The everlasting anniversary
1309SR …. The everlasting anniversary
On loop: A date, a gesture, a feeling
A chronicle of origins, the ‘time acronym’ 1309SR sets the clock back to the birthdate of its creator, Serge Ruffieux. This inherited fetish for time - Ruffieux’s father was an accomplished haute-horlogerie craftsman - conjures the precision of Swiss watchmaking and the exacting rhythm of a recited gesture.
Like a watch’s ‘complications’, its layered structure describes units of time - from the dream of style and function, to the found materials and their previous lives, to the movement of hands, binding them all forever.
Exploring cut-up techniques and instinctive associations, the process tears, molds, cuts, clashes, weaves to create one-of-a-kind objects. Each element has a role to play; each function outlined in its final form, the imprint of artisanal collaboration palpable throughout.
Hybrid, craft-intensive and festive, 1309SR creations are objects of celebration designed to heighten our experience of dressing.
1309SR …. The code, the collective, the language
Cultural cut-ups and crystal dreams
Between engineered details and spontaneous ornements, these are accessories in motion. Rooted in a gesture that is both artisanal and industrial, these versatile objects embody a crossroad between fantasy and comfort. Flat, functional, fun.
Leaisurewear classics are the focus of 1309SR’s design reboot: fringed mocassins, pool slides, and mary-janes are warped into objects of wonder that borrow from an eclectic array of references.
On-the-go details meet the twinkle of a beaded strap, the inflated outlines of a rubber sole evoking a zodiac boat. The eye takes in technical textures and the raw edges of silk ribbons on top-stitched seams. A constellation of crystals seals the deal.
Sunglasses are fused with rows of mismatched hoops, their crystallised neck-straps defeating the purpose of conventional jewellery.
As if caught mid-transformation, these contemporary hybrids are a mirror of a time where objects and ideas are unbuilt to be rebuilt, where the process defines the object.
These contrasted impressions are the alphabet of the brand’s visual language - a new ‘folklore’ which binds the different chapters of its making together. From alpine tribalism to Italian ornementation, through the ergonomic lines of US sportswear…it edits and borrows to its needs.
1309SR … A countdown?
Collaborative craft and the future of luxury
Like a countdown to the future, these composite artefacts describe a new step in the pursuit of sustainable luxury. At its core are complimentary ways of making, blending couture-like craft with sportswear practicality. Stripped-back constructions highlight the ease of bespoke rubber soles, reflecting the utilitarian core of each design.
Infused with the freedom of DIY, it is a new-found artisanat made possible by Ruffieux’s extensive collaboration with the craftsman his work aims to engage. Its analog foundation
— Ruffieux handpicking rhinestones and dead-stock ribbons in a variety of Italian factories
— has evolved into a solution for eco-conscious manufacturing.
By creating new bridges of supply with brands and factories that have immeasurable deadstock on their hands, and a wealth of craftsmanship to expand, we solidify the bonds that unite us with the experts we are fortunate to work with.
Dead-stock materials and responsible leathers are hand-assembled, each object encapsulating a labor of trust and camaraderie - a bejewelled step forward?
Cormio Bio
Cormio
Brand Bio
Jezabelle Cormio was born in 1990 in New York, to an Italian father and American mother. Her worldly childhood led her to live in big cities like Paris, Rome, and London as well as small towns across the Italian countryside, a duality embedded in the core of her creative process. She studied fashion at the Royal Academy of Antwerp in Belgium.
In 2019, she felt it was time to design a broader collection focused on embroidered knitwear, with an all-encompassing head-to-toe perspective. The first spring-summer collection of Cormio was launched that September, alongside her business partner Giordano Franchetti. Growing steadily ever since, it introduced more than a line of garments, but an alternative approach to fashion design.
Reclaiming the Italian tradition of transmission — and its love of grandmothers — Cormio creates pieces inspired by Italy’s vast cultural heritage, working in decentralized areas of the country where she can contribute to sustaining the community in a meaningful way.
