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Colliding sources of inspiration –Music, fashion & cultures

Since I was a teenage boy, exploring music for the first time, I have been into hip-hop and rap. At first not understanding the lyrics as my English wasn’t at all developed yet, it was the beats that grabbed my attention and spoke to me profoundly. And although I’m more and more opposed to the nastiness in the lyricism within this genre, I can’t seem to disconnect myself from this deep inner connection I have with the strong beat that hip-hop is inextricably linked to.

We always cycled to the library in my hometown, my mum brother and I, on a Saturday morning. In an era when the internet was on the cusp of bursting into the mainstream, the library was still the main source of inspiration and exploration. I loved the CD section, which was a prime source of music exploration. I picked albums with covers that spoke to me and asked if I could listen to them (always grabbing the 10 cd’s maximum allowed at a time). But also the floor for kids and teenagers, which had books on a wide array of topics, and books often contained lots of pictures, speaking strongly to my dyslexic self. Here I browsed, letting myself become into contact with unexpected and new subjects. I strongly remember a book on skateboarding (a sort of step by step guide to learning how to skateboard, but in this fluor 90’s style) and comic books (which I got sucked into deep as well). It is in this library where I first came into contact with the book “The Gentleman”, which became a seminal piece in my understanding of style, clothing and dress. The book explains early on in its pages that “we can’t teach you how to behave like a gentleman, but we can show you how to dress and compose yourself like one”.

Next came my interest in fashion. Through this library book I started to understand the role clothing plays in expressing one-self and what (personal) style meant. Heritage brands and their products also were featured in it and spoke to my imagination strongly (like Louis Vuitton or Ralph Lauren). Through an exhibition in the local art gallery (Groninger Museum) on/by Marc Newson, I became aware of design in a wider context. Marc Newson worked with G-Star and had his own collection there, broadening my view of what design in clothing meant.

Since then I have build on these early moments of inspiration and have had many moments more, too many to describe here (only mentioning Blend, CODE and Fantastic Man magazines as they have played mayor roles). Fashion is one of my main creative interests in this world and hip-hop is still one of my main sources of music, both classic and modern interpretations of it.

Pharrell & Nigo’s LV

Watching the LV FW25 show and collection was very exciting, inspiring and moving somehow. It brings together these early sources of inspiration and memories of moments that mattered to me in my life journey. It speaks to me even on two more profound levels; as I dream of creating a brand which connects to different cultures and backgrounds, the collaboration between these two man strongly speaks to that. Seeing this brotherly friendship between Pharrell and Nigo reminds me also of my own friendship with Nathan (RIP) as we both had different cultural backgrounds too, but found each other in the things that inspired, motivated and moved us. There was always a certain joy and pleasure in our friendship and our way of connecting on things like music, skateboarding and style, something I see reflected in Pharrell and Nigo’s friendship and miss a lot for myself.

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Gathering inspiration as a force for creation

A couple of things in my thoughts are coming together; recently I have been reading the Virgil Abloh chronicle “Make it ours” and the book Abloh-isms. In it you find reference to his 3% rule. Separately have I been working on migrating all my Instagram saved posts to Are.na. “Mooooooooodboard”, something Loïc Prigent always says in his videos (of which I have watched this recent one) and apparently is also a website of his. Also did I watch this video tour of Diplo’s Jamaican house (mansion), making me think of Major Lazer and its graphic record sleeves.

“Abloh became even more committed to his belief in a 3-persent principle – the idea that an object altered by 3 percent becomes something wholly new. […] By touting his 3-percent philosophy, Abloh spotlighted fashion’s reliance on reiterating what had come before.”

From ‘”Make it ours” – Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh’ by Robin Givhan

How can moodboards and the 3% rule lead to more creative creation and freedom

Combing these thoughts, I’ve had the realisation that a way to progress in my creative pursuit to create a fashion brand is to be more intuitive in the way I create. As I have been educated in my Bachelor to be able to come up with well formulated concepts, I now have the tendency to start not in the creation phase but in the explanatory phase of a creative project. I notice in myself that finding the explanation for why I’m creating (something), an idea, research reference or fully formed concept is how I want to start of my making process. The process of intuitive creation based on subconscious inspiration has been lost on me a little bit. Re-igniting that child like making and creating process is very important if I want to be able to progress in my creative pursuit as I imagine myself to be.

Moodboards Setting myself a challenge to make a weekly mood-board of inspiration, however (un)co-herent it may be. By setting aside half an hour to a full hour of free roaming on Are.na and printing out (part of) this mood-board and sticking it onto a foam board pannel.

