New Power Studio.

art
4/23/2009

New Power Studio.


by Hynam Kendall


Feb 2009. For the first time in it’s 25 year history, the BFC announce a 'MAN' day. With James Long, Christopher Shannon and JW Anderson showcasing the best in gentlemen‘s etiquette within traditional runway presentations. And then, in a Clerkenwell art gallery, a film of jersey-clad men and women, accessorised with smashed-up busts, models with towering hair and white mice in window displays, it is an appropriately experimental introduction to an appropriately experimental collection.

Fashion designer Ebru Ercon has known menswear stylist Thom Murphy socially for years. But it isn’t until November 2008 that they decide to embark on a professional partnership. They don’t know yet, in these early stages, just what incarnation the collaboration may take on. Only that they will work with each other. It makes sense. They do, after all, have very similar aesthetics, which, as Thom so eloquently puts it, “is nice because it means a lot of stuff is already a given between us.” Obviously their backgrounds are different. Thom is an esteemed stylist and art director, a long standing contributor to prestigious titles such as i-D, Dazed, Arena Homme Plus and Another Man, and founding creative director of B Store, and Central Saint Martins alumni Ebru is a womenswear designer, recognised for her manipulation of the silhouette, “but it all amounts to the same thing,” assures Thom, “in that we are making creative decisions.” 

Later that same month, Thom and Ebru refine their plans and make them specific: to work together on something related to fashion, but that also offered them the space with which to comment on lots of other stuff they're into. New Power Studio is born. And a decision is made to debut a collection that following February at the climax of the first ever MAN day. Effectively, they will close Fashion Week.  
Of course it made sense for NPS to launch their debut collection at MAN. Thom has worked with the MAN team previously, casting and styling for Siv Stoldal, Cassette Playa and Anne-Sofie Back, and Ebru had shown her eponymous womenswear collections across successive London Fashion Weeks, supported by Lulu Kennedy's Fashion East. It’s less obvious why the duo decided to launch their 2009 unisex collection with an offbeat Terry Hall (no, not Terry Hall of The Specials) mixed media installation, entitled White Mice: Tony Hornecker’s famed blocky set designs litter the gallery space as the crowds, invited via a specifically created YouTube film clip - something that has not been done before, assemble and assimilate. The gallery has been transformed into a twisted high-end hosiery. Ramps up walls covered in carpet, brass stantions with rope imprisoning models on chairs whipped to the same shade as the carpet. Ceiling roses spilling out dozens of glowing bulbs from gallery walls. Flag poles announcing the great arrival of New Power Studio. A strange mouse run in a frosted window. As it was in a gallery it was all to be finished to a gallery standard, the ramps are all bespoke made, the carpet courtesy of Brinton's. The banquet chairs are wrapped in miles of wool by the incredible Tina Reisinger, the Brass Stantions “pinched from that dodgy after hours bar on the Kingsland Road in a late high speed dash in my van disguised as a giant peanut,” says Hornecker. Live mice, white of course, scuttle in the window of the gallery, a thousand claws tip toeing and tap dancing to reggae beats played by famous Techno DJ Mark Broom. Then there is the film. It is not a story. Not a narrative. Not even a televised fashion show. It is a collection of close-ups. Of stills. Of images and shadows set to Growth by Jeff Mills. A projected billiard triangle filled with perfect white O‘s. A slithered dagger of light on a man’s face. Baroque wall renderings for shoulder pads. Lego blocks of white. Two figures bound by a body of red fabric. Dejan Cekanovic builds towers of hair, loose buns like unbaked bread falling at the models’ ears. Nasir Mazhar ties plasterwork headbands around the model’s brows: a modern day crown of thorns. Once baroque renderings, wall hangings and busts, these white curlicues are now bound to triangular limbs with string and wire. In the two-minute-six-second promo, chalk and mortar peppers Thom’s favourite piece - the Winston T-Shirt, a black cotton jersey with canvas front and white zip pocket. Ebru's favourite piece sashays in and out of focus in the slithers of light: the God trousers that turn legs into amazons, tailored canvas coated grey marl jersey, taken in at the ankles. It all descends into a trippy sea of distorted circles, circles becoming ellipses. And then it closes with two models, one running from the other, backs to each other, a bound of red fabric stretching between them as the distance between their bodies grows. It is not so much a video presentation of a fashion line, as much as it is art. A movie. An expression of fashion and it‘s role. It‘s meaning and it‘s use. In lieu of models stomping the runway, Thom and Ebru present this: an experimental short. It’s strange, different, odd. Not po-faced, no, not pretentious or cold, but sexy, sexy and young, different in that way that shocks and excites the senses. How apt an introduction to a fashion line that breeds on experimental, taking the recognised aesthetic of sportswear and turning into something new. Something different. Something experimental. 

