We would like to present to you Aitor Throup’s New Object Research Spring / Summer Men’s collection, The Rite of Spring.
Manifesto below:
This is a self-portrait.
I have spent almost 15 years of my life crafting a creative ego which I feel was subconsciously
necessary to protect me from judgement and opinion.
Throughout my 5 years of fashion based studies, and my ten years of somehow existing in
this industry, I have invested the vast majority of my time and my energy in creating worlds,
writing manifestos and narratives, designing characters and metaphorical masks and generally
defining rules and regulations for my creativity.
This resulted in 4 highly considered and intricately executed narrative based clothing concepts
titled, chronologically: ‘Mongolia’, ‘When Football Hooligans Become Hindu Gods’, ‘The Funeral
of New Orleans’ and ‘On The Effects of Ethnic Stereotyping’.
In January 2013 I presented the culmination of years of research and development into these
four concepts, as four separate outfits collectively titled ‘New Object Research’.
I had achieved a personally satisfactory level of storytelling and product innovation, which
had been my commitment up to that point. But I was still deeply unhappy as an artist. I was
trapped by my work. I just wanted to create and to finally unblock the limitations that I had
created around myself. I wanted to take off the armour that was my creative ego. To take off
the self-made mask which had obscured my true self for so many years.
On the 13th of February 2015 at 22:30 I had a creative epiphany.
I was frantically writing in my sketchbook desperately trying to express my unhappiness and
to understand a way out of it.
I understood why I had put myself through years of blind commitment to an unknown cause.
I finally understood my work, and at the same time broke free from its previous restrictions.
I woke up.
This is a collection of trans-seasonal prototypes which will inform a fully commercially
distributed collection which is already being developed for a January 2017 launch.
The concept pieces displayed tonight, including their method of presentation, will be on display
and available for purchase on request as individually limited outfits from Dover Street Market
in London from Tuesday the 14th of June 2016 until Wednesday the 6th of July 2016.
To further clarify: the sculptural installation in the reception area is also a self-portrait.
Four life casts of my own body, each wearing development prototypes of each of the four
previous New Object Research concepts; and laid on top of one another as if dead.
This piece represents the acceptance of the now. Through defacing my own work by covering
it in a ghost-like white paint, I am disregarding its current surface value whilst respectfully
allowing it to peacefully rest, grateful of the value it will forever hold beneath the surface.
Aitor Throup, 12th of June 2016.
Press Photography by Neil Bedford and Thomas Zanon-Larche.
StyleZeitgeist Photography by Julien Boudet and may not be reproduced without expressed permission.