3% rule Challenging myself to be more open to using found inspiration as a direct input for creation. Authenticity can come from how you reposition and repurpose. Freeing myself from creative limitations like this could help me progress towards a visual identity and style that over time I can make my-own.

Major Lazer Finding inspiration in different cultures can be a great resource towards making something new and inexistent. I want to relieve myself from the constraint that I’m not myself part of the cultures that inspire me, and instead use these inspirations to create things that relate and build on that which instigates my curiosities.

Major Lazer is a fictive character for an electronic dancehall project by two (white) producers. Although it raised some eye-brows in the beginning (as they themselves where not coming from a background in which the dancehall music was founded and created), they have kept going and are now widely accepted as a major group in the scene. It’s a prime example of not letting yourself be limited to only working within your own confounds (culturural upbringing/heritage). See also my own reflection cultural inspiration.

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Looking (back) at my own work

Currently my time is been spent on lots of things other than my creative endeavours (of which my personal blog/website is one). My camera has only joined me on the larger trips, my sewing machine and film-scanner have been boxed up and stored away, even my small bag of embroidery tools has been floating around without being used much.
  Life can sometimes get in the way of creativity. When the only time you have for these endeavours is spare time outside of your day-to-day work and lives obligations. This is particularly true when you’re trying to buy a house, build a home and start a family. Sometimes creativity has to be put on the back-burner to progress in life so that your living environment can grow bigger, which in turn will provide you with more space to grow creatively as well. But that’d assume that life admin, settling or a day-job couldn’t or wouldn’t be a creative outlet for me. To some extend this is true, as my hobbies are my most challenging creative pursuits and exercises. On the other hand; my work at de Belastingdienst challenges me in completely new and unfamiliar ways (professionally and creatively) and finding/renovating a home has made me thinking and working more in three-dimensional space.

De Verdieping

Serendipitously I had been asked to participate in an exhibition right at this time when I was going through a re-start of sorts. De Verdieping is an exhibition by current graphic design students of the University of the Arts Utrecht. They were asked to approach an alumnus of the same course. They would exhibit a work of mine together with a work made in response to that by one of the students (Floor van den Bergh in my case). I have used this opportunity to summarise a certain period in my work/life, accumulated in the Bugao Li jacket. Below is the to be exhibited diptych and accompanying wall description:

After designing the annual 2nd-years graphic design course’s exhibition ‘HQ’ in 2012, I was invited to travel to China. It fascinated me tremendously, to the extent that I returned and eventually would spend most of my graduating year over there. Graphic design is my professional expertise, but in my personal time do I like to work with photography and clothing design. Working with concepts (something my degree has thought me) also comes to the fore in my hobby’s. This work is an accumulation of all these interests; inspired by the history of Shanghai, I made this jacket as if it were that of a gatekeeper in one of the Lilong alleyway estates ‘Cité Bourgogne’ (1930) in the old French Concession.

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On how 2020 changed the course of the fashion industry

Here at Hermès we use an equestrian phrase that seems particularly apt in this day and age: ‘Straight ahead, calm and poised.’ Fashion maintains a strange relationship with time: it consumes it. Yesterday tends to be devalued in favour of novelty, supposedly the only carrier of the future, but modernising does not mean throwing away the time that came before. We can’t erase the past. The frantic and superficial aspect of fashion is not helpful and doesn’t interest me. We should focus on creation first. I am optimistic: we are all artisans of innovation!

Véronique Nichanian of Hermès, in Fantastic Man No.32 (F/W 2020/21)

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Corona confinement

As the world and I are trying to confine ourselves as much as we can, to and in our homes, I have also found that this creates a large amount of time in the week that has to be filled with ‘something’. Normally I like going outside, on any day really, but mostly during the weekend. Going outside, either to the city or countryside, makes my mind tick. It gives me inspiration. It helps me think, because (particularly in the bustling city) there are things happening around me, movements and appearances to pay attention to. This is just how the city works, it bustles. Within all this ‘happening’ I find my mind can settle. I don’t have to wonder what I should do, I just flow, move myself through the chaos. It frees up my mind to think about other things, stimulated by all this spontaneousness that is find in the chaos.

Anyways… This I now can’t do, as the inside of my house does not resemble anything of the city centre. Although there are plenty ideas at the ready for me to entertain myself – keep myself busy – it sometimes does not come easy to me to actually get started. Because not much is happening inside my home (or out on the streets to be honest) it can feel hard to get my engine started. But I have found something that can perhaps get me fired up; working on my website. Finally I have time to spare that can be used toward something that I don’t usually dedicate sufficient time to. Although I’d really like to spend more time outside and less time in front of my screens, I really should try to make the most of it.