Blue Revolutionaries

Meet the protagonists of AN/ARCHIVE EVENT TWO redefining fashion's most democratic color

Blue Revolutionaries

Meet the protagonists of AN/ARCHIVE EVENT TWO redefining fashion's most democratic color

Ephemeral, transgressive, contradictory, blue has had us enthralled since the dawn of civilization. A color unique in its significance and allure across cultures, AN/ARCHIVE EVENT TWO: blue r/evolution examines its production and application to workwear through Roy Roger’s archive, the work of artists Rowland and Chinami Ricketts, photographer Charles Fréger, and the library’s Research Tables.

Research tables from AN/ARCHIVE blue r/evolution by DSL Studio
Photo by Agnese Bedini and Melania Dalle Grave, DSL Studio.

The color blue embodies contradiction. In applied arts, it emerged from precious lapis lazuli mined in far away lands like Afghanistan, transforming into pigments that symbolize eternity and divine stability in Renaissance art. Equally, it manifested as indigo, a natural dye that became associated with workwear and denim through the centuries. This convergence of blue’s dual heritage, from the sacred to the everyday, from the rare to the ubiquitous, makes its status as a social phenomenon so beguiling.

What is the real essence of fashion? It is the strongest form of communication, a powerful visual language that connects us to communities and subcultures through what we choose to wear.
Massimiliano Giornetti
Director of Polimoda

Roy Roger's

Guido Biondi, Creative Director of Roy Roger’s and grandson of original founders, Francesco and Giuliana Bacci, has impressive knowledge of the history of denim and the family company’s archive. At the beginning of his career, he was immediately captivated by the archive. He is emphatic about the importance of research; his team do scrupulous work around the world, collecting and acquiring pieces for the archive. He found one of his favorite pieces in Los Angeles, “we found a Roy Roger’s jacket in Pasadena in Los Angeles, one of the first ones ever made, at the world famous Rose Bowl flea market. The surprise of finding one of our garments on the other side of the world is something that has really stuck with me.”

When it comes to finding unique pieces, Biondi underlines the universal and ubiquitous power of his team, highlighting one of the pieces selected for blue r/evolution, a pair of Stronghold jeans from 1900-1910, “this piece was found in a mine about 50-60 metres underground in Colorado, U.S.A., by a sort of “Indiana Jones” of denim.” The jeans are stained with wax: as the miners descended with candle lamps on their helmets, the wax melted, its droplets staining the miner’s workwear.

Rowland and Chinami Ricketts

Rowland and Chinami Ricketts are two artists committed to making and process. Their work is an embodiment of what it means to grow and work with material. Starting with an indigo plant seed, they grow the plant over the course of a year, before using it to dye fibers that are then transformed into artworks. “It is a very meaningful way of making something,” Rowland describes, “the revolution needs to be small, when done on a small scale, things tend to not be destructive.”

Rowland and Chinami live and work in Indiana, U.S.A., growing indigo at their home, and bringing it into the studio to use in their own individual practices, working with fibers and making textiles. Making an ephemeral thing, like color, is special and something that the artists hope can offer students a pathway to think about sustainable ways of designing, producing, and making work.

Zurashi / Slipped, uses the ancient ikat technique of “slipping” yarns, binding them at different degrees before dyeing to ensure varying gradations of color. The work represents many months of work, a slow revolution in the translation of ancient techniques into contemporary fiber art pieces.

We make color, and color is merely a reflection of a wavelength of light.
Rowland and Chinami Ricketts
Artists

Charles Fréger

Charles Fréger’s work Bleus de travail depicts young blue collar trainees at the start of their career. Despite the obligatory uniform, the men reveal their individuality through customizations and personal touches to their appearance. Fréger’s commitment to portrait photography could be considered a visual adventure that reveals how uniform and dress encode truths and shared experiences. Using the conventions of photography, Fréger manages to present something completely unconventional, in which human life and personality, choices and hesitations, successes and failures burst through the seams. These photographs incite a reflection on work itself, confirming it as an integral part of who we are.

Research Tables

Head librarian, Marialisa Cornacchia, has curated blue r/evolution‘s Research Tables, presented for the first time at AN/ARCHIVE. An integral part of the exhibition, these tables extend figuratively beyond the exhibition and the books, catalogues and publications that are presented on the tables, to include the other titles and resources available from Polimoda’s library. The Research Tables represent Polimoda’s intention to centre the library and the students’ research at the heart of the school.

A welcome antidote to the crises fashion is experiencing, blue r/evolution ignores the commonly accepted credence that fashion is exclusive and inaccessible. It declares that fashion doesn’t have to be niche and separate, instead reframing it as an active part of culture, and demanding it be studied and distributed as so.