JuHee Park

DESIGN PROCESS INTERVIEW BY ROXANNE OULLET-BERNIER

There is this odd thing about the language of nature,

this unpredictability in seemingly geometrical motifs.

Yet, JuHee Park catches their essence with exact

calculations, rendering biodiversity in transcendent

physical garments.

In the back of this Paris-rented room, JuHee flips through her sketchbook, sharing in a quiet, yet passionate voice, her extensive process. What brought her to pursue fashion education, she explains, was a certain sense of frustration that she felt throughout her adolescence in her native South Korea. She felt like there were certain social expectations that were put onto women, which often led to very specific roles in families. “Because of these expectations, I dug more about how I could be free from society and family values in women’s roles.”—She specifies.

This desire of emancipation steered JuHee into researching figures of underground mouvements and avant-garde, which eventually brought her to discover both Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen. This led her to realise that there was a large diversity of roles that she could take in the world, besides the ones that felt predetermined. While listening to their story, she felt a greater sense of connection, which stirred her interest for fashion.

JuHee began her fashion education at the Kookje Fashion Design Occupational Training College, in Seoul, where she completed her undergraduate diploma. Driven by the idea of continuing her studies in London, a city that harbored many of her most revered fashion figures and artists, she found work in a fashion trading company that specialized in knitwear, where she began saving money. After four years, she finally enrolled in the Fashion Graduate Diploma at Central Saint-Martins.

In London, she immersed herself in this entirely new scene, where punks and avant-gardes met. She came to describe the city as grotesque— far from a pejorative term in her eyes, but what came to be a constant source of inspiration. Her graduate collection, Women in Fur, is a compelling convergence of both the influence of this new environment, and her desire to defend women’s condition. Inspired by Luncheon in Fur, by Méret Oppenheim, she challenges sexual objectification by discerning erotiscm from sexism. When the piece was released in 1936, it created a general uneasiness, where it was debated that the cup was vaginal, the spoon phallic and the hair pubic, while others reeled by the idea of having fur on their tongues. To recreate the sense of discomfort that brought the Oppenheim artwork, JuHee created surrealist pieces, where fur and dinner plates are draped into the garments, to create intricate shapes, volume and relief. Some of her pieces feature elements of circular knitting, where she explored the idea of a bird nest, encompassing the women in fur that become metaphorical birds.

For her master’s degree, JuHee decided on leaving her cherished London, joining l’Institut Français de la Mode in their Knitwear Design program. This move allowed her to immerse herself in Paris’s relationship to savoir-faire, and their immeasurable pride towards their artists and fashion creators. If she left the punks and the grotesque behind, they still act as an important inspiration in her designs.

“Eventually I have to work on something wearable and practical. I like to inspire myself from all the sources from London, and then I make it from here.”

While JuHee had started delving into knitwear when she was at Central Saint-Martins, she expresses that the course she chose in Paris was quite the radical change. From now on, every fabric must be made from scratch, mostly through machine knitting. For her, this is a way to actually live fashion, to experience it at every stage of creating. This organicity in the process led her to make links to nature—another constant source of inspiration for JuHee.

Her first project at IFM, inspired by the idea of a wandering dandelion, refers to her own wanders since leaving South Korea. It also acts as a metaphor between the hairy seeds of the plants, which are forced to leave the flower head, just like humans who are born to eventually set sail. The look features a loosely knitted off-white dress, on which JuHee has attached black mono film yarn, that if one looks too rapidly, they could mistake it for human hair. The yarn hangs in long treads from the sleeves, while in the back, it forms a linear motif, all of which is creating the illusion of motion or, in this case, displacement. Then, in the front, she uses artificial hair winded around circular shapes and laser cuttings, forming an intricate organic motif that shows glimpses of the body underneath.

Her second master’s project, assigned by IFM, gave her the opportunity to design for the renowned Alexander McQueen fashion house. The theme was around biodiversity and sustainability, which JuHee is already strongly familiar with. She was inspired by the concept of metaphormosis, or the concept of an almost grotesque one, in conjunction with the McQueen 2018 Plato’s Atlantis collection.

“I like the idea that in the evening nature is not really a peaceful thing. There can be grotesque scenes.”

She started her research around the idea of the pupa, and how it eventually unfolds to reveal the butterfly. These remains left by its previous state form intricate pleats, which JuHee connected to the idea of origami. This led her to create paper toile, which she assembled to discover potential shapes for her

garment.

