The 5th Edition January 2015
Gazette CIFF.DK
Copenhagen International Fashion Fair (CIFF) is the largest fashion fair in Northern Europe The Fall/Winter 2015-16 season will be unveiled 29 January – 1 February at the Bella Center and Forum, Copenhagen. Follow us @CIFF_DK & @CIFF_RAVEN
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Editorial By K R I S T I A N
faced with the knowledge that the internet has produced a highly articulate and educated public, are tasked with interpreting fashion, art, and music and taking them into new and invigorating directions. CIFF RAVEN, the new Copenhagen International Fashion Fair menswear destination, stands at the forefront of a creative vision that is distinctly different in style and intent. Curated as a unique collaborative arena representing the interests of a new kind of audience, it crystallises the traditions, mindsets and ideas currently influencing men’s lifestyles. What makes CIFF RAVEN’s platform so unique is that it consists of a collective of artists, musicians and creative individuals working both inside and outside fashion, which means that the influences and inspirations behind each presentation are authentically driven and completely original. Among the industry innovators who have embraced the new space are OFF-WHITE c/o Virgil Abloh, Maxwell Snow, 424 on Fairfax, and the POOL Aoyama – all cutting-edge talents who have helped give the international streetwear market its recent traction. The overall looks on view encapsulate some of the strongest designs to have emerged in recent times: CIFF RAVEN provides a window onto the context in which creative output and razor-sharp design are thriving in Copenhagen, with stylemakers championing new codes of dress at the vanguard of fashion, articulated by a strong, fresh visual identity that is solely their own. This ingenuity
TO DAY ’ S TA S T E M A K E R S ,
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is clear to see in CIFF RAVEN’s choice of represented designers: names such as Han Kjøbenhavn, Vidur, Apollonius, Martin Asbjørn, Erik Bjerkesjo, Astrid Andersen and Stutterheim are some of today’s most forward-thinking menswear brands. By nurturing a specific aesthetic identity directed to specific audiences, CIFF RAVEN aims to show members of the broader public that the impact of their cultural manifestations really matters, and that they themselves are a vital driving force in the fashion universe. The end result is both unexpected and utterly compelling. CIFF’s latest visual campaign, shot by photographer Cameron McCool at the enigmatic Danish Tegner Museum, merges high fashion concepts with brutalist architecture to stunning effect. Among the anticipated highlights of this year’s fair will be a solo installation by Los Angeles artist Cali Thornhill DeWitt. Having previously collaborated with Virgil on a joint art installation for the Crystal Hall at CIFF, DeWitt will expand on his iconic text- and image-based works and create two pieces specifically for CIFF RAVEN’s inaugural launch. Not surprisingly, DeWitt is a close friend and frequent collaborator with Posh Isolation, the Danish record label jointly founded by Christian Stadsgaard and Loke Rahbek. Operating as both a gallery/library space and a music distribution label, Posh Isolation acts as an antenna for underground bands, steering its activities in response to the new music produced by a small, vibrant network of Danish musicians. This is a
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strictly friends-and-family affair, with the represented artists selected for both their talent and community affiliations. Initially a sharply dissenting voice deliberately out of synch with most music of the time and operating very much outside mainstream influences, Posh Isolation is now a leading force with an impressive roster of breakthrough bands including Lust for Youth, IceAge, and Puce Mary. The nature and origins of all these contributions demonstrates the genuine relevance of a forum that allows participants to challenge and redefine mainstream notions of fashion, art and culture. By viewing them together, as a sum of their parts, CIFF RAVEN achieves its ultimate ethos: a curatorial strategy whose aim is to demonstrate how the innate energy of Copenhagen coalesces with innovation, inspiration, and attitude. This is what makes CIFF RAVEN so radically different from its contemporaries: a process of pulling away from the traditional institutions and conventions established by existing forums, and creating approaches and spaces defined by, and supportive of, artistic output. At its core, CIFF RAVEN gathers together different voices and modes of expression, enabling contributors to express their ideas in concrete form in a spirit of interconnection. By drawing inspiration from artistic exploration and combining it with a streamlined Danish aesthetic, CIFF RAVEN’s multifacetted vision reflects a new form of modernism rooted in contemporary global culture.
