The Tastemakers Society

photo by Omar Sverrisson, edited by Lina Hanson

There’s handmade and then there’s Sruli Recht handmade, blood trickling handmade is what Recht specializes in. Technically you’d describe him as a designer but in hind sight that would be too restricting, a more appropriate title would be, ‘maker of things’, which would pretty much cover anything, which is exactly what Recht handles, everything. Sruli Recht an Iceland native has mastered the ability to create, it sounds relatively easy, but think about it, he made a mobile cutting table, a belt, a rug, shoes, need I go on more, he can jump from project to project and you would never be able to guess what was coming next.

Name, age, location

This is like roll call. Manny’s roll call. Currently Sruli Recht, 28 solar laps, Reykjavik, North Atlantic.

Tell me about yourself.

…Ok. I am very easily bored, and hungry for new things all the time. Prone to frequent temporary fixation. Science-fiction nerd. As a kid I used to pull apart things to see how they worked, and then put them back together. My own blood gets on everything I make. Water seems to get all over me whenever it’s near. I like to sneak. Sneaking past water has never proved fruitful. It gets me every time. Ice though, seems non-plussed by my presence. Water gets on everything. I like to use my hands. Unless reading, I need music on all times.

When did you know you wanted to design clothing for a living and why?

I couldn’t say I ever really did. Maybe I still don’t… well not just clothing. I made a switch from fine art around 18, before then I was happy with the idea of living in a shack painting and sculpting… but you know, it was obvious I liked ‘things’ too much. Material possession and objects always connected me to the real world. Grounded me. Around that age it seemed a living could be made from the accidents of my hands and head. The past year or so has seen the studio move toward more product and concept design as well as psychographics and art direction with a few architects here in Iceland on city planning work. And, well, shoes…

You don’t exactly make clothing pieces that can be mass produced, can you give us your take on your style and how you create and design your pieces?

I couldn’t tell you what the style is beyond it being a result, I’m not sure I style things in as much as let the elements and forms shine through. In using whatever is around me at the time of resolving the design, whether it is cardboard and stamps, or fabric and thread, the finish takes on this simpler result. Though, whatever comes out of this studio definitely looks like it was made here. The other day I read someone call it “analogue in materials, and digital shapes… the opposite of sensual.” I like the analysis in that explanation. 

Most likely due to swaying interest there is a Venn-cross of industrial, clothing and product design with a focus on the design and concept capturing someone personally rather than aimed for mass sale and broad commercial appeal. My fascinations and fleeting desires influence a darker ironic tone, along with m general aggressive subtext… which all somehow relate to social dis-function and sustainability. I’m not sure if anyone else sees these social commentaries. That seems to distinguish it. 

The shoes?

For the same reason as I began with clothing, it is difficult to find a beautiful shoe. When putting clothing on a food pyramid shoes are at top of the scale… I think an inverted triangle relates directly to the body - jackets and coats at the early wide base, shoes at the hard sharp joint. And it was challenge. Despite the nature of the first collection, it was never intended as sculpture for the feet. I make non-products; The studio is very focused on non-products, and the annual shoe collection present a narrative for us. Each season the shoe line resets our visual communication and sets a new feel for the next year. Shoes are very interesting and we treat their scale with the same proportions as architectural models.

How does the design evolve?

Well, that’s half of the point right there really, isn’t it? I mean, from what I can tell design itself is mostly Darwinian… appliances and clothes are just thumbs and feathers. So when all of a sudden we have this new “where was I before…. traffic lights and contraception” it is man evolving real-time on a chart-able marketable non-cellular level compared to the old school of millennia-shifting fin-flipper-finger. What I enjoy most is an innovative design that makes light and irony of our odd social transformations. The direct evolution of these works really does come through practical handling of patterns and 3 dimensional objects. It’s a very hands on process.

How do you approach your designs, whether it’s clothing or shoes?

I do what makes me excited. That’s when I know something is right, if I get this rush of raw possibility - it’s my barometer. My work is the result, a breach of process, not intention. I’m not trying to make them be like anything as much as feel like it was or is going to be something when finished. It is an emotion or an intellectual abrasion, sometimes an idea will just hit me right in the face though. Other times it happens through an accidental pen stroke, mishearing something, looking at it from the wrong angle… often it is, again, that whole process thing of doing it again till it slowly shifts into the right form. I take the subject, think about its context, future, present and historic and pull something out of the fractured void… I like making ugly things beautiful. If you stripped back the structures of the designs and looked at the elements you would likely dislike them. Beauty is context, right?

I can see every point of a garment in my head from fabric cutting to every seam clipping, which can lead to pre-designing. So I get hands on. A beautiful simplicity in construction also can be obtained at this practical stage too. I very much enjoy making things without time, pieces that seem to have existed in the 1800’s or 2180. I like to things non-existent, things that live in a small metropolis out of time. Things that have no direct place [like me].

What’s the most difficult thing about being a fashion designer?

