This week Oyster Vision jet sets to Paris to talk with the brilliantly crazy Andrea Crews about fashion, art, recycling and what it means to be Exotic:


andrea crews

Katharina Kowalewski interviewing Andrea Crews in her Pigalle Paris store:

K: The next Oyster issue is exotic, so we have chosen you as a representative designer for exotic style. What is so exotic about Andrea Crews?

A.C: If I try to define what it is exotic I would say it's something different that you have got everyday. So it's kind of a spicy moment or feeling that you got. I would say that exotic is something like that. So I would consider myself as a fashion designer who is a bit different. I work, I think, in another way. I don't know what is different –the clothes? – Clothes are the end of the chain, a movement with conceptual ideas, recycling clothes, finding another way of consuming, another way of working together, another way of doing things and showing stuff. Clothes is actually something very easy to do and very easy to play with. You get dressed and it's really easy to sing or to pose for a picture if it's in the matter of showing the clothes I am wearing.

K: Something you use to express what is inside of you like creativity and art and music? AC: Clothes are the best excuse to practise art and music!

K: If you would define Andrew Crews design what would you say is it about? AC: First of course it is fun. It has to do with play, you play with your clothes, you play with your body, you play with your image and yourself! We do transform it's recycling. Andrea Crews tries to show cloths it in another way. You transform the clothes, change it and you play with it. It's like a fun process of expressing yourself.

K: Where do you find the cloths to transform? A.C: I find my clothes everywhere. I know how to recognize clothes; I am at the market and the second hand clothes all the time.

K: And you don't get enough of it sometimes? AC: Yeah of course, I do. But I have got a lot of assistants and they love clothes!

K: But aren't you afraid that with all the second hand transforming there will be one day not enough for you and that you'll have to take new fabrics for a big collection as the brand is growing now? AC: I am not afraid of this at all! I have to say that about second hand clothes: you know the quality is very different than it was ten years ago. So it's more and more difficult for me to find good second hand clothes to transform. But I do also transform stocks of brands. So it's also super interesting to recycle not only unique and second hand clothes.

K: Like you did for Nike? AC: Like I did for Nike, like I do for some other brands and I am developing myself like that.

K: I was wondering where you got all the Louis Vuitton stuff from that you transformed. You don't get them second hand or for free…? AC: No, no. I go in the black market in the African area. K: And what about your events, you do events in Berlin, in Madrid, in Paris in the contemporary art museums? AC: Tomorrow I am going to Amsterdam I am going to work with a super cool gallery called “Mediamatic” and I did order three tons of clothes. I am going to have stuff from the nineties and the eighties. I will open bags full of old clothes. I will go with a crew over there and we’ll meet some fashion students and we are going to make a huge workshop of recycling clothes and I am going to do a performance which I don't really know what it's going to be by this time: but instant styling and music.

K: I saw some of your videos it's very promising. It can get even without clothes… AC: I love that, I love clothes and without clothes

K: Like your photographies! Can you talk about your photography work and film work. What do you do when you don’t design? AC: I just made a project with computers, so I am not a clothes obsessed girl. I think it is very cool to do clothes and naked girls and computer! And now I am going to do a basketball court and in a few months I am going to work on bikes. So I think I am more an artist in a way I do designs, okay I do also videos and pictures and also music. So I want to touch to everything! Clothes are the thing that works well, everybody wants my clothes, so okay I am doing clothes!

K: You dress a lot of artist, Santogold, Katerine, …What music do you hear at the moment and does it inspire you? AC: I don't know if I could say, like music inspires me. Of course music gives me a lot of vibrations. So it's more like something I like. I think that the inspiration comes more from the moment and then you decide on that. I work a lot with musicians in the video clips we are doing, with artist we’re dressing up. So, of course a lot of time we work together. So I talk about music, we exchange and we arrive to different styles. In music I am super open, this time I just bought the album of “Christophe” you know this old French singer. this is a super experiment and this is going to be the music of the next fashion show.

K: Can you tell us about the beginning of Andrea Crews when you were still in Bordeaux about your origins and how you started designing? AC: I started when I was in art school. Actually, I had to do an internship in a company and I didn't want to do that. So I had to build my own company andwhat could I do – I loved second hand clothes, so I've decided to do that: to work on second hand clothes and to make a new economy system.Then I did it and I found partners. I did a show in a contemporary art museum and that’s how it started basically. Then I arrived in Paris, where the Palais de Tokyo invited me. I realized this project, invited designers, transformed the clothes. This was the beginning of the recycling process.

K: You cast friends and you work with your friends you have like a group of artists around you. So it's more a movement that's happening here. Does Andrea Crews change Paris a little bit? AC: Paris is very boring. In a way, what we are doing is new. I don't know any other place like Andrea Crews in Paris, maybe more in London, Berlin or Copenhagen, but okay will Paris change with Andrea Crews? -sure!

K: And how did you choose the Pigalle area, red light district, for your store? Do you get along well with the neighbours? AC: I think we are in the most beautiful street of Paris. Especially at night with all the nylon lights and the girls of course. It's not a shopping area, but it's a very, very energetic area. And I love the fact that we've got here Hôtel d'Amour and over there Pigalle. So it's a mix of hip people and girls from the street. I like that, very inspiring. Sex shops are very inspiring.

K: So where is the future for the brand? What do you think how it's going to develop? Are you going to do new stuff and use new fabrics or you think it's going to stay the recycling principle forever? AC: Okay we do three different things. We work on new fabrics and we develop like a fair trade system with Brazil and India. We are working on more and more precise, fashionable, clean clothes. We also do unique second hand transformed pieces that we sell in concept stores and you can find them here in Paris, in Pigalle where we are. So I will go on with the recycling. I will go on making small quantities for the shop and I will go on working with brands, work with their stocks. I like this. It's super interesting for me.