From these toiles, JuHee explains her knitting process. At IFM, they are taught an essential program, called Stoll, in which they can, with very precise calculations, create their fabric samples. Used to designing with her emotions, the machine forced her to rethink her process, where her usual intuitiveness had to take a pragmatic shape. In her sketchbook, she laid pictures of the computer renderings from the program, which to an outsider, looks like an incredibly mysterious code, left to decipher. JuHee describes it as an almost medical process. “The machine is really bitchy. When I make one single mistake, it doesn’t work at all. Such drama! Sometimes it takes much longer than knitting by hand.”

JuHee worked hours on creating these origami shapes on the knitting machine, which she then assembled together. Her final garment transcends this surreal organicity in a beautiful symmetry, one that is often only found in the haphazard work of nature. The elaborate shapes are generated with a partial knitting technique, where a single black line will come out as wavy. On the yellow background, these lines created the butterfly motif, while the knitted origami pieces formed the intricate three-dimensionality.

In retrospect to her fashion education, JuHee expresses that, the more she studies, the more she realises that there is a multitude of stories that she would like to tell in her fashion trajectory. In Paris, she felt like her visions aligned with others, which eventually brought her to love the city and the prospect of creating there. If displacing herself created challenges, she expressed that it brought a necessary tension. “It’s all about tension where, just like in knitwear, if you lose the tension, you lose everything.”

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Images: JuHee Park and Guillaume Roujas

Originally published in LIGNES DE FUITE VOL.3

LIGNES DE FUITE Vol.3

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Clarisse Bessard

Edited by Roxanne Ouellet-Bernier

Co-Edited by Jasmine Gamache

Réinitialiser la connection

The studio’s setup was so cute. A little table with her

sketchbooks, the couch was bootleg Versailles, and

the fridge had tattoos. In the far corner: an old Singer

machine, a rusty overlock, and a stubborn mannequin.

The walls have ears, they say, and the ones of her

atelier echoed Depeche Mode, which her mother

would play in the car, when driving her to school at

6 a.m.

“You find this very embarrassing?”—Said the subtitled screenshot of a smiling shirtless young man with his hands behind his neck. “It’s from a gay porno from the communist times.” This phrase would be the parting point of her collection Réinitialiser la connection. And that is precisely Clarisse Bessard’s destination: reconnection.

“I’m always drawing from my roots.”— She explained as she leafed through the first pages of her research sketchbook.

As far as Clarisse can remember, she only ever had her own interpretation of the world. She vividly

recalls the first time her mother gave her a pencil and a paper. Instinctively, she introduced the pen to the empty canvas and wrote in an inverted manner, from right to left, as she thought she should to express her first written thought. This would later be diagnosed as dyslexia, a learning disorder, undermined and overlooked at the time that she now embraces as a strength.

“It’s as if I had binoculars that showed me where no one was looking.”

She found her voice in her abstract way to perceive and interpret things, a discomfort she chose to trust in her creations.

She was born in Paris, to a French father, and a mother of German descent. Her maternal

grandmother left East Germany during the political conflicts of the Cold War, an era that is very visible in her references. The pages of her sketchbook are filled with images of East German folklore, cemented memories and dualities, juxtaposed with rebellious youth at the fall of the Berlin Wall and of today. It is clear from her extensive research that she is in constant efforts to build a bridge from

her family’s past to her present here in Montréal. Looking at the worn picture of her grandfather, a dandy man holding a beer, wearing a tailored sky blue jacket adorned with silver medallions, Clarisse places herself between times to reveal a modern melancholy.

Photography : Kaven Tremblay

“The fact that we were locked within ourselves.” She spoke of the walls that restricted us, in regards to our recent reality: quarantined in a health, socio-political, and economic crisis. In these claustrophobic times, she felt it was an opportunity to reconnect with herself and find clues in her DNA.

Back in Paris, during her early studies, Clarisse explored different creative fields. Dipping her toes in visual arts developed her creativity and enriched her critical thinking, and her ventures in graphic design and architecture gave her valuable tools of aesthetics and construction. However, it was in fashion design where she found solace as a creative, as she found it contained elements of them all: the relationship of suggestive beauty and architectural structure, the detailed precision and stylistic understanding of graphic design, and the limitless playfulness but hands-on spirit of visual arts. Clarisse moved to Montréal to pursue her studies, and as a personal challenge to leave her comfort zone. She enrolled at Collège LaSalle, where she acquired the technical skills of garment making. The application of this newly gained knowledge onto the human body accented her fascination with anatomy and movement. In her latest research, it is apparent that she is not only conscious of beauty and theory in her designs, but also of the relationship of one’s body, the durability, and different utilities of the garment being worn.

Although some aspects of her designs appear harsh at first sight as they aesthetically derive from uniforms of labour, one would notice at a closer look that she intervenes in this rigidness by opening up the patterns to allow more air for motion. Some trousers become skirts, some jackets resemble dresses, and angles become curves here and there.

