Cora Isabel David

Studio Visit

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Cora Isabel David is busy. The 27-year-old designer is currently involved in several different shows, at Wedding Dress #5, at the Showroom-Meile, and as a nominee of the P&C Designer for Tomorrow Award at the tent. Her studio and flat are in the heart of Kreuzberg at Kottbusser Damm.

If your current collection was a building, what would it look like?
It would be big, wide, airy. I imagine large windows that allow many perspectives, since my current collection works with contrasts between closeness and openness.

What type of building would you choose as a temporary studio?
The more space, the better. A loft is probably the standard answer, but a large, wide space above everything else would be great. I love it when no one is moving above my head. I love a wide view and to not feel too restricted. I tend to leave my stuff lying around. Being able to let things lie scattered across the space for a while often helps develop new ideas.

How would you describe your relationship to your studio?
Very intense. I am very happy with the combination of living and working. I find peace here.

How important is the space for your design process?
I simply have to feel at ease. I need personal things, my walls are full with pictures. I find these anchors to my own person, which accumulate automatically over time, very important. I like being surrounded by memories, but also new things which are added to that.


Whose studio would you like to take a look at?
Those of all the designers whose work I’m interested in: Marc Jacobs, Hussein Chalayan, Giles Deacon, Riccardo Tisci, Rick Owens, Maison Martin Margiela, especially now that Margiela left the house. I’m interested in inspired spaces, where also unusual things and personal stories pile up.

What inspired your new collection? 

My collection is inspired by the global economic crisis: what psychological effects does the crisis have on people, how does it change aesthetic preferences? In the interviews that I did, people repeatedly told me that they feel a greater need for security and intimacy. To this, I added proverbs, phrases from the media: 'don’t let it get to your head', 'tighten your belt'. I knitted stock prices into the fabrics and used thick strings to gather cloth, playing with the German saying 'to put one’s head into the gallows'.

Which object is dearest to you in your studio?
The kaleidoscope, which I look through when I can’t stand seeing cuts, fabrics and seams any more. 

What does a moment of inspiration feel like? 
When something inspires me, a thousand ideas start rushing into my head and I’m equally convinced by all of them. It can be too much to handle for the moment.

How do you go about designing your clothes?
Most of the time, it’s a combination of patterns and draping. I often imagine two-dimensionally how a cut could work well. Then I usually rely on that, start making a first model and modify it a lot on the dress form. It all goes hand in hand.

What do you do with a finished piece?
I put it away. Onto the next one.

If you could travel through space and time, where would you like to stop?
I always played that as a child! I’d pick the 1920s: art, fashion, the suffragettes, going out in Berlin. It must have been a fantastic lifestyle – but maybe that’s only the stories that have been told afterwards.

What do you see when you look through your window?
Roofs, the tops of trees and a different sky every day.

What does Berlin mean to you?

Berlin is a melancholic city to me, it feels unfinished. I think it has the highest quality for living – I’d even be so bold to say that that statement holds international truth.    ◊    - SSt

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www.coraisabeldavid.com 

Picture Credits: Nicolas Kantor für DERZEIT

The abstract moment of talking to Scott Schuman
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He is said to be the most influential fashion blogger. On his site The Sartorialist, he documents street styles from around the world. No matter how big, influential or different, he’s certainly the blogger with the largest carbon footprint. We’ve met him in Berlin.

     

DERZEIT: What does the Sartorialist offer to its readers that online versions of fashion magazines don’t, or can’t?

Schuman: It’s free of any advertising pressure. This is the most sincere, honest form of fashion journalism right now.

But you’re here for a campaign event.
And how would that affect my blog? If I put photographs of it on my site, I will reference the job. It’s not like in a fashion magazine. My blog is totally honest, totally sincere. I shot 100 images for Burberry and I only put about 9 on my site. I liked all 100 that I did and was proud of the work. I said very clearly that this was a project for Burberry and quoted the link. In that way it’s absolutely honest and sincere.

How do you understand your work?
I’d describe myself as a photo-journalist, but as opposed to a journalist telling facts, I’m just giving you my opinion. I don’t have the patience to sit down and get all the facts right. I feel like the master of ceremonies of like-minded people. The comments are incredibly important on the site. My question about "Would you rather be the Celine woman or the Louis Vuitton woman" got like 600 comments.

 

There are a lot of blogs about street photography. What makes your blog different?
My girlfriend Garrance has a blog, but we shoot in two very different ways. She shoots in a much more personal way, things that literally inspire her to buy something or something she’d like to wear or a girl whose persona inspires her. My approach is much more abstract. Sometimes there might be a photograph that I take and I don’t necessarily like the outfit, but you look at it and think: that’s a great, abstract moment. There is one I haven’t put up yet of a girl with a big, floppy purple hat and a tailored purple coat. I don’t really like the two things together, but it’s an undeniably beautiful shot. She’s just in mid-step, there are always people around her, beautiful light. If I were a designer, I would look at that and go: I love that moment, but I would change her hat this way, I would make the jacket this way. Maybe that abstract moment that the designer takes away from it is the idea of a hat that matches your coat. It’s much more abstract than to stamp in: This person is nicely dressed.
Also, there is so much more variety on my site, with so many style blogs it’s twenty-somethings shooting twenty-somethings. It’s incredibly narrow what some people shoot, whereas I shoot Cowboys, old guys, a 17-year old girl.
The thing that separates me from the other blogs is that I have a 60-40 split between men and women, so the comments come from both sides – straight men, gay men, women, lesbians, old, young, European, American, such a diverse group that’s creating such an interesting variety of comments. Many other blogs are so narrow, you really only get one opinion.  

Do you think that web content needs to be printed to last? Is that something that’s important to you?
I think there is a difference between web content and photographs. I like to hold photographs, that’s why I did the book. But I think the internet is going to hold a lot longer than the photographs are.

What do you personally gain from your work? 
I love the variety and I love fashion. Some people think I started this as something against fashion, to go away from it. But I love the fashion system; I just see it in a slightly different way. In the months in between the fashion shows I go to Berlin or Japan, India or Peru – to walk around all over these places. Sometimes you get something and sometimes you don’t. Seeing how people live, seeing the different cultures, the different expectations, I think it’s fascinating.

If it wasn’t fashion, what would you obsess about? 
A lot of what I do in my blogging is based on what I know from the sports world. It is so far ahead of fashion, e.g. in terms of marketing, because it’s so much bigger. The fashion blog is not much different from Sports Talk Radio, where you have sportscasters who talk about what’s going on with the local soccer team and then callers call in to say their two things. A lot of my concept of how I wanted to have the blog is based on that.

Print publications always have a last page. What do you imagine the end of the Sartorialist to be like? 
A worldview. Hopefully, I will have the chance to do this for 40 years and hopefully I will have a snapshot catalogue of style from around the world during that period.

My next question would have been when would it be time to move on, but you just said that you are planning on blogging for the next 40 years... 

They will have to pull me out of this thing. It’s the perfect lifestyle for me. It might evolve and not always be a blog though.  - SSt

(Picture credits/  Portrait: Nespresso, Street scenes: Scott Schumann für Nespresso)

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