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L’enfant Terrible

Fashion has a new enfant terrible: feisty German-born designer Bernhard Willhelm. Katharina Kowalewski chats to the 36-year-old about surrealism, his affinity with Japan and objection to the uniformity and rigidity of fashion today.

The theme for this issue of Oyster is surreal. What is the most surreal thing that has happened to you?

Before moving to Paris, I worked in Antwerp in Belgium for 10 years, which is a very surreal place. It’s very much like the twilight zone. When I was there, it wasn’t a fashion city. You had very extreme, very morbid kinds of places, and everything was sort of falling down. There were also shops where the garments in the window were completely bleached out from the light and then in a corner there would be a little old woman working! For me, that was one of the most surreal things to see in Europe.

And Paris is real? Oh, I don’t know. There is not much space for new buildings and the city is done, so I don’t know if it’s still ‘moving’. It’s a good and a bad thing, but I just hope it doesn’t become a museum like Venice. It’s already a bit like that.

So why didn’t you stay in Antwerp where you have so much space to develop? Because Antwerp was also becoming very small. It changed completely in the 10 years I was there. That was also a very surreal experience – seeing it change from the twilight zone into a fashion city where you can buy any label in the world in such a small space. I think there is the same amount of shops in Antwerp that you now have in Paris, which is scary.

Your designs have some surreal elements. Where do you draw most of your inspiration from? I think this inspiration and muse thing is so overrated. I find most of these come from working. Every morning I think, ‘Today I am going to do something I want to do’ and I think most of the things we do actually come from our wanting and needing to do them. It sounds very pragmatic, but it’s also a challenge. I am a very curious person and every day I try to find something new that interests me, which is actually how we build up each collection. I like the feeling of being attracted to something, whatever that is. I am not a designer who makes sketches and pins them on a wall. It’s a very free way of creating a collection.

Tell us about your childhood. I didn’t like going to kindergarten or school. I guess too many people in a group drive me crazy. It’s so much about competition when you are young, and I am not a really competitive person. I created a connection with nature, as I just liked being out in the green. I had a greenhouse with cactuses and meat-eating plants and strange creatures like turtles. All the other kids had furry animals and I just liked turtles! I am crazy about reptiles and it was something that kept me going when I was young. Then, when I was 16, I became interested in art and in fashion. But if I didn’t do it anymore, I would go back to nature.

Would you work in Germany’s Black Forest region? Yeah, I would be out there in the green with the changes of the seasons and fresh air, just being happy with the little things.

How do you stay in touch with your inner child? You need an escape and you can find that through the pleasure of exploring the world. Setting a target market at 25 to 40 and thinking about what they need is really strange to me. And who cares? I find that all so old! I don’t want to think about people getting dressed and going to the office.

So who do you see when you design? That’s a bit of a mystery, but since the beginning, it has been Japan. They are one of the few nationalities who actually like or appreciate young designers who aren’t known. They like the idea of being the first ones to have something new. Europeans don’t seem to have that so much. They need hype, press and magazines to believe in it. I think the Japanese are quick. They like the fun of it. Our women’s collection is actually licensed and made in Japan with Kashiyama. The men’s is still in Belgium, because it’s a very small collection.

Do you design with characters and storylines in mind? Definitely. I think you need a story to bring a collection to its end. A collection has to tell a bit of a story, at least. It’s not about five jackets, six trousers and five pullovers. I think it should be more about what you actually want to say. Storytelling can be done in many different ways. You can tell a story through the presentation or the cut, or through the colours or the prints. There are many different ways you can combine storytelling.

Where do you draw the line between commercial and creative? Do you just choose the creative and anticipate that it will become commercial one day? I would love to say that, but I think it has to be a balance of both. The balance, I’d say, has more to do with the price. The clothes we do are not supposed to be commercial, but there is always both.

Tell us about the fabrics you use. For dying the fabrics, we try to use Japanese techniques you won’t find in Europe. We work with a young guy in Kyoto who does the dying for all the kimonos. It’s nice to put Japanese tradition into the clothes. Japanese designers have always been one of my favourites and they kind of kept me going as a designer. They were probably the most important in the 80s and 90s. I don’t think Belgian designers can deny that a lot of what they do is coming from Japan. I think they deserve respect.