Photography : Kaven Tremblay

As she explores this trade of expression, Clarisse’s ability to connect tactile memories to emotions works as a sixth sense when conceptualizing and developing her collections. Running her fingers across pieces of devoured velvet fabrics and crumpled printed cottons, she illustrates how textile transformations are allowing her to translate the definition of discomfort and manipulate its meaning. The desire to communicate a relatable message and provoke a need for reflection is at the core of her creative process.

This hybrid of contrasts is also prominent in her selection of fabric, an activity she compares to a puzzle and she finds crucial in the early stages of her projects. She roams the aisles of fabric shops in the pursuit to build an eclectic harmony of noble and technical materials through the investigation of texture and colour to prepare a dissonant array of media that would echo her insistence of breaking with the expected.

In Reconnection, her first explorations of colours and shapes are worn by an army of young men donning strong squared shoulder blazers combined with wide raver-like pants and enormous dolllike bows. A curious contrast of rigid masculinity, workers’ uniforms, and the fluid liberty of a dancer with a burning heart letting loose in the underground tunnels of a bossy regime. They all come together and drown in a beautiful palette of bright industrial blue, striking orange and yellow, muted green, aged white and soft lavender. There is a sense of brutalism perfumed by the sweet smell of a hopeful flower in the early spring.

A humoristic tone in the spirit of her research reveals her way to cope with adversities, a correlation she found with her friend, classmate and roomate Élisabeth Atchadé. They met at Collège LaSalle, where they began their studies together, and they now live together and attend L’École Supérieure de Mode de l’ESG UQAM, which became the birthplace of their collaborative project SOCIAL JETLAG. In this collection they imagine what it would look like if there was a flood in the Montreal subway and the passengers were wearing their utilitarian designs.

“During this pandemic, all our vacation flights were cancelled and the closest thing to a collective trip we could take was the Metro.”

Bessard explained that the idea had sparked from a photography book of car accidents by the Danish visual artist Nicolai Howalt that she had in her library and had showed to Élisabeth, who in response shared a book on the history of Montréal’s subway system. In this marriage of inspiration, the collection was born. Their research, packed with pages of iPhone photographs taken by the duo while taking the metro, explores the visual diversity and fast paced movement of the underground travellers of Montréal collated with a detailed study of a car’s airbag and the products of a souvenir shop.

Photography: @emelinemorellet and @justalexwh

“I ♥ MTL” says one of the designs, while another is a voluminous waterproof cape that you might need in case your beach plans get ruined by a storm. In all, one gets a sense of versatile technical garments, portraying an hypothetical cityscape. A world where we tend to take things for granted. “It seems each

time society moves ahead, we end up repeating the same mistakes.” Clarisse finds observing the chaos around. It seems like no matter how prepared one seems to be, one never knows what’s going to hit. Another storm, another crisis, another war... Wall after wall is being built and torn down, conflict after conflict continues to spark, and yet no way to avoid accidents, no way to control chance. Humanity has a way to inflict order within and around and anytime Liberty gets her turn, another wave of chaos that sweeps her away.

Direction artistique & Photographie: @emelinemorellet

Daily lives and history are recurring cycles of attempts, suggestive successes and brutal failures. As you delve deeper into the perspective, it truly makes one wonder...

Do you find this embarrassing?

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Originally published in LIGNES DE FUITE Vol. 3

LIGNES DE FUITE Vol.3

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Daniel Bosco

PROCESS INTERVIEW WRITTEN BY ROXANNE OUELLET-BERNIER

If the Parisian soil is different from anywhere else, it is most definitely one of well-cultivated art, literature, and of course, fashion. The setting is slightly predictable —at a Crêperie in Montmartre, but Daniel is not phased by such a touristic choice. Time is running short. They are leaving the next day for Milan, to present an ode of Donatella Versace to Donatella herself. “It was part of a project we had on Versace, and I was selected to go to Milan and present it to Donatella! It is a little bit nerve wracking.” Daniel said with clear excitement in their voice.

Originally from Burlington, in the suburbs of Toronto, Daniel grew up in a very queer positive environment. Their parents got separated before they were born, (their dad remarrying another man), but they kept a beautifully sincere friendship. They reminisce of how they would often be brought back together to express their mutual adoration for Madonna. “It was like constantly getting pushback Madonna, like they were going to concerts together, even after the divorce. They were going to the Rebel Heart Tour together, which is kind of funny. My mom loves the gays.”

Their mom, which they refer to as having a big Italian personality, almost like a drag queen, has been a constant source of inspiration in Daniel’s life. Taking the role of a muse, she led them towards fashion, encouraging dressing up, baking and crafts as they were growing up. However, fashion was also something they had to learn to love on their own accord. They spent many of their childhood summers working in their grandfather's shoe warehouse, which led them to hate footwear and, as a result, fashion. They felt like being a bigger kid and queer were already enough of a reason for them to stand out, which steered them towards conformity for most of their child and teenagehood.