“The White Mice installation was a comment on luxury stores and everything in the space started from that reference,” says Thom, of the set that abounded with white blocks, Tetris squares and stage blocks turned to oblong coffins, makeshift plinths and seating for the rouged models, lithe, precise in their balletic shapes. “But essentially the aim of the video was a to create a mood and atmosphere that was a visual link to the characters for the clothing and the set. It’s about a mood, the mood of the collection.” The use of installation in place of runway is also a nice clever introduction to NPS’ other endeavours… endeavours into art, music, editorial… with a video presentation, the NPS partners are literally blurring the edges between art and fashion…  

A lot of times when two established people join forces, they adopt a moniker that melds the two names. With Thom and Ebru (Thebru?), this is not the case. This was not something they wanted to do with their new collaboration. When they banded together, they opted for an independent brand name. Why “New Power Studio” though? On a base level it obviously has literal connections to the project - it’s new, and, of course, a studio, and then there’s the “Power” element… “We wanted to comment on the significance of the word Power at this particular moment. Questions surrounding Power and what it means to have power are very relevant to the world now, especially in the UK. To be empowered, to be powerful or powerless. We felt that the old identity surrounding Power such as money, personal wealth, luxury, weapons, energy and social power seem like very zeitgeist questions that we were discussing,” says Thom. The notions of power are certainly evident in every piece of their new clothing line: a high-collared sweatshirt is branded with triangle patches, hierarchal triangles alluding to a struggle for power, grey marl arms that pass the shoulder create a new silhouette, literally turning the torso into a triangle itself, submarine windows on the elbows expose the underneath, zips create harsh lines on the soft curves of the back, the ass, the thigh. The repetition of triangles. The repetition of circles. Yes, New Power Studio are saturated in thematic power. So much so, they should probably punctuate every word of their name with an exclamation mark. And the Simon Parris logo? A triangle (again) of perfect yawning zeros. An acute triangle, it’s belly full of soft ocular shapes - shapes reflected in the repetitious holes of the sportswear line. What was the rationale behind this? “We looked at reggae record artwork, corporate branding and religious cults. There is no particular significance to the shapes within it, other than the aesthetic,” says Thom. And what a powerful aesthetic it is. 

Afterwards, after the hurrah of their MAN day debut, New Power Studio is on everyone’s lips. The New York Times promptly features the film on its blog, as does Dazed Digital, with the following caption: “Wasn't sure what this was about, but the film looked really cool, and the white Russian cartons were great, and the real mice in a Rotastak style home silhouetted in the window front was amazing!!!!” And Thom and Ebru’s designs are coveted. Already infamous. It is a word-of-mouth success.

But it’s not all spectacle. Beneath the glean of White Mice there was, and still is, substance. Reflecting on their original intentions, Thom explains: “We were interested in people's emotional reliance on the status that luxury goods seem to provide the individual. It seemed to us that ’luxury’ has given people an instant sense of status, worth and style.” “We wanted to see this sense of ‘luxury’ in the everyday. And sportswear used to have luxurious connotations,” Thom says. “Remember - it was sportswear that initiated the birth of Ready To Wear, with Jean Patou's designs for the tennis stars of the 1920's the forerunners of contemporary clothing.” NPS’ pieces do manage to bridge that same gap between comfort and class that Patou once mastered: the pieces hold a precise informal style, but at the same time are refined, never audacious. This is reflected in the predominant use of fine quality Jersey which offers comfort and elegance. Ignoring the current sports luxe trend - typified, for example, by DKNY’s 21st Century take on 80s style, all techno neon accents and contoured shapes - NPS’ sportswear is relaxed with cut-out details that give its soft textures and subtle palette a street-smart edge. So what do we call it? Sportswear-with-a-twist seems such a glib interpretation… “Sportswear,” Thom says. Simply sportswear. “We like the ease of Sportswear,” says Thom. “But then again,” he concludes, “Sportswear in general seems like an old fashioned term now. Especially as, let’s face it, no one who wears it actually plays any sport!”  

Enquiries info@newpowerstudio.com 

http://www.newpowerstudio.com/ 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAkEH2pZQcM 

http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/london-fashion-week-lads-on-film 

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