BY C A M E R O N M C C O O L AT T H E
R U D O L P H T E G N E R S M U S E U M & S TAT U E PA R K
Hooded Vest & Pants M A R T I N A S B J Ø R N ; Jacket R I OT S R E S O R T Pants H O L Z W E I L E R ; Shirt M A R T I N A S B J Ø R N Jeans H A N K J Ø B E N H AV N ; Turtleneck S A N D ; Jacket R I OT S R E S O R T Long Sleeve T-shirt A R M O I R E D ´ H O M M E Pants S A N D Opposite C A L I T H O R N H I L L D E W I T T, F O R E V E R I N O U R H E A RT S , 2 0 1 4 (C O U R T E S Y O F T H E A R T I S T & C A M I L L E M A RY W E I N E R )
Editorial Director and CIFF Fashion & Design Director K R I S T I A N W. A N D E R S E N Creative Director P I E R R E T Z E N KO F F Design Director M A R K Editor-at-Large A R N AU D VA N R A E T Editor M A R T Y N B AC K Colour Management A L A I N TO U M I N E T Printing R O S E N DA H L S
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Locals Only By N I C O L A S
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Photography P I E R R I C K
VA N R A E T
Posh Isolation's founders on cassettes, Copenhagen and why it's better to create with friends
big city with a warm, friendly atmosphere, is much talked about for its incredible cultural activity, especially in terms of music. For several years now there’s been a thriving underground scene, led by a cluster of Danish punk and noise groups who are spearheading a real experimental movement and developing ever more groundbreaking and charismatic sound research projects. We meet two men who are very much part of this scene: Loke Rahbek (Vår, Sexdrome, Lust For Youth, Croatian Amor) and Christian Stadsgaard (Damien Dubrovnik, Sarah’s Charity, Angry Ayrans, Severe Photography, Opec). They are the founders of the Posh Isolation label based in Copenhagen, representing groups such as Marching Church, Vanessa Amara, Puce Mary, F.E. Denning, Communions, and other pearls of the Danish underground scene whose music has often been released in cassette format in a limited number of copies. We were lucky enough to meet Loke in Stockholm next to the studio where he was staying for a few weeks working on a new project.
C O P E N H AG E N , A L I T T L E
So, Loke, let’s talk about your label. How old is Posh Isolation, and how was the project born? LO K E R A H B E K : Posh Isolation will be six years old in February. The label was started because I and Christian had made a record, the first Dubrovnik LP, and there was no label that seemed an obvious choice to release it. In Denmark there hasn’t been a real culture for this kind of music before, and it seems that the easiest way of getting it out is to do it yourself. And then we realized we could do other things ourselves, and there was another release, and then another, and it sort of snowballed. After we’d been doing it for a while, some good friends of ours recorded N I CO L A S B O U R S I E R:
something and we thought “we can put that out as well”. From the beginning there was no big plan for working on a record label or anything like that. N B : What were your activities at the beginning, and how did they develop over time? L R : I like to think that my activities are still very much a creative process. Although we do all the standard music label work, we try to minimize that part of it and give priority to recording the music. Nowadays of course there are a lot of other people recording music as well, but the main goal is to present things in the best possible way. It’s like making a frame or a stage for these things to be presented. From that point of view our project hasn’t really changed much since the beginning – we just do a lot more of it now.
