here & now

The F de C Reader is a pocket-sized biannual emergent from a certain redundancy in publications regarding the world of fashion. Rather than claim, this reader exudes need for a re-primed canvas with a peculiar focus on clothing and all its metaphorical and metaphysical realms. Seasons and collections are still encapsulating for chief editor Alin Huma, who also doubles as an incisively mischievous photographer, and so the publication opts to “treat fabric as spore.” The grainy newspaper stock on which the reader is printed easily intervenes as a textile itself and with articles from today and yesteryear, the reader seems to take an anachronistic approach to a cyclical nature of fashion.

As shallow as the fashion world is often derided to be, it still cannot seem to see through itself.  What struck me about the F de C Reader was the transparency- a front cover carrying reverse printing on the inner flap as well as self-documentation of its own production process- something we do not see enough of in fashion. The meditations on clothing make this reader materialist in its own right as an available quote from Anders Edström on Maison Martin Margiela tell us, “The first time I saw his clothes I thought they were quite strange. The models were strange. The whole office with everything badly painted in white, even the TV, was strange. I’d arrived straight from Sweden. I had never seen anything like this. I didn’t know anything about fashion but I still had the idea about fashion that it was supposed to be glamorous. This was the total opposite. But after the initial shock it quickly grew on me. His shows would be overcrowded and the energy was great. It was very small then, there were only five people, including him, working in an apartment. It was exciting, intense.”

Other pages carry content such as conversations with Zhang Da (creative director of Hermes, China and designer for his own label Boundless) or Japanese personalities such as Chikashi Suzuki on the state of fashion photography in Japan and Toshio Nakanishi on Japanese pop-culture from the 60s onwards. We’re on the heels of the second issue but there’s still enough time to note a brief selection of contents from the initial manifest: Simon Fujiwara, Max Pam on photographing in West China in the mid-80s and  exhibiting in a department store  ”museum”  in  Japan  during the Bubble era, Vladimir Karaleev in addition to a nude series by Daifu Motoyuki, factories in China by Erik Bernhardsson, photographs of vintage Margiela by Yumiko Kikuchi as well as photo editorials of old revolutionary, Japanese  avant-garde  designers by Alin Huma.

The F de C Reader is available at Motto Berlin. They have a Facebook page too.