Canvas readers are well aware of our affinity for Danish designers Spon Diogo (four posts and counting), so heading into the winter collections at Copenhagen Fashion Week we were adamant a meeting had to be arranged. After many months of online tete-a-tete with Rui, one half of the design duo, we finally had an opportunity to meet.
In the weeks leading up to Spon Diogo’s Winter 2010 show Rui and Mia invited Canvas to spend time with them in their atelier, a small studio space tucked away in the heart of the city. Given their home life is also physically joined to their working space, Spon Diogo literally live and breathe fashion. But their idea of fashion is not about ‘what is fashionable right now’ nor are they concerned with creating popular trends. Rather fashion is their medium for expressing an idea. There is an intense intellectualism inherent in each collection that is matched entirely by their technical abilities, despite neither having studied a formal approach to fashion design. Their dedication to design is overwhelming and not something we had anticipated, seeing the collection evolve, and it certainly separates the work they do from any other designer in the city. This is the most innovative, edgy and well thought collection produced by Spon Diogo to date.
CANVAS: Rui, both yourself and Mia, independent of Spon Diogo, have worked for many years in fashion. Even though Spon Diogo is only four seasons old, there seems to be a bit of history behind the label.
SPON DIOGO: As I have mentioned before, Mia has a classic tailoring background. She has two tailoring degrees. I have worked in the fashion industry for years. I used to have a shop and gallery in Iceland, in Reykjavík in the late 90s. I used to have Danish and American designers. So of course we’ve always touched fashion. Mia always wanted to be a fashion designer. Back in Reykjavik I also did a lot of projects, I began working on a small line, so we were always in designing. I come from a background in industrial design, furniture primarily, and I think this to a certain extent…it’s all very interconnected somehow. And at that point Mia was working on some projects that were more graphic design based and I was doing some similar graphic design projects as well. So we started working on some projects together and it developed from there. We found that we worked well together. We had sort of the same [ideas], this idea of conceptualising. We have the same rhythm. When you start working with people you don’t necessarily work the same. Some people like to go into work immediately and then figure out afterwards what went wrong. But we really like to study whatever we’re doing. We go, ‘ok, this is what we’re doing [for the season], let’s go, full force on this’. I think the way we work together is very much based on temperament and in that sense we connect really well.
The organisation of space is a principle of both fashion and architecture and your aesthetic has been described as constructional, architectonic. Is this a reflection of your industrial design background?
To some extent. It’s not necessarily aesthetics but it’s more the way of looking at a garment. The whole understanding of an object is more about the feeling of an object in space. I see it as something that is able to stand alone and not refer to anything else. We love this idea of an object being self-referential. It’s autonomy, really, in an object.
I tend to view your idea of fashion as “common sense design” in that kind of Bauhaus way, where superfluous features tend to be taboo. Would you agree?
I could to a degree. I appreciate Mies Van der Rohe and some of his methods for the detail. For instance, in early times [of architecture] you had detail in a pillar [of a building] and you would have the detail grow out of a meeting point. For us, as with Van der Rohe, he would take that detail and also make it the embellishment and make it the language of the whole building. In modernism, as with Van der Rohe and with us maybe, that detail is where everything comes from but it’s minimalised so the construction comes out as simple as possible. This is the key to modernism, really.
Germano Celant said “to cut is to think”, that the cutting of a garment represents a new way of seeing the body. When I look at your clothes, particularly last season, I think it’s a very apt description of how you design. Do you consider yourselves a minimalist?
Yes.
Do you think your aesthetic is very Danish?
No, I think it’s a very European way of designing but also, to some extent, a very Japanese way of designing. Even though the aesthetics are very different I see designing, the method of designing, as a way to construct, to build a language.
Is their a distinct Danish style, or is it something influenced from and by other cultures and countries?
Denmark has matured a lot in the last few years and has developed a language which is very Danish. Even though a lot of the young, creative designers, the successful ones, have studied abroad they are very personal in their work. They have their own sensuality and own style. No matter how experimental or how avant garde it is, it always comes back to being functional and beautiful. No matter how different the designers are there is something which binds us together. And I think we [Spon Diogo] have it to a certain extent as well. Even though we want to work with something [an idea] we are always a little bit careful not to overdo it. It may be a lack of maturity, but it also may be a Danish thing.
How has the financial crisis affected Danish fashion? Do you think it’s changed people’s perception of luxury and how they approach fashion?
I don’t think so. The Danish fashion industry is very, very young so fashion is not deeply founded as much in Denmark. So the normal Danish person would choose big brands, luxury brands rather than ‘fashion’, and big brands are often luxury brands that aren’t necessarily fashion. I think this is still the case, even with the crisis. I do see people shopping and buying Jil Sander and Chanel, although they’re not shopping as much. And not necessarily because of their perception of luxury. What is luxury? I think time is more of a luxury. I think it has shifted from a material thing to an immaterial thing. So I don’t think Danish people perceive fashion in a different light I think they perceive their whole lives in a different light.
Has it changed the way you approach your design?
We haven’t changed really. We are in a process of still trying to establish our name and to establish trust in the industry. It is very much a matter of trust [with the buyers], to see if you can survive, if you can deliver. We haven’t changed our approach but we’ve learnt a little bit about how to build a collection. To design a collection is quite easy, you just do what you do. But to build a collection, for different body types and as such, this is a little bit more difficult and we haven’t really thought of that before [when designing]. We’ve learnt a lot about how to make our stuff sellable. So we hope with this collection there is more to choose from in terms of silhouette. This is one of our main focuses [for the season].
How do you share the design process? Do you designate specific roles?