So you still have the same goals? Yes, but it’s important to keep moving, developing our ideas and getting better at what we do. NB: LR:
N B : Working with Christian, do you each have a speciality in your work or do you do everything together? LR : We do have different roles, probably more so today than before because there’s a lot more work now. I do most of the artwork, the art direction and I guess in music business terms I do what’s called label management: I speak to the artists about the release and so on… But of course we still do a lot of stuff together. We don’t really have anything like a business description or business tactics, it all changes with each new release. Sometimes I do the largest part and sometimes Christian does the largest part; with me touring so much these days there are a lot of things I can’t do because I’m not in Copenhagen. Christian is a lot better with paperwork than I am but it would be wrong to say that he
does this part and I do the other stuff. When I’m not there he keeps everything going, even if we don’t do a lot of releases when I’m away, just maintaining the label and taking care of the mail order side of things, putting things in cardboard boxes and all that. It may not seem like it but it’s actually a lot of work. There’s all the administrative stuff to take care of and a lot of boring paperwork. N B : Are the artists released on Posh Isolation all friends? L R : Yes, we decided a long time ago that we didn’t want to work with strangers. I think in order to create and to be precise in your presentations, there has to be an intimacy between the work and the artist, so we made this rule that we only would work with people that we knew and people who come from more or less the same environment as us. Nowadays of course we all travel so much and we have good friends all over the world, but you need to draw a line somewhere and we decided to stick to Denmark with a few Swedish exceptions. Maybe it will be different someday. I think if you’re presenting or describing something it’s a lot easier if it comes from an environment that you know, so I’d have a hard time doing a good job working with something from say California or Tokyo, because that’s not my environment and I don’t know their particular sort of emotions. So we try to keep within our own scene.
And do you have people proposing their music to you? L R : Yes, it’s become like a self-feeding mechanism were people that are even loosely involved with the label are asking us for releases. There’s always someone who’s finished something, so we don’t have to look very hard these days, there is definitely enough material for two or three Posh Isolations to run at the same time. ☞ NB:
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But of course all our friends and all the people we work with know that they can come and play their stuff whatever they’re working on. We then figure out if it makes sense to release it through Posh Isolation. It’s very important to make a distinction between what we put out and who we are friends with. We can have good friends in Copenhagen making great music, but who don’t fit Posh Isolation – it’s a very difficult thing to describe and put into words. It’s a gut feeling… Exactly, it’s a gut feeling, and following it is really the only rule there is. When an artist releases something through us, it’s always as much their work being presented as them being part of the larger body of work that is Posh Isolation. NB: LR:
NB:
Is it the same for the literature you have in the Posh Isolation store? L R : The store, or rather the shop, came about because there was a need to have a platform for us to work from because the workload became so big and we
couldn’t do it in our bedrooms anymore. When we were getting a physical place it seemed stupid not to have somewhere people could go and meet and talk about things and present their work and ask questions or criticize. I think that’s the main function of the place – it’s more like a cultural centre for nerds. We carry a selected stack of books and records, and they’re not all from our scene, we’re branching out further to all sorts of similar activities all over the world, labels and artists, things that sort of come from the same angle… all the things that we just enjoy, really. N B : The aesthetic side, the visuals and the graphic work seem really important in your work. You have a strong, very pure identity, is it your own work?
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Of course with every release you have to find the right balance between the work of the artist and Posh Isolation. I can’t just paste any collage that I’ve done onto any record that we’re putting out, they have to sort of go together. Finding a balance where the work and the label are taken care of aesthetically speaking is a big part of the process. This balance differs with every release of course. We use different artists and people, mainly in Copenhagen. Vanessa Amara’s record is a good example, the tape and record we put out have pictures on them that he took himself, and then we put on our own stuff and collage to make it all fit. It has been very important for us since the beginning to have a strong aesthetic and a sense of coherence between the different releases. Also my background is probably
LR:
‘The more stones there are in a wall, the stronger it’s going to be and the harder it’s going to be to ignore it.’ more in visual art than in sound and music, which might explain the need for a strong visual identity. And it’s also just nice when things look nice really [laughs]. There’s nothing worse than a good record with a bad cover because the visual is the first meeting betweeen you and the record, before even the sound. And when it works, it kind of creates the room where you’re going to listen to the music: it hints at an emotional context.