Being considered as a fashion designer. That’s pretty difficult I wouldn’t introduce myself as that. So the hardest thing would be to define what I do. I design. Often I will be introduced as a tailor, that’ strange too, I don’t mind it as much. Tailoring is part of what I do, influences every decision in a way, but its definitely not my limitation. Actually, that is it - being considered a fashion designer, or any one thing that defines you as a specialist, boxes you into an area. I have the luxury of creative flexibility, and here in the northern hemisphere I’m afforded the wonderful luck of many different projects in many different fields.

The nice thing is, though, just how amazingly real-time this industry can be. Rapid social adoption of styles can be eerie, and at the same time, the medium and focus on the work really can allow for great spotlights on the lost art of political and sexual acts. Gaultier still remains the greatest shifter of social change. That man single handily drip-fed the populace with a wall breaking serum of gender sexuality expression. There was a time before him, and a time after. Some designers and artists can do that. That’s one thing that I do love about it; there is a forum to make a mark, change thought and let everybody adapt to it after. I’d safely say he spurred the last great social change pre digital communities.

Since I was a kid I have been obsessing over what will be the next social standard replacement/evolution for the suit and tie. I saw a program when I was 12 that predicted men would all be wearing formal business skirts with their suit jackets, even in business meetings, due to the rise in global heat. I believed this is for a while but recently I’ve begun to think it will be something much more interesting.

I find it very common for creative individuals to have some hobby of sorts that they are almost as equally passionate about their creative endeavors, do you have such a thing?

Well, the hobbyist creative I’m no good at casual endeavors. Maybe, but I seem to turn any and every interest into a project, with revenue. My life, the bits that don’t really involve the studio, I could tell you about that instead.

I read a lot. A lot of cyberpunk. Any books by those authors, Bruce Sterling, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Bruce Sterling, Philip K Dick. Gentlemen Seers of thine Oncoming futures. I’m heavy into future tech and social adaption. I’d like to have cybernetic optional add-ons. An in built air conditioner would be really nice. I collect. Horde, I mean. Toys, comics, books, fabrics, scissors. Old Russian cars, pretty much soviet anything. We cook a lot here; I like to experiment there. But I’m trying to cut my hobbies down. I really miss oil paint and porcelain clay, and playing music… but there are just too many things to distract.

photo by Gundi

Part Two: Late September - October 2007

How do you view the fashion industry of late and where do you think your style of clothing fits in that arena?

It’s always a shifting environment - visually economically and conceptually. It’s good to be in if you can keep your head above, but you know on the other hand this question “how do you view the industry of late” its not like it is any different to what its ever been. Trends blend and rotate, things surface and drop. Though realistically its the same thing its been since Jean-Baptiste Colbert designed the machine ‘fashion’ we think of as so modern in the mid 1600’s. How do I view it? It is exactly as it should be. The good people alleviating themselves of their financial burdens, daily, to keep up their habits, and remove themselves as a financial threat to the kings. So its working perfectly.

I have this romantic vision of people buying less clothing … pieces that they wear for longer times and that mean more to them. I do like vintage pieces for that reason. There are some really beautiful designers around. They aren’t hard to find. Their clothes are well made, gentle and are made to live for many years. Go find them. One piece will mean more to you and your grandchildren than you can imagine. Its how it used to be and its definitely how I like to make my clothing.

I read once “old fashions never die, they are just worn again with irony” I think it was Bill Watterson doing Calvin and Hobbes. They cycle repetitions of the contemporary-retro is accelerating. That’s a change. Its strange to see something like rave clothing repeat its self so quickly, and probably the first trend to loop at this speed. It almost didn’t really get to leave. My clothing, I don’t know where it fits. I guess we find that out soon enough.

What was your childhood and teen years like, do you believe that any experiences you had during those times carried over into you creative mindset when putting together garments, or has your youth aloud you to completely alter that time to have no effect on you what so ever?

Turbulent and unsettled. I wasn’t sure who I was or what I was supposed to be doing here. I tried hard to find an identity… and it doesn’t work like that. These years did carry over yes. It would have been nice to be something like…Estonian. I could have drawn on my cultures and heritage et-cetera. like how the English designers really pull at the history, throw in some tartan or a bowler hat or some neo-nazi symbolism. It’s easy like that. But I have the gift and misfortune of being in some paint-peeled corridor between these rooms. I don’t really feel like I’m from anywhere in particular. Aside from being Jewish actually… that is one thing I always feel an affinity to people with, but drawing on that visually or conceptually again is too cheap and been done. I was too young when I left Israel, and too old when I arrived in Melbourne to feel at home in either. But in this way, it became the medium I would have to operate on from an early age. I needed to interpret what was going on around me, or what I was trying to do for someone else. It put everything into a dislocated perspective. Everything was just a little out of arms reach. So any of the people I’ve worked with, the divide has been the instigator or catalyst for innovative angles. The schism makes a very relevant nice standpoint and always seems to feed new accidental ideas. What we do is really one long series of mistakes. A chain of broken links.  

