Wifried Mayer

Interview with Wilfried Mayer

- Can you tell us a little bit about yourself as a fashion designer and your brand.

W: I live and work for my own brand in Vienna since 2005. Before that I was in Milan for one year, working as a men's shoe-designer for Bally, having graduated in 2004 at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. After being a finalist at the Hyeres Festival in 2005 I decided to start the brand carrying the same name as me.

- Can you tell us a little bit about the new Spring/Summer 2009, what were your initial concepts?

W: I gave the collection a title ''NEO EON ONE''. Two years earlier, the summer collection was called ''KA'', both titles resulting from a playful approach with letters. During the design process for KA, I was interested in the transformation period going on in the early Soviet Union. What is most visible for us nowadays is a certain aesthetic deriving from the avantgarde movements during that time. But what also interested me, was the creative energy resulting from a very difficult situation of scarcity on the one hand and a seamingly unbreakable enthusiasm that would -by all means- lead people to do whatever it takes to reach their goals. So KA simply reflects a certain visual aesthetic that you could maybe call 'geometric' or 'functionalist' the form of the letters being a reference to the formal language that interested me then (and still does now). With NEO EON ONE I played another, basically similar game:

Its formalism lies in a rotation principle of letters and it is a never-ending-cycle; just put the first letter of the first word to itｫs end and you will have the second word and so on... I don't like to have a collection theme; like it is required mostly in fashion schools. I always have different fields of interest on the one hand and I have my aesthetic output on the other. If I am successful, i might be able to communicate something of my current concerns and moods that result from the things I am currently dealing with.
I always felt uncomfortable with a designer who would point out his intellectual background as a necessity for understanding his work... Maybe this approach spread in the nineties, when it also became fashionable for a fashion brand to be associated with art somehow... For me it always looked more like a rather unsophisticated marketing-trick to add some identification value.

So, to be brief: The title DOES refer to my inspiration:
EON comes from the Chevalier d'Eon, a diplomat and great fencer living in the 18th century. Being a fencer myself, i decided that Eon would be a good mascot, also because he lived as a man for one half of his life and as a woman for the other half. I made some rather 'unisex-styles' in this collection and I also started to offer certain styles in both men's and womenｫs sizes; so Eon's gender ambivalence suited me well at that time. (NEO because the above- mentioned aspects of my collection were rather new compared to my former work and because I tried to adopt a certain esprit connected to the notion of Eon's personality and integrate it into a contemporary aesthetic vision. Oh yes and ONE because where would the word-game be without it...)

- Regarding your A/W 2008-09 collection, can you tell us a little bit about the detail.

W: As always, I tried to use high-quality materials together with good crafting according to the tradition of classical menswear.

Some of the fabrics for example were perceived in a quite controversal way because for example I used a Japanese wool fabric that was dyed in the color of concrete, the thread being woven in a way to make the fabric thin and heavy at the same time, the touch was something between silk and paper, but heavier.
-This was not what one would traditionally expect from an ﾒelegantﾓ menswear collection. Style-wise it was quite eveningwear - inspired (for example through the use of black ribbons) and maybe that was a bit boring.

- What is the most important facet to pay attention to in your designs?

W: I like to see people discovering such facets when they have a look at my work, but I couldn't advise you what should be important for you; I think it's best to figure it out for yourself.

- Do you have any favourite materials/fabrics and/or special techniques you enjoy using?

W: As I mentioned above, I like to use really good wool fabrics; a lot from England but also from Japan for example. What is also important for me are the shoes; so leather is an issue here; and I also have a big concern for crafting. For shoes you can work with a lot of different techniques and I like to make use of these possibilities.

- In the beginning, what actually made you get into designing?

I had a certain passion for fabrics and for clothes. So when I found really good fabrics I wanted to have something made out of them and that's why I started to think about what it could look like. And that's basically what I still do today.

- How would you describe your style?

W: stringent, modern, sober, weird, understated

- What are your opinions on the current Europe fashion scenes?

I think that fashion design, as a part of the creative industries has become one of the collecting basins of a new proletariat, with bad working conditions, people being exploited as cheap labor, far too much offer of labor and commodities, with people being poorer and poorer in terms of purchasing power and awareness for quality. I think that the big part of fashion designers consists of people who are trying desperately to survive and unfortunately you can also see it in their designs.

- What are your career plans, do you have any future goals?

W: I would like to earn some money, rent a studio and employ some people. Doing some design consultancy would be nice, maybe editing a book or two.

- Do you have some words of wisdom for any young designers and our readers?

W: Be passionate and feel good. If you are a young designer, think well about the conditions of this branch and if you can pay the price for being a part of it - without giving up passion and wellbeing (and iｫm not only talking about money).

Website : http://www.wilfriedmayer.net/

Written by Toshimi Takaishi