many cases in underground music, there will be a scene eventually. When we first started the label there was definitely not a scene in Copenhagen, it’s been a mixture of luck and… well I don't know really, but I guess that as soon as you have an environment and people that are motivated enough, well it just kind of happens by itself. I mean once you get into your head that you can actually record and release an album then it’s easier for you to just do it for real. But it takes a while to realize that. I remember when we made the first Damien Dubrovnik record, I had this kind of mythological approach to recording, as if it wasn’t something that you could do just like that. As if there was this higher power that decided when someone would put out a record. And then we did it, and I realized that it’s not actually impossible. So we were playing with Damien Dubrovnik and rehearsing with Sex Drome and we thought, well we’ll just record this as well, as we already knew how to do it. So we put that out and then by luck or by chance we ran into Iceage who had just recorded their first 7” as well, and although we didn’t really know them we felt a kinship with them as they were
playing punk music like us, although very different and not in the punk scene of Copenhagen. So if we teamed up and brought our friends to their shows and their friends to our shows, then it would seem like these shows weren’t just a waste of time. I think that’s kind of what created that scene to begin with.
would come and play bass and help out or whatever. And then it kind of spread all over Denmark, and people interested in that kind of music and who were good enough or “on the level” ended up being part of this machine, this movement, this brigade or whatever you want to call it. Any task is easier if you’re more than one or two people, because the more stones there are in a wall, the stronger it’s going to be and the harder it’s going to be to ignore it. N B : Do you think bands such as Lust For Youth or Iceage that are signed on big labels (Sacred Bones Records, Matador) helped the other bands to develop? L R : Yes, they do sort of become ambassadors for the Copenhagen scene, when one of these bands goes out and plays there are going to be people who don’t
know about all the other stuff that’s going on, and I think that eventually in this day and age information is so easy to access that if you like one of these bands it’s going to be very easy for you to find that they’re actually in other bands, playing with other people – they’re part of a scene. And once you find that out you start to get that it’s not just a band but something bigger. If all the bands just stayed in Copenhagen, it would be fine of course, but it wouldn’t create the same sort of attention for the whole scene. Can you talk to me about the video Nowness that’s on the Posh Isolation website, it seems crazy! (nowness.com/ story/13-torches-for-a-burn) L R : Yeah it was a good party, the whole event was what I had dreamed out years ago, to be able to do a thing like that, to expose our whole scene on a scale like that. I think it was a very special day for everyone, it felt like we were a football team of some kind. There were 30 of us from Copenhagen in Los Angeles so it felt like being here, only it was warmer and you ate tacos. NB:
N B : Let’s talk about the Danish underground scene in general. Over the last few years we’ve seen more and more great bands arriving on the scene, you’re extremely productive and you’ve managed to be heard all around the world, in the USA or even in Japan. Posh Isolation bands have gigs out there, you go with two or three bands and play in these countries, like a kind of New Brigade. How do you explain that? L R : Well I think it’s not the first time that’s happened in music history. In
After that had been going on for a while we would all sort of hang out together and start making projects. I was hanging out with Elias (from Iceage) and we sort of felt like recording something and that turned into Vår. And this was happening with people all around us, just making crossovers and recording music together, even if it was just 10 people to begin with then a friend
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we went to sample the icy wind of Copenhagen, to soak up the underground atmosphere, and to visit the Posh Isolation headquarters. Our host was Christian Stadsgaard, the other driving force behind the label. He began by showing us around this small building below street level with countless carefully selected cassettes and vinyl records lining its walls – enough to delight the most demanding lovers of experimental music. We talked about our meeting with Loke and the activities of the label, and I asked him a few questions about his personal views. He told me that one of the most important things for him was to never be too satisfied with their work and to constantly challenge what they do. He said it’s important to keep enough distance from each project so that they always see the big picture and are able to present the work in the best possible way. He mentioned that there’s something that both flatters and puzzles him, and that’s seeing more and more groups taking a close interest in the Danish scene and making punk music that’s very similar to Iceage for example. They might even use something that ends with “...For Youth” as their name, a reference to Lust For Youth. He finds it much more interesting to do
A F T E R C H I L LY S TO C K H O L M
your own experimentation and move into unexplored territories, to develop your own sound and your own world. We then talked about French culture and the French music scene. He cited the names of several groups and recommended several French records that I might enjoy. I started to explore the shelves and discovered some of the shop’s treasures, including countless flyers and trash fanzines, as well as some mysterious VHS cassettes in a cardboard box. Every time I looked at something he explained who the artist is and where they met, often at concerts around the world.
