Ma — the space between
3rd year collection
My collection began with a single question: how can minimalism and maximalism exist within one silhouette?
Ma is a Japanese notion of negative space: not an absence, but the charged interval that gives form its meaning, the pause between two notes. My work does not live in either pole, but in the distance that separates them: between European and Japanese cut, between minimalism and maximalism, between tradition and technology.
The question came to me after a trip to Japan, where I saw opposites constantly coexisting. So I set out to build bridges between contrasts. Most of the silhouettes are modular, they can shift from maximal volume to the most minimal garment. I mixed the technical pieces I had seen in the streets of Tokyo with traditional dress found in eighteenth-century books, such as Hokusai’s sketchbooks. I combined technical fabrics sourced at Concordia in Belgium with more traditional materials: dyed silk, wool, cashmere for the tailoring. Through my garments research, I drew a bridge between traditional Japanese garments and European fashion. I used no boning and no Victorian construction to hold the volumes; the European hand lives instead in the tailoring, in details and construction that did not exist in Japan before the country opened to the world.
Model: Astrid Afua · Photographer: Oisin Grace
Vincent Rousseau —
vincent.9.rousseau@gmail.com