My youth probably has an effect on me. I don’t think about it often, but how could it not? I always thought about the future. Still do.

How is life in Iceland and do you feel being in such an almost isolated country has given birth to your need to feel your creations instead of outsourcing them to some factory in another country to create?

It is small, quiet and cold. The air is excellent and the water is better. The pools are clean. There is snow. Many great friends, and the stark limitation on resource has really chopped away at the ability to rely on a material or gimmick as a feature. The idea has to go further and clearer, the concept can’t be written up on a plaque next to the object, the whole thing needs to be cutthroat sharp and just as menacing. And if flights were less expensive it would be pretty much the center of the world. The disadvantages are quite simple - primarily the remoteness. Flying, shipping and that lack of production resources really do impose an arrested development on most companies. There has always been room for an intimate production relationship in my products but being here has forces a reassessment. Iceland doesn’t have a cheap or traditionally skilled labor force in these fields, it used to, I think. But its been so far away for so long that things like tailoring and shoe making have been left to a few specialists to take care of, and most people sew at home for their own families. You can see in the cultural costumes the effect of the distance - the men’s jackets are missing the back collar roll, I can only guess because it was never imported. So it just became a standard of dress, or not a part.

I feel my work much more, it is slowly ripening as the years go on, and yes this country has pushed that a lot. The Icelandic habit of imbedding symbolism and meaning deep into all things is rubbing off on me. And it’s what I needed. It’s abrasive, uncontrollable, indecisive, and deadly - like a relationship.

You briefly mentioned sculpting and painting do you still do either of them?

No, unfortunatley. But the same development and practice comes through in other areas.

Are you self taught or a University attendee?

Both. Mostly self taught but trained in design. Any student or designer will tell you that you can’t learn these kinds of techniques or approaches in an institution. You really have to feel your way, research and discover things. I did learn a lot at University, I studied fashion design and then did an honors in design proper whilst I was working in London, I think. The formal education of those years were very important, they gave me a very strong understanding of things and place. I didn’t stop working the entire time I was there, didn’t miss a class… I loved it as mush as I loathed it, and wanted to leave as much as I wanted to stay.

In contrast to all the design work you’ve immersed yourself into, what is the most liked yet least creative thing you enjoy doing?

Driving. I really love to drive. I swim laps every morning. Whisky. Cheese. Dinner parties.

Part Three August - September 2008

You’ve been busy these last few months dropping products consistently like the Icebear and the cutting table, can you explain some of these projects in a little detail, how they came about, what their process’ were like and how they differed?

We’re trying to release a product a month starting in June with Cutting Table No. 1, followed up in July with Icebear. And this month was two typefaces.

Cutting Table No.1, is the first collaboration with Formfast (formfast.it) - a transportable aero plane-friendly modular cutting table for designers and students a like. Built out of cardboard the cutting table is the core of many design projects. Traveling the last few years and the lack of a good clean surface to cut on was the inspiration to this.

The Icebear, project happened when I moved into my apartment and needed a rug to tie the room together. At the same time I had been talking to someone about seal skins and Icelandic resources, whilst thinking about cooking… the ideas collided and out came this rug. This piece takes the graphic lines from butchers meat diagram posters, and the techniques used by furriers where waste products are put together and sold as luxury products, like fur jackets. Have you seen behind the lining of a fur? When you pull apart inside a fur jacket the first thing you notice is it is made up of hundreds of tiny scraps of skin sewn together. Though it looks like one pelt on the outside, a fur garment is made of scrap and waste.

Do you have a favorite amongst your recent works?

The Icebear is probably one that I find the most personally succesful. I lay on it, look at it each morning, my friends and family sit on it. I fall asleep on it. So in that sense, it is the most part of my life, which makes it by proxy my favorite.

You work in multiple mediums why is that?

Design communication. It is like language, and in this sense I’m multilingual. It is important not to restrict yourself or create too many rules about what you can and can’t do - I want to design what ever I can get my hands on - feet, faces, phones. I’m not biased. It is like being creatively promiscuous. And it would probably be claustrophobic to only work on one thing.

Do you have any new projects you’re currently working on right now?

Oh yes. Actually just now we just posted a typeface set made with Jarred Eberhardt (wearenotyou.com), our glasses collaboration with Oliver Goldsmith is close to finish. Collection two of the shoe line is under way, and a crossover limited edition samstarfi Ben Frost, dark wolf of electronic composition (ethermachines.com). The photographer’s pen is near completion as well…. mmm yep. And the production of the umbuster is beginning. Yes, there are new projects, always new projects.

How do you figure what project or product you want to on next?

Project manager Hildigunnur has a list that shows what is happening with each project. As a new idea pops up she it on the list, and it just begins. Not all ideas go on there, as they are mostly related to our network associations at the time. So, its a natural selection. From the outside it is seemingly random - there is a time and place for spontaneity.

What is Sruli Recht’s dream party?

Bitches and Cocaine?

srulirecht.com