has more sensitivity and an
overall search for love and connection vibe. What was very exciting to read in Guertin’s story though was
how art and the desire to make some form of art, in this case comedy, is an
intense and real drive. The
character being a woman is wow to see because there are so few instances of
this and it is done in a transferable way but does not disavow the fact that
she is a woman experiencing things.
The need to express and actualize oneself is not the domain of men only
and it was a relief to see it being articulated with such ease and humor in
this book.
The line that got me good was this:
How can I be so manipulative, not only to other people but
also to myself? Am I tricking
myself into fulfilling my own goals? Is success against my nature? Would I
rather transgress against my own personal development?
I need to understand that it is not artificial to allow
yourself to be successful. It is
just learning to have self-control and self-control in an important part of
developing a strong identity.
Ok so like yeah, girl just read my mind! But really this
book is a nugget of inspiration and I use that word in the most cliché way but
really damn it, I mean it. Read
it; make an hour of your day fun and funny. Everyone is the same but different and that’s okay.