Her greatest creation to date, her daughter Leonilde, was born in November 2020 just about a week after filming the brand’s short film for Gucci Fest which aired the same month. Cormio lives and works in her design studio in Milan and produces everything she creates in Italy.
De Handt Behind The Papier Maché
BEHIND THE PAPIER MACHÉ
THE BEGINNINGS
Founded during the 2020 confinement, De Handt is an evolutive object-based project that crystallises the micro-revolutions of its time: Drawn inwards, creatives of all backgrounds were confronted with the instability of their given fields, prompting them to re-imagine the ambitions they had set out to accomplish. With a renewed sense of purpose and freedom came a new way of making that blended individual experimentation with universal optics. Borne from a desire for renewal, the resurrection of handmade craftsmanship chiseled the outlines of De Handt. Evolving the principles of sustainability and upcycling explored in the fashion industry, it is a back-to-basics-meets-art-history venture.
Yens Cuyvers is a Belgian-born designer that forges unlikely alliances between couture, architecture and symbolism. Trained at the prestigious Antwerp Academy, he developed collections that incorporated his traditional Flemish heritage alongside military-inspired silhouettes and subcultural aesthetics. A continuation of the décortiqué approach which was pioneered by the Antwerp 6, he stripped his patterns bare, exposing them to unexpected cultural juxtapositions.
From his work for the John Galliano label, he kept a deconstructed/reconstructed approach within high-end craft, and a resolute appetite for the Neo-Baroque. Faced with the shortcomings of his mother industry, he embraced an ideology of assemblage and bricolage inspired by historicism and traditional craftsmanship: a post-punk resistance to normative mass culture favouring a layered, utopian aesthetic and radical hands-on process.
Loosely inspired by Yugoslavia’s Spomenik architecture - a theme investigated in his student years already- the first series of De Handt objects features a collection of miniature monuments, set in bold rainbow colours - an ode to the perpetual reinvention of the abstract shape and an optimistic re-appropriation of seminal symbols, splashed with the pizzazz that is unique to the DH world.
With Spomenik, architects of post-war Yugoslavia sought to invent universal forms that could be interpreted by whoever would look upon them, while honouring the memory of its shattered history. A revolution of shape, it titillated the viewers’ imagination, allowing the work to evolve endlessly.
“Yugoslavia was an ultimate expression of social constructivism… a revolutionary system almost openly declaring its contingent and constructed nature. No wonder then the size and grandeur of the socialist monuments! The system, revealing itself as openly “under construction” (in permanent revolution), had to ground its symbolic regime literally into the ground, and to make it, if not indestructible, then at least immovable.”
– Gal Kirn
Positive yet austere, ever-morphing structures, they were a new form of monument, an icon unaware of its own form, always looking forward. This inclusive and abstract object, both celebratory and political, is central to the De Handt ethos.
THE FIRST STEPS
Bringing the eternal to the mundane, Cuyvers erects micro-monuments to a civilization of his own making. An inclusive utopia, celebrating diversity and unity with an irreverent sense of function and glamour. These lush everyday objects take us on a journey towards sustainability, with a radically transparent and queer ethos to guide the way.
Cuyvers flips the contents of Paris’ sidewalks into highly stylised objets d’art, a cultural bricolage to be cherished as a token of rarity. His do-it-yourself attitude and sassy humour turn repossessed cardboard and clay into collectible objects devoted to the petrified ephemera of dried flowers.
« There is something powerful about re-using something. When some things become too disposable you start making everything disposable. RE-use is about that pass-it-on hing and about valuing what you have. »
– Judy Blame
With couture, the hand moves from the inside out, drawing the outline of the shape, excavating it from fabric then draping and stitching it to a simplified body - transforming instinctive lines into three dimensional, living characters. Similarly, Cuyver’s approach sculpts shape gradually, painstakingly, from a line on a page to an object on a mantlepiece, recording not only the fact but the feeling of its making. Each object is one-of-a-kind, bearing the irregular and layered imprint of his hand.
This process is inextricably linked with the force of recycling. An urge to extract, repurpose, and create objects that reflect the cultural patchwork of the Now.
Necessity creates the new luxury.
