Spring 2011 presentation at 505W 25th Street, New York
Former practicing architect and now fashion designer Siki Im has seen him interpolate a post-world ice age whereby a building structure hemorrhaged with soy foam by New York architectural firm Leong+Leong conspicuously subverts the scaled heights of the city’s larger brownstones. The artificial concept store was built to house Im’s Fall 2010 collection whereby the foam aforementioned produced textured masonry and ramps creating angles of elevations for both natural and interior spotlighting overhead to shine over the space. The building itself as a rectangular prism with bolted black panels inlaid suspended singular noir fabrics, cut in such to elevate the conceptual preface of the range’s title, ‘A New Era’. Many of his artisanal-made garments are meticulously cut and finely finessed abridging the precision of Im’s architectural foundation knowledge and the tailoring virtuoso of Martin Greenfield Clothiers, arguably New York City’s finest tailoring establishment.
The inner-trappings of the corporate world as digressed by Siki Im for Fall 2010Another designer awashed in a procession of pure black it first seems but with any facade, a closer inspection reveals the internal facings that have been paramount in the construction of Im’s clothes from the selection of materials, concept and production. For ‘A New Era’, his response to the collapse of America’s economy in 2009, dictated a connection with William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and the entrapments of Brett Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho. The mental deterioration in these films was translated into a reaction of primal instinct, making with essentials and the aim of physical survival. The archtypal grey felt boards in office skycrapers that sub-divide desk cubicles for white collar employees was an artificial mise en scène. The separation of singular and grouped models facing as frontages with prehistoric computers behind them were beautifully adorned in tailored cashmere coats , ribbed cashemered sweaters and trousers of voluminous shape. Paper folded hats made from dicarded sheets of the The New York Times alluded to the submersion of fiscal stability and the nominal office schedule, typing profusely at the desk appeared antiquated. Almost it seems, Im’s devised proportions in asymmetrical coats created carte blanche for what new office wear could be when stability does return.
Such cerebral approaches, interfacing literature and woven textured clothes lay bear a more distinguished modus operandi. Tracing his upbringing, it is geographically diverse. From Cologne in Germany, then pursuing architecture at Oxford University in England and then numerous projects when employed at Archi-tectonics in 2001, fashion design became a much greater impulse. His senior role designing during the primary years at Helmut Lang had highlighted street culture, ecological graphics and the manifestation of visual art were principles underpinning Im’s insights in design. However, they do not collude to envisage a men’s range with congruent objects. For his cites esteemed architects, female ones for that matter in Israeli Zaha Hadid and Japan’s SANAA’s Kazuyo Sejma. They act as Im’s architectural kindred spirits where the delicate and sculptural forms liberate rigidity in space dimensional design.
In Dutch artist MC Escher’s drawing rooms ‘Relativity’ made in 1953, the relative space reflect the inner-workings of Im’s internal construction. This was informed in his most current range entitled ‘Isolation/Integration’ for Spring 2011 that unhindered the use of organza silk incorporated in Super 130′s wool blazers but also in utilitarian caps, bomber jackets and waist-tied trench coats. The paliette of silver ash grey, virgin white and slate grey evoked the physical barriers faced by immigrated installations Im had prefaced. The proposal of these integrated garments of both a formal and agile-sports nature – the nonchalance of baggy trousers, the elongation of a white boat neck t-shirt and enveloped v-necks from armoury/ fencing sought to disarm frictions of isolation and give a totally new sensory experience.
Siki Im’s fashion practice also combines a Japanese ethos of wearability and the notion of constriction. Whilst building and sculturing the shapes of American sportswear, likewise the intention or non-intention to suffocate or accentuate loftness within an architectural space, the internal mobility of a wearer equates to unrestrictive proportions. The meeting of East and West, as his upbringing suggests values both the technical advances in modern western industry and the simultaneous blending of the ritual act of dressing.
