(INTERVIEW) Discarded clothes reflect the pulse of the city, says Vanja Meško Russenberger
The Berlin-based designer, Vanja Meško Russenberger presents her new collection, which addresses the meaning of love in modern times and holds up a mirror to the dirty textile industry and mass consumerism.
She was born in the mid-1970s in Ptuj and, as she says, experienced one of the most groundbreaking alternative periods in Slovenia in the 1990s. Vanja Meško Russenberger is an artist, fashion designer and textile artist. She taught herself how to sew, create and find suitable materials for her products, and she models her own clothes, creating all the promotion herself with the help of her videographer and photographer friends.
In the late 1990s, she moved from Slovenia to Zurich, Switzerland, where she ran a fashion store called Ostblock. The store was a fashion hub for unconventional and unique fashion and design products created exclusively by artists from Eastern Europe and the Balkans. About ten years ago, she moved to Berlin, which has always been a strong influence on her work.
For the last four years, she has been creating fashion from second-hand clothes and reworking them in the style of the recycled fashion trend. She cleans, washes, stitches, sews, shaves, dyes, cuts and gives a new look to found pieces of clothing. With her keen sense of fashion, aesthetics and local context, she has managed to create unique combinations and has already launched two upcycled collections. Collection36 is a critical, politically communicative and environmentally conscious fashion line, while on the other hand the Love collection, which Mešková Russenberger launched in autumn, is much more personally confessional, as it deals with the concept of love.
Meško Russenberger goes exploring almost every day. Her workplace is Berlin’s Kreuzberg, in the centre of the German capital, whose walls are adorned with colourful rebel graffiti. She searches for second-hand pieces and selects materials suitable for her work at designated collection points and in the streets where people dump clothes they no longer want. In the process, she meets a range of people from the margins of society, chats with them and makes new acquaintances.
We went with her on one of these adventures through the streets of Berlin.
What gave you the idea for a collection featuring second-hand clothes?
There are several artists in Berlin who incorporate street objects, infrastructure, abandoned pieces of furniture… into their work. Somehow I found myself in this idea too.
Sometimes I wonder why someone has decided that a T-shirt expressing belonging or resistance is no longer interesting. Is it because of the gentrification of the city, and they had to leave the neighbourhood because it was too expensive, and as a result they had to get rid of the clothes? In the clothes you find, you can see how the city is evolving and what trends it is picking up, how it breathes.
Kreuzberg is embedded in your creativity and its symbolism is very recognisable through the motifs you use, such as patches, T-shirts with rebel slogans, colour combinations, etc. What kind of area of Berlin is this?
In my opinion, this is the most original part of Berlin, but it is becoming more and more commercialised. It has retained its politicisation, it is multicultural and it is home to different social classes. It is a very relaxed environment, open and free-thinking. This is very clear in my last two collections, because I could not have found this type of clothing anywhere else. When you sit in a bar and watch how people are dressed, you see the variety of styles and tastes and this kind of environment inspires me.
For the past four years you have been walking the streets of Kreuzberg in Berlin, looking for clothes that people have thrown away, abandoned and dumped on the street.
I don’t really look for them. The clothes are there. They are everywhere. They are always in visible places so that those who need them can take them. They are not rubbish, they are clothes looking for a new owner. Those who dispose of them know it too. That’s why they often put them in protected bins or boxes marked ‘free box’ or ‘for collection’, or in designated spots in front of apartment buildings. Some of these points are also equipped with roofed houses to protect clothes, books and crockery from the rain.
I see you are picking up fabrics and checking the materials with your fingers.
Sort of, yeah. If I pick up a second-hand piece now, I can quickly assess what condition it’s in and whether it’s still worth restoring and treating. I also often come across brand new clothes that still have the shopping slip attached. When it came to colour, I was open to everything in the first collection, but limited to black in the second, which is also the colour I incorporate most often in my work. This made it easier for me to create. I try to make sure that I include non-renewable materials, because I am aware that non-recycled clothes are the biggest problem for our environment. That’s why I try to reuse those, for example fabric blends or 100% polyester. I use them to make skirts, jackets, sleeveless tops.
Some fashion companies advertise that you can recycle worn and old items of clothing.
This is misleading. Especially the promise that they will recycle the clothes and make them into new pieces, because most of the materials cannot be recycled at all. They sell them to South to poorer countries: to the African continent, for heating in Bulgaria … We can, of course, ask how ecological such heating is. It is a good idea, of course, but very harmful and inefficient.
You are critical of mass consumerism and the textile industry, to which you belong. What is the message of these two collections?
I loved doing the upcycled collection, but if people didn’t buy clothes so massively, I wouldn’t have needed to do it, and I would have loved it even more. People buy clothes in bulk, soon get bored of them and then throw them away. I tried to represent a similar thing with the Love collection, where I tried to represent the fear of love, intimacy and deep relationships, which I also see as a trend: the mass search for instant love and intimacy and, on the other hand, the fear of deep relationships.
You are politically and socially critical through your clothes. How do your clothes convey your vision of the world and society?
