Perhaps it was the ‘awakening’ that followed the pandemic. Or that ‘urgency vs ‘lax’ debate that some creatives faced. Whatever it was, local artisans were inspired to create.
And it wasn’t just stuff. People were making valuable, intricate things, but doing so from an underlying desire to see ‘change’ in their worlds.
Artists had a new lease on life, thanks to this ‘artisanal awakening’, but I say this isn’t new. The ‘rise of the artisan’ is cyclical.
MoDA Market had its own cycle of artisanal awakening in 2013, and again in 2023 – with a new lease on Holborn Road at Locale. Today, MoDA Mag enters its newest cycle with COAL. In retrospect, MoDA Market had always been a catalyst for the promotion of artisans. It remains an integral feature for the founding Clarke-Panton duo.
My appreciation for ‘handmade’ grew circa Christmas ’22 when I saw Pussbackfoot design assistants adorn foam cones with unexpected trims like fringed paper and circular wood chips to make mini Christmas trees. I was transfixed by the attention to detail.
This level of personalization adds to the theory of ‘all artisanal, all the time’.
Hence why in today’s AI-forward world, the leading designers are the ones who embrace ‘handmade’ and tug on the emotions of their consumer by way of design.
Diotima’s Rachel Scott developed an entire storyline for crochet just from childhood memory. As she develops this storyline each season, she rediscovers elements of her life that somehow reflects the overarching human experience.
Every step of the production line is handmade by the Diotima ‘village’. No two designs are the same and each panel is created in a separate time and place, sometimes, by varying sets of hands. 100% of Diotima’s crochet are woven by groups of female artisans here in Jamaica.
For her first outing at Christian Dior in 2016, womenswear designer Maria Grazia Chiuri, conceived a vision of the ‘modern Dior woman’ specifically from her own musing of her daughter Rachele Regini.
‘Today, we have lost this incredible craftsmanship of artisans’, Chiuri said in an interview with FashionNetwork, 2023. ‘I have a personal connection to this issue…where valuable techniques and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge from mother to daughter have been lost over time.”
The Dior Lady Art – a Chiuri concept that involves renditions of the classic bag done by artisans, has been described as a ‘celebration of haute couture creativity and artistic diversity’. Then there’s the Lady D-Lite – an embroidered masterpiece with over a million stitches – all artisanal, all the time.
I could go on, but the common thread here is that these artists understand the intricacy and intimacy of creating communities that connect with their art and promote their artisanal endeavours.
For five short months (October 2023 to February 2024) I worked with Rachel Scott at Diotima, specifically for her Fall 2024 Ready-to-Wear collection.
That time felt like two weeks and a crash course in the artist’s art. Researching and developing multiple collections while marketing and monitoring the sale and (outsourced) production of the current season’s designs is an art form in and of itself.
The tools are imported, the production is timed and monitored – extremely strategized – and the finished product is exported to NY for another round of handiwork.
Like Scott and Diotima, many artists today outsource material, take it home, add their own magic, bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, et voilà, ready for market.
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