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Music is everywhere. Christian played one record after another, listening to things he hadn’t heard before, people came and went, everyone chatted and the place started to fill up. Someone put some beers on a table and we raised our glasses in a really friendly atmosphere. Some members of bands such as Communions and Lust For Youth joined the party. We stayed for hours talking and sharing ideas – just like Loke said. I remember someone patting me on the shoulder and saying “It’s always like this here!”
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Posh Isolation Bl책gardsgade 14 st tv 2200 Copenhagen Denmark poshisolation.net soundcloud.com/poshisolation konkretfilm.blogspot.dk
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Fall / Winter
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2015 – 2016 Photography Cameron McCool
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FAG E R H O LT – H E A R T M A D E
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Jacket S A N D T-shirt K JÆ R
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Long Sleeve T-shirt A R M O I R E
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Left to right Leather Jacket R I OT S R E S O R T Turtleneck S A N D Pants H A N K J Ø B E N H AV N Shoes S P R I N G C O U R T; T-Shirt A R M O I R E D ´ H O M M E Jeans C LO S E D Shoes J O H N N Y B U L L S ; Jacket & Shirt R O D E B J E R Jeans C LO S E D Shoes S H O E S H I B A R ; Fur, Belt & Pants S A N D Shoes P L AY B OY ; Jacket & Skirt C A R I N W E S T E R Shoes A PA I R ; Jacket H A N K J Ø B E N H AV N ; Jacket & Sweater P O P C P H Jeans C LO S E D
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Hooded Vest & Pants M A R T I N
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Shoes C R E AT I V E
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Turtleneck A R M O I R E
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Jacket & Pants S A N D
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Left to right Jacket J U L I E FAG E R H O LT – H E A R T M A D E ; Jacket J U L I E FAG E R H O LT Jacket R O D E B J E R ; Jacket S A N D T-shirt K JÆ R K Ø B E N H AV N Skirt S TA N D B L AC K
– HEARTMADE; NUDE
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Stylist M A X C L A R K Hair H A L L E Y B R I S K E R AT J E D R O OT Make-up E L I A S H OV E AT J E D R O OT Digital Techs O L I V I E R G R E N A A & M A R K D E X T E R Retouching S É B A S T I E N D E O L I V E I R A Video J U L I E N C A R L I E R Photographer’s assistant K E N N E T H M E N G CIFF Fashion Coordinator D E N I S E W I L K E J U H L Creative Director’s assistant J OY S I N A N I A N Security M I C H A E L J O N S S O N Models AU G U S T I N L A M P R E I A , A N T H O N Y LO R E N T E , FA N D O A L AG U E R AT E G U Y
&
LO U I S M O R E L L I AT S U C C E S S , L AU R I T Z AT E L I T E C P H , O L I V I A AT 2 P M C P H , A I A AT U N I Q U E C P H , A L E K S AT E L I T E S TO C K H O L M , I A AT E L I T E S TO C K H O L M
Location R U D O L P H
T E G N E R S M U S E U M & S TAT U E PA R K , D R O N N I N G M Ø L L E , D E N M A R K
Special thanks K AT Y
BARKER & CECILIA HELLNER
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Leather Jacket M A R T I N
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T-shirt 4 2 4 Jeans H A N
K J Ø B E N H AV N
2 9 JAN – 1 F E B 201 5
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