Who are the most iconic Japanese designers? It was Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garçons. I also like Koji Tatsuno a lot. Every time I go to Japan, I say it is the most exotic place I can go. The whole culture – the food, the clothes, the people – is so exotic to me, and I’m kind of fascinated by that.

With your new men’s collection, will you be keeping a certain sexiness? Men’s fashion in the last 10 years has been so much about the suit and looking kind of prep and normal. I just needed to mix things up and discover a new sexiness for men, which is what we’ve been trying to do in the last three seasons. The body is something you actually can show and there are still some men who are not ashamed of their bodies and their sexuality. I grew up with the whole AIDS history and after that I think fashion became kind of baggy and sexless. I feel that it’s time to kind of discover that sexiness again, but it isn't easy. Menswear is something you have to put a lot of energy into.

With your women’s collection, you tend to go with volume and flat shoes… I think that sexiness for women is always something else. I want to get rid of the whole idea of pumps and that kind of catwalk sexiness, as I find it very uniform and tiring. These models all have the same kind of walk and all turn themselves the way a model is supposed to turn and it seems like this is the only way a woman can be expressed on the catwalk. I just can’t deal with that! Give them trainers or give them something so they can just move differently or look different. I kind of feel close to Japan because they developed the style of not being too sexy. I think I’m just more attracted to intellectual women. High heels and overly skinny girls make me feel awkward. I don’t really feel like looking at them because they sometimes seem like victims: anorexic and not very happy.

So why did you present models in cages in your last collection? This was a very abstract idea I got from the way museums pack and ship statues. To put a woman in the box means the woman becomes a statue. We made a special box for each woman, where the gesture and position was fixed and frozen. People saw them as victims or marionettes, but I saw it more as a wrapping idea – a packaging for the cloth. Sometimes when you get a present, the wrapping is more important than what is inside.

You once said there should be another way to present clothes than a catwalk. In the beginning, you want to play by the rules. You want to be in those magazines but, in the end, they ignore you or you realise this is not what you want. In the end I was like, who cares? So now we just do what we feel like doing. We also started doing films and installations because it’s another freedom. You don’t really have to present on the catwalk to be in magazines and style.com and media marketing systems.

Is success for young fashion designers about luck or hard work? You need both, but you also need clients. If you don’t have them, forget about it. We are kind of lucky because we have the Japanese people supporting us through the licence. You need this support because it’s getting more and more difficult. I think it’s nearly impossible to do a collection now if you don’t have rich parents.

What do you consider to be a big problem within the fashion industry today? I’m not a big fan of branding, status and Hollywood glamour. It just doesn’t interest me and I don’t understand it. I would not feel better with a designer bag – which is usually very ugly or not very personal – it’s just this stupid bag. I know alternative sounds really old, but I think we need an alternative to big groups like LVMH.

Would it be a dream or a nightmare for you if everybody wore Bernhard Willhelm? Uniformity is so sad. Please mix it up. Make things happen your own way. I’m happy we don’t have to wear uniforms. It’s nice to be different and individual. It’s interesting how most people look for a partner who has the same interests and even the same look, and after a while they get bored with each other because they don’t learn anything.

Where do you get this mix from? I don’t manifest it; I just like seeing it – especially where we live and work in Paris. Sometimes you’ll see a guy dressed like he would be in the Sahara, wearing a caftan in bright blue, and it’s so nice to have this ethnic mix. I don’t want to see tourists and I don’t want to see bourgeois Parisians who take themselves so seriously in their upper-class ghettos and think they are better. I find it very uninspiring. I think a mix of all cultures is very important for the 21st century, and Paris has to learn that. I want to mix more. I don’t want to be in this group where I only talk German. I tend to be lazy though, so I have to force myself to mix. But I think everybody has to.

So why did you choose to be here in Paris, next to the top French brands? I’m really wondering what I am doing here, because I could be anywhere. I would prefer to maybe be in the Black Forest and then go to Paris twice a year to show my things. Maybe I should do that (laughs)! bernhard_mit_Wurst_klein2.JPG