A special and lucky number - I am very happy to be able to announce our VERY number thirteen.
VERY’s quest is to represent art and creativity, its artists and creatives: ideas presented largely by the players themselves or by those who know them best. VERY never has a theme, but presents a platform for those who create. Set in today’s zeitgeist, this particular issue has the topic “identity” as underlying notion.
Sir Paul Smith launches the subject when asked about the idea of “luxury (in fashion) today” and the special situation of the British high street in today’s global clothing market. Here we discuss the “identity of clothing”, the result of a creative idea, which can become one and then another. Our fashion example is portrayed in our double cover shoot by Sarah Shatz: a Boudicca design and its high street version. It is an idea with a very own quite independent lifespan; the extent of which depends on how the initial creator can protect his/her idea.
Copyright, intellectual property - and its protection - is discussed in panels all over the world, far and beyond. But what are the realities? Zowie Broach, of Boudicca, reflects.
From clothes and the ideas that created them, we move onto the individual. The projected idea of “individuality” and “express yourself” is key to many (fashion) marketing campaigns. However when looking closely, we find that globalized fashion is doing exactly the opposite it may like to promise. The same garment or style promoted a millionfold doesn’t make us “more special”, but “more the same”, when we buy and wear it. Thomas Geffrier looks at uniformity in his photographic way and Danakil’s stark vision offers us food for thought on an existential basis.
Ilsa Colsell invites us to join Brad Kahlhamer on his mystic search for the inner self in the depths of America society. Gayle Kwong Chung shows us her version of Atlantis (or what it may now look like down there, with all the plastic bottles having gone overboard), and Walid Maw'ed from Palestine takes on the global topic of water.
François Dagognet ponders the essence of time and weighs up its positive and negative sides. Time sometimes runs out, and the last contribution is our farewell to Angus Fairhurst, who so tragically and irreversibly showed us, just how short time can be.