In the design process we don’t have any roles. But of course to start off we discuss what we want [for the season]. This happens because we live together, we work together, we do everything together. Even now we are discussing what to do for our next collection. And so when one collection is finished we almost already have the themes for the next collection. But we still have to do the research. We put some things down [on paper] and we discuss some problems that could arise. Strategic problems or otherwise. And then we start designing, but we start designing together. We always sit opposite each other and draw for weeks, from morning until night. Hundreds and hundreds of drawings later, we just sort of just work through the better ones. Sometimes we steal each other’s drawings and copy them and say, “I like this element, I’m going to work with that”. And then it’s really a selection process. We have to cut [designs] from what we’ve drawn. And Mia, of course, takes care of the whole technical side and I take care of everything else. I work on press and I work on producing the [catwalk] show.
What was your inspiration for winter? Did it come from a single idea?
It was really more of wanting to develop elements that are not close to our culture, to find beauty elsewhere. We’ve studied how animals use their fur or their skin or whatever to show their muscles and their power. Like a crocodile, it’s belly is light but it’s back, arms, face is dark. It’s a way to camouflage. Some animals tend to accentuate parts [of their body] to seem bigger, to intimidate. And this idea we integrate into the collection; which parts do we want to accentuate? And then you simply start cutting up and looking at which parts of the body [to accentuate].
Isn’t that a little bit like Darwin’s survival of the fittest?
No it’s just a theme really and a dialogue around this. You know, we really like this idea of finding beauty elsewhere. Nowadays you can sit in front of your computer, you can read books and you can actually be everywhere and you don’t need to travel. We really like this idea. Everything, all information, is within your reach. And the same with beauty, or the sense of beauty.
What is your idea of beauty?
I have to answer this personally because Mia’s idea of beauty may be something different. For me it may be something which is a little bit off, to some extent. It’s something you cannot forget, like a trauma. A trauma is something you cannot forget. An image that is really powerful and it can be either ugly or beautiful. And for me, it’s about the effect that it has on you. So my idea of beauty is not specific, it’s more a feeling of something. And beauty can be anywhere.
Would you consider introducing prints into a Spon Diogo season? It’s not something we’ve seen from you yet.
Yes we thought about print for this collection but we decided against it. Maybe for summer. The whole idea of colour, and this is really personal also, is more than an aesthetic. I like colour that is more than an application. It’s something in itself. You know, you paint a wall and it becomes an application. And we don’t really like that and we haven’t seen that yet [in fashion] because everything, for us, is done from the inside. That’s the way we work. The detail has to come from within. That is the story of the design. So colour would have to be applied in the same way, rather than as an application of colour on top of the fabric which has a natural colour in itself.
I like what a lot of other designers are doing with print. I just think we would rather take up colour rather than adding colour. We are using red this season but we don’t see it as red, we see it as just another black. Even the blues we’re using are not ‘blue, blues’ because they’re a little bit darker. We do love colour but the colour has to work [with the collection], it’s an integral part of what we do and how we want to use it. We love it [colour], but it’s not important for us at this point. When you are doing a lot of construction, as we do, colour can sometimes come in the way because people’s focus would have been on somewhere else, on the colour. And when we design we want colour to be secondary, or tertiary.
The winter schedule seems fairly light. A lot of labels I had anticipated seeing based on last seasons schedules aren’t showing. Do you think it’s encouraging a lot of young labels, like yourself, to put on a show in place of where the bigger brands might have been?
No, I don’ think so.
So you would have done the show regardless?
Exactly. We always wanted to do shows, of course. We started doing the show last season but we waited until we were quite ready. We don’t really get any [financial] support, all we really get is our name on the official schedule. But I don’t think we’re perceived as a small label, we’re perceived as something that’s going to be here [long term]. Not something that passes by, which is good. Last season there was almost twice as many shows. There were a lot of Swedes showing here but they’re not showing here this season, which I think is a pity, because a lot of them can’t afford it, so you see some of the bigger brands moving into smaller venues.
Fashion shows now deliver something akin to performance art. It’s almost as if these parades have an autonomous position of their own; the spectacle of the show runs parallel to the clothes. Do you feel that it’s a necessary way for Spon Diogo to sell clothes?
Our shows are not that extravagant. I think we really like the idea of a presentation more than a show. The show, to some extent, must present the feeling of the collection and we have a lot of tools to use to be able to convey that feeling and the ambience of the collection. Of course you have the London shows that are very much about performance and a lot of the Danish designers comply to this but we don’t follow that tradition. I think we follow the French presentation where it’s more like a salon. Our show is not that dramatic, but it’s going to be a little more dramatic than last season. We’re working with a fantastic team, the best stylists, hair and makeup in Copenhagen. Very talented and very progressive.
Your debut runway show was Summer 2010, you present in Paris and are eventually hoping to show in New York.
New York is a really important market and everything is happening in New York so we’d like to go there and ‘meddle’ (laughs). I think we would be perfect to show in the American market.
Does it help to have some level of success in Denmark before being successful in other countries?
No, I don’t believe so. As I said, Denmark is such a small market. I mean obviously if the press don’t want to touch it, if you’re not getting press in your own country, well of course… but the buyers are much more practical than that. They are very much like, ‘Will this sell on a hanger? Does it look like someone will buy into it? Is there hype surrounding these designers? Does it have a good fit, is it well produced, can they deliver on time?’ In that sense the buyers are really old fashioned. They’re not like us. They’re not philosophers, they don’t go into the philosophy of design.
So where do you want Spon Diogo to be in twelve months?
Exactly the same place, just in more shops. And in a bigger atelier. Three or four times the size.