The clothes I find on the street reflect the economic and social state of the city. So I found a lot of pieces that carried political slogans or belonged to a subculture. Sometimes I wonder why someone has decided that a T-shirt expressing belonging or rebellion is no longer interesting. Is it because of the gentrification of the city and they had to leave the neighbourhood because it was too expensive, and as a result they had to get rid of the clothes? In the clothes you find, you can see how the city is evolving and what trends it is picking up, how it is breathing.
What is the creative process?
The clothes themselves give me a lot. They tell me how they will transform in the future and help me to create. If it’s a skater sweater, you just associate it with that subculture and think further about how to combine that piece in a way that makes sense. I learnt the processes of alterations myself. First I rip, cut and turn a found piece of clothing into a useless one, then I start to create a new garment, combining, cutting, sewing and turning it into a complete one-off.
Have you ever been reproached for perhaps taking away from those who don’t have? Have you followed any principles here?
At the beginning, I had doubts about whether it was appropriate. I wondered whether I was taking from poor people or from those who live in poverty. But then I quickly realised that there is no shortage of clothes anywhere. If you just walk to the humanitarian organisations, you will find that most of them do not take clothes because they do not need them. The only rule I strictly stick to is not to take coats or jackets. These are desperately needed by the homeless in the cold winters. We cannot escape labelling and moralising, no matter what we do in life. There will always be someone who has something to say. I had to explain to my children why I was doing it.
How did the children take it that their mother was looking for inspiration and new materials to create with the discarded clothes?
The children are already used to a sustainable lifestyle. I don’t wear bought clothes and shoes myself, and I only buy new products for my two children on rare occasions, even though they initially had feelings of incomprehension. Everyone sees you on the street. I have also been confronted by their classmates, which has raised some questions. But now everybody knows I do it. It has even turned in a particularly positive direction: I was presenting my work and talking about fashion processing in my son’s class. The children were interested in my work and had heaps of questions.
It didn’t end in primary school. Today you also run workshops for students. How did this collaboration come about?
The Dutch artist and teacher Marciana Timmermans invited me to run a fashion workshop with the students of the Arnhem School because my way of working was special to her. The collaboration was great! It was a pleasure to work with the young people, they were very motivated and creative. We run workshops once a year in Berlin for ten days. First I introduce my way of working to the students and then they go out on their own to find discarded clothes on the streets of Berlin. First they clean the clothes, then there is the creative part, designing new clothes and making a short fashion video to present the final results. The response so far has been excellent and the interest of the students is high, so we will be repeating the workshop soon.
You are also special and constantly brimming with creativity: when you promote other collections too, we see that you are a model for your clothes. Sometimes you shoot videos from the comfort of your own kitchen, with loud punk music blasting. How do people react to the promotion of your reworked pieces?
I get different reactions. I have been accused of trying to commercialise alternative culture. This is happening because a lot of people see fashion as a commercial activity. But I do it differently. I am also socially and politically engaged as a human being, involved in my local environment and defending the symbols of alternative culture that my pieces carry. Therefore, I feel that I am also expressing my beliefs through my work. But I am also archiving a period in the history of this city, because for me, the message of fashion is a response to the time and the environment.
Your pieces, even if reworked, are not cheap.
There is a lot of work behind it and even though I admit that my pieces are not cheap, I find it absurd that I have to justify my price to my customers. I put a lot of time, creative effort and physical labour into my work. I have the help of several seamstresses from Ptuj, with whom I work very well. Without them, my collections would not exist. All the products are handmade and belong to the middle price range. All pieces are unique. I will not underpay my seamstresses in order to satisfy the whims of dissatisfied customers who are used to vulgar consumerism. At the same time, the collection is an experiment. My customers are not used to wearing clothes that someone else has already worn.
Your most current collection, Love, is dark. You’ve chosen black pieces and turned them into unique garments. What are you telling us?
I don’t see the love collection as dark. The Love collection was inspired by ideas about the complexity of love, its challenges and promises, vulnerability, unrequited and unconditional love, the fear of love and its dysfunctional dynamics and dependencies. It is a minimalist collection that, although critical, at its core celebrates the beauty of love, which enriches our experience, provides us with a deeper understanding of ourselves and those around us, and gives greater meaning to our lives.
Even if you spend most of your creative time alone, you also have help promoting your collections alongside your sewing. Who helped you with the film Love?
I wrote the script for the film, which I called the same as collection. Then, as I have done so many times, I worked with the director, editor and cinematographer Lilli Kuschel. Sara Korošec (Muzikačaka) helped me with the music and Lana Kariž Meško danced. The film has already premiered in a Berlin venue in November, officially launching the collection to the public. I wanted to make a film that not only represented the collection, but told a story. The aim was to create a visually appealing and contextually exciting film about love that also reflects my aesthetic taste and values.”
So love is not a dark force?
Absolutely not. Love is the most powerful energy. It is the meaning and reason of life, it is like the sun. There is nothing more beautiful in the world than to be able to love and to receive love. I see darkness as the inability to love and to receive love. And that’s what I wanted to communicate with my latest collection.
Text was originally published in Slovenian language: https://vecer.com/slovenija/intervju-v-odvrzenih-oblacilih-odseva-utrip-mesta-meni-vanja-mesko-russenberger-10351612