It is their entourage of big personalities —of “always being ambushed by weirdos”, as they mentioned fondly —that pushed them to stand out amongst people.

“If you're in a room full of weirdos, how do you speak so loud that you can hear your own voice over the top of everyone else's?”

Having to navigate through their family’s big personalities, as well as coming to terms with their own queerness, led them back towards fashion. It is now a prominent notion in their fashion endeavour. “That speaks to my design right now. It's all about how can you stand now? And it's all about reactions.”

Daniel attended the Toronto Metropolitan University, in which they studied fashion design in the undergraduate program for four years. If the curriculum was rather traditional and technical, it is one of their professors, Danielle Martin, who saw their potential and steered them towards graduate programs, most specifically at Central Saint-Martins. They got accepted into the Graduate Diploma—a one-year program that prepares students for their master’s degree. In London, they learned how to unlearn everything. It was all about experimenting, about making noise, and finding who they were as a designer. “There were no limits where there was art, fashion, and costume. They didn't care. It was just about finding yourself. Being in that space was very inspiring.”

Unquestionably, their graduate collection was the epitome of these precepts. As an ode to their Italian heritage and their reverent appreciation of food and lively get togethers, they presented out-of-proportion silhouettes: one of them as an actual tablet set, dressed up in a gingham tablecloth, while another, draped in flower curtains, has an actual window in the guise of headwear. Inspired by the films of Fellini, they brought their narrative into a theatre setting, where you have no choice but to stand out. “It’s kind of like getting your voice muffled, or not knowing how to stand out, so you become the actual table,” they explained.

Daniel expresses the importance of storytelling in their work. They delved into everyday normalcy, and how it can be distorted through queerness, sculpture or disruption. They are driven by the idea of archetypes of characters, which are often inspired by those close to them, like their friends, their mom, or simply stereotypical Italians. These protagonists are then put into instantly recognizable situations, which sparks conversations around Daniel’s work. “I can talk about myself, which I love doing, but I also get to hear other people, and I love reactions. Whether it’s a good reaction or a bad reaction. A sense of humour is huge to me. I love making people laugh, and I love not making people laugh. I love a bad joke too.”

Disenchanted by the very competitive aspect of Central Saint-Martins, Daniel chose against pursuing the Master’s program in the same establishment. Seeking a more collaborative environment, they opted for the Fashion Design and the Arts MFA at Parsons Paris, where they found the interdisciplinary appoach they needed.They are constantly encouraged to express themselves through different mediums, should it be performance, dance or sculpture.

As part of a couture project, Daniel worked with the eminent Maison Lesage and Palais Galliera, in which, in true French custom, they learned to pay homage to designers and the dedication to their work. While going through these exceptional archives, they were riveted to the work of Madame Grey, and took inspiration from her iconic draping technique. They then brought it into their own universe, into one of their childhood memories of playing soccer and being absolutely catastrophic at it. They imaged a narrative where Madame Grey herself would have been forced into playing soccer— a rite of passage for Italian children— and would have been queer and very bad at the sport. The result is a flamboyant sculptural gown made of AC Milan jerseys, Canadian and Italian Flags, brought together with the draping techniques of Madame Grey.

Daniel’s next project is another homage to their Italian heritage, a retrospective of Gianni and Donatella Versace’s work. Harnessing from Gianni’s cult of supermodels, Daniel made Donatella into the muse herself, blowing her face out of proportion onto a short bodycon dress, framed by abundant locks of blond hair. They delved into the idea of the modern icon while bringing it into an almost kitsch dimension. In a very Daniel way, humour was their answer to the project, and they believe that one should never take themselves too seriously.

Embarking on their final year at Parsons Paris, Daniel reflects on where their fashion education brought them. Although moving abroad is a difficult venture, they believed in the necessity of going out of their comfort zone, which led them to learn about themselves and grow. “I'm one of those people that are motivated by pressure. This is why I think fashion was the right path for me. Being in school has pushed me, and it's pushed me to network and it's pushed me to meet people I wouldn't normally meet, and it's pushed me out of my comfort zone.” And on the corner of our terrasse, their eyes crinkled with mirth, Daniel shared a piece of advice, before they left on their Italian gest. “I think genuineness is really important and that's what I've heard from the industry. They're looking for genuine people. If you are insane as a person, be insane and be true to yourself.”

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Originally published in LIGNES DE FUITE Vol.3

LIGNES DE FUITE Vol.3

Buy Now