Interview with Lucy Orta
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Although Lucy Orta claims we live in a homogenized world of fashion, her work is anything but runway run of the mill. Located across the Atlantic, Orta has rocked France and the United Kingdom since the nineties with avant-garde collections based in social, economic and political concerns forcing consumers to move beyond Printemps/Hiver dressing distress and truly question how they clad themselves. Angelenos had a chance to view fashion from a lens much wider than their Ray Bans in 2006/2007 when Orta’s work was showcased alongside Hussein Chalayan, Tess Giberson, Issey Miyake and others at the MOCA Skin + Bones exhibit. Perhaps because she has not yet succumbed to ready to wear and has instead kept at the forefront of ideas much bigger than her art, Orta is lesser known than these contemporaries. Yet with countless shows under her tent dress everywhere from Antarctica to Beijing, she is clearly taking the world by storm. Her projects, which walk a socially activist line between fashion and architecture inspire us through sculpture, couture, and performance interventions to wonder how we too can effect change with a sewing machine.

Europe was in a socio-economic recession as a result of the first Gulf war, and Orta was not immune to the growing unemployment and rise in homelessness facing the world. Instead of overseeing statement hair and make-up in the frantic fashion week tents, she staged deliberately provocative interventions all over Paris in decidedly unfashionable places: squats, railway stations, metros and in the street neighboring the fashion shows at the Carousel du Louvre. These unairbrushed performances served as an aggressively “real” showcase for her mobile fashion as shelter collections, Refuge Wear and Body Architecture, and created a buzz all her own.

The cast of vagrants, with their concrete runways, demonstrated the operational nature of metallic or brightly colored waterproof body suits, equipped with pockets to store food and water, which expand from coat to sleeping bag or tent providing all-in-one clothing turned moveable shelter. With Collective Wear, multiple people united together in a fabric igloo or tepee highlighting the importance of the physical and social links. “I was challenging the elitist, conceptual dominant trends and highly commercial market at that time (1990) and looking for new audiences, collective participation and a more socially engaged practice in response to contemporary art,” Orta says as her unique and pregnant vision charged through the front lines of fashion, leaving an indelible mark and offering a solution to the biggest wardrobe crisis, that of survival.

The impact of Orta’s vision is what catapults the fashion world forward, but a look back proves the dress patterns were outlined in youth. As a young girl, Lucy would accompany her mother, a social worker, on visits to the homes of Asian immigrants in Birmingham, quickly picking up on their pain. “The women suffered terrible depression, isolation and loss of identity as well as [struggled with] the cultural and linguistic barriers.” Lucy’s exposure to the plight of those placed on the periphery of society, the other, is a struggle that is so markedly addressed in her Refuge Wear. She recognized the literal protective properties of clothing from natural elements, and went beyond to the psychological, speaking to a greater sense of refuge. Refuge Wear and Body Architecture strive to be the home these women, and all others on the fringe, did not have offering them a sort of shelter and society they can wear on their sleeve.

These days the effects of Orta’s work can be seen on a mass market scale. The pendulum swing toward eco-consciousness, a hyper-alertness of the materials we wear and our interface with nature echoes with Orta-like awareness. Orta herself sees it in her students, “Young designers are thinking about new audiences: the handicapped, elderly… and ways to produce fashion in more ethical and sustainable ways. New initiatives to recycle clothing and even consume less are being put into place.” Yet as the tide of popular fashion edges forward, Orta remains one step ahead at the forefront of new technology. As coordinator of the Artefact Research Hub at London College of Fashion she works with the goal of creating mass couture, the democratization of high fashion and discovering ecological fabrics. Not stopping at the success of her previous work, she is pioneering a maison all her own.

The responsibility Lucy Orta has taken on as a fashion designer is a fierce and noteworthy example to others in her field. Next, her team Studio Orta is in the process of developing Les Moulins where she hopes to combine galleries, residencies, restaurants and production studios for artists; a mini-collective with major influence. It’s a grand project that resonates with Orta’s own ambitions, “I would say that one of my roles, as an artist is to create forms, which have a longstanding impact on ways of thinking.” Browsing through her website, one can see these forms have done more than turn heads, inhabiting the collective social consciousness of the art and fashion worlds. From tent dresses to tepees and all the sustainable fabrics in between, I place my bets on this forward-thinking soldier to offer shelter from the storm

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www.studio-orta.com

Published on 6 November 2008 | 2 |