The Future is Fanning:
Kiko Kostadinov's
Womenswear
Designers
Twin Sisters Laura and Deanna on Their Brand of SciFi Realism
- Interview: Claire Marie Healy
- Photography: Vicki King
In Andrzej Żuławski’s late-70s sci-fi film On the Silver Globe, a group of cosmic explorers escape earth and find a new planet to live on. Produced against the backdrop of Soviet-era Poland, its wild and unrelenting vision of the future confronted the present: is current society the only way, or could there be an alternative? The film inspired Laura and Deanna Fanning for their AW19 Kiko Kostadinov collection, but feels especially topical today. As a pandemic reorganizes how we are living our lives, the aesthetics of such a primal reset feel more relevant than ever. “The strange thing is that time has seemed to become shorter and longer”, the twin sisters tell me in March, as they have shifted to working remotely during the UK Government’s lockdown. “[And] the world has become smaller and bigger.”
That the current moment feels like we need to articulate a new language of dress isn’t lost on the Fannings, whose through-line of maximal function has become its own, assertive woman over the four seasons they have designed for Kiko Kostadinov. Anticipating the current mood of dressing for dystopia, the best way to describe the Kostadinov woman might be deliberate: inspired by these old visions of the future, there’s a sense of forward-marching, of agility, that seems fitting for our present. Their first collection, SS19, looked to the color schemes of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World; and, while AW20 didn’t explicitly reference any literary or cinematic works, it explored an overarching theory of looking (specifically early 20th century gestalt theory, which argues that humans see the whole from the interplay of different parts). But even without show notes straight out of an archival deep-dive, their mechanical brights—punctured with diamonds, spikes, and swirls knitted within-and-without—have always registered as details of the world-building sort.
Back in February, Laura and Deanna were free to meet in their airy studio, and chat about this or that while modelling their own color-blocked separates: revealing at one point that people used to presume they were one person with a double-barrelled first name, and sometimes still do. (Their regular stylist, Agata Belcen, told me beforehand that Deanna has previously said to her that with twins, one tends to have a longer face and the other, a wider face; this is true in reality, but barely perceptible). The pair don’t actually finish one another’s sentences, which is useful for transcribing, but they continue the thread thoughtfully, often glancing at one another and emitting a simultaneous Ozzie cackle.
While they admit fellow CSM alumni Kiko is very hands-off in the design process, the Fannings navigate the infinite vortex of Fashion Weeks by doubling down on their creative collaborations nonetheless: like ASICS, Camper, and the AW20 handbags made with Medea’s Giulia and Camilla Venturini (who, in a pleasingly symmetrical twist, are also twin sisters). It’s a feeling of infinity that emerged in the spiralling optical illusions of AW20: where, they tell me, they wanted to offer a counter to a landscape where clothes exist behind screens, in a plane of flatness. These are clothes for women who participate, not just women who dream of alternate realities; a combination that feels up to the challenge of the moment. It’s almost as though the Fannings have always known it: the future is already here.
Where does Laura’s vision end and Deanna’s begin—and vice versa?
Deanna Fanning: My work is always about constructive textiles, because of my background in knitting. So we have a shared vision aesthetically that's quite natural—but we always gravitate towards exploring the vision in different ways.
Laura Fanning: In fashion you work so closely with people. It's such a psychological game, so you have to feel comfortable with people for it to work.
DF: Interpretation is [a] really interesting aspect. At the moment it's not uncommon to walk into a studio and you'll find many people don't have the same first language—so by nature words aren't really enough. You see what you see. Maybe that has a big part in the success of the collaborations we've done—because we don't get so worked up on the plan necessarily, it's very much like a visual exchange.
What I love with what you’re doing with Kiko is there seems to be a very sustained, detailed, research method—whether that’s movies you’re watching or books you’re reading. Like how on some level AW20 is obsessed with basic geometric shapes, but also, like, gestalt theory. How does this dynamic work in practice?
DF: It's kind of like a trigger that we have, and then we'll zone really deep into that area, then work it into the garments. I guess we have the luxury of time because we don't do pre-collections—midway through the season we get to this point where it's almost intuitive. You don't have to look at the reference necessarily anymore, because the ideas and the fundamentals of what you're trying to do are already there. I think that's a really good part of research: being able to bring those ideas into your subconscious.
LF: For AW20, we had a feeling [about] the value of clothes today: how they're represented online is your capital. So I guess we just wanted to go back to using our hand, and making techniques, that acted as a counter to these very flat, graphic, sellable ideas of clothes.
DF: Like the diamond darts on the knees —the trousers are 3D, but how do you put the 2D back in?
A/W felt occasionally earthy, but never straightforwardly so. Where do those colors come from?
DF: I think that's a really intuitive thing. The light in Australia is really bright—maybe it's a nostalgia for a brightness, because everything's so grey here.
LF: Not everybody likes color. Some people find it very confronting and it can be agitating.
DF: We [should] have a healthier relationship to color by now. I know we’re in 2020 but still can't help to feel that the Western narrative, and how it's so tied to religion, has significantly hindered the development of color in dress. People still call red a cardinal red, and purple wasn't worn for so many years—people hate purple. We had a buyer come from Italy and they were like, “No one in Italy would wear purple, that's bad luck.”
What was it like growing up in suburban Melbourne?
LF: Clothing was always a really big part of our interests. My mum’s family made clothes, so we were around it since we were small. I remember one of my mum’s aunts had a really big archive of Vogue Italia—it was just sitting in her garage—and it was so sweet because it was all of her references. In that 90s moment those magazines had great color and were quite severe at times as well—it was super inspiring.
DF: We went through a phase where we used to have a market stall at a Sunday market. It was on the other side of the city. We would source everything during the week at different charity shops, and then be so proud of this collection! [Both laugh] It's crazy, we'd like steam it, wash it, and we just loved it so much! We actually did okay—we used to make a couple of hundred dollars every time.
Your references can be really esoteric—do you go to archives or just YouTube?
D: Sometimes we can get into a YouTube hole but also I just really enjoy watching old films. Costumes are really important, trying to understand the way a person would have carried themselves at that time.
L: And how people put things together. Costume is really powerful like that. Costumes in films are kind of like collections in a broad sense, because you’re focusing on a time, an era, a theme, a subject, a story.
D: Like people watching when you can't people watch.
“...by nature words aren't really enough. You see what you see.”
Also how a film might be edited, with the color brought out in a totally different way. There's something about the amplified version of familiar colors that you’re working with that feels fresh.
D: Yes, like Fellini [is] really interesting. Shape-wise we don't reference it, but all of the colors are so saturated in all of Fellini's films. I think that's really beautiful.
These sci-fi, post-apocalyptic references are trending at the moment—for a very real reason, obviously. Some designers are working through chaos with more chaos, and others are responding with uniforms. Are you thinking about utopias or dystopias when you design?
L: For us it's more like, what's left for women in the future. In such a right-wing, dark [era], it's really easy to present as something that's floral or soft—it's very likable. But what does that do for the presentation of women?
D: I know some people use that trope and try and subvert it but we're not so interested in that. That's an interpretation of a representation that initially started through the male gaze.
L: You can just wear menswear. But why should we buy menswear?
D: For us that's really important—it doesn't mean that you're assuming a man’s image, you're creating your own strong image. It makes me think of the Viv Albertine autobiography. As a punk she did and wore anything she liked, but later it changed. She was wearing suits, she used to go to Pineapple Studios and teach dance. I was like that's really interesting, because she was an absolute revolutionary, then she let go of that specific kind of image. I hope womenswear can be more like that.
Claire Marie Healy is a London-based writer and editor, currently Editor of Dazed & Confused.
- Interview: Claire Marie Healy
- Photography: Vicki King
- Photography Assistant: Sandra Ebert
- Date: April 16, 2020
