BLESS
Hovering somewhere between contemporary art and fashion, Paris-and Berlin-based brand BLESS makes intellectual, pragmatic, tongue-in-cheek products with a turn-of-the-millennium aesthetic.
Over the last 25 years, BLESS have crafted one of the most singularly interesting and beguiling bodies of work in the world of fashion. Both a part of and apart from the wider “industry,” their work exists in a space where the fashion garment, the art object, and the lifestyle product coalesce, exploring the various ways these modes form and shape us. They are interested in how we express ourselves through things that look cool, look uncool, uncomfortable, useful, weird: an interrogation of both form and function, utility and decoration.
Founded by Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag, and based between Paris and Berlin—the two have somehow actually never lived and worked in the same city—and started the project initially as a way to entertain themselves while waiting for more stable employment. Yet they almost immediately got a commission to work with Martin Margiela, which coalesced the nascent project into something more stable. This collaborative spirit has also defined the label over the years: working with other brands, labels, shops, inserting BLESS into the visual ecosystem everywhere they can.
With total sincerity, though, they’ve also pulled at the ideologies that underpin all these creative worlds, creatively subverting the structures that hold it all together through a series of projects that have placed primacy on recycling, reusing, and appropriation.
And so BLESS have created some of the most thought-provoking, humorous, and stylish responses to being alive and getting dressed in the 21st century: trainers you have to assemble yourself, wigs made from old fur coats, hybrid sweatpant-jeans or jean-heels, tables, chairs, bedspreads. These hybrid reworkings are a natural fit for a project interested in the hybridity of everyday life.
FELIX PETTY
How was BLESS founded? What were the intentions with the project at the beginning?
BLESS
As our manifesto says: “BLESS is a visionary substitute to make the near future worth living for.” BLESS started as some sort of a hobby, a two-women club to entertain us until real employment would show up. This never happened, so we just continued to do what we do up until today.
FP
BLESS is often described as an “avant-garde fashion label.” Do you agree with this?
B
Would we describe ourselves as “avant-garde”? No. Our chosen title is, at the moment, “situation designers.” We want to shape our business to our personal lives and needs.
What people think we achieved is often classified as avant-garde, and certain aspects might inspire others, but, honestly, the projects fail as often as they are successful. The secret is that, after a certain time, people are just surprised that we still exist. Perhaps we are the opposite of avant-garde. Google proposes “timeworn” as an antonym of “avant-garde,” and this sounds good as a characterization of BLESS.
FP
How do you define “avant-garde”?
B
Honestly trying to serve personal needs, being intuitive, and actively practicing fearlessness.
FP
There is also a continuum that informs your work, and a consistency to what you do, even across the wide variety of projects, objects, collaborations. How naturally did this cohere?
B
The continuum is us, and the dialogue is our working tool. BLESS is a very personal, category-free construct. We are not even sure who and how we are, and BLESS is our beloved child in her mid-20s.
FP
As well as existing between art and fashion, BLESS also seems to exist within a more holistic sphere of something like “lifestyle,” but that we could also refer to as “Gesamtkunstwerk.”
B
In the end, it's our self-chosen profession and attempt to deal with all kinds of life situations, just as they come along. It’s less lifestyle, more a certain style of life we have chosen: to shape not only clothes and objects but also any kind of situation, actively, and to take responsibility for what we do, create, produce, bring to life.
FP
But, still, people often seem unsure how to speak about BLESS in terms of fashion product or art object. Do you enjoy this ambiguity? Do you ever wish to be more one or the other?
B
We are neither. We are interested in clothing and body-related objects because of its appealing everyday-use aspect. In connection to our engagement in this self-determined field, we constantly face the examination of context, as we want to spread and sell our products and share our values with others. The fact that we get attention from different scenes is definitely a big compliment, and we would like to add that we are proud that BLESS is not only unisex but also uni-age and, as mentioned before, style-free in some sort of sense.
What drives us all the same is to search for our own way to deal with different kinds of offers from the art world that would like to bring BLESS products into exhibition formats. Same as our allergic reaction to high fashion’s typical mode of catwalk presentations, we do not die to display our work on a wall or pedestal, which is why we challenge ourselves to always find a way to work around it.
FP
Despite your respective backgrounds in fashion design, many BLESS works are avant-garde objects or furniture. Is there a conceptual root that links it all together?
B
Less a concept and more the consequence of shifted interest. When you are young, clothes are the most obvious choice to play with when trying to define yourself. Growing older, it became less relevant to us, and our focus shifted onto the quality of our surroundings, like relationships, food, environment. Let’s just say the playground became bigger from the sheer fact of aging and understanding better what matters to us.
FP
You have collaborated with a wide variety of partners and brands. How do you determine with whom to collaborate, and how do you decipher what to make with an external partner?
B
Usually the other partner has to offer something that we are lacking and that makes us more complete.
FP
A notable collaboration came with Margiela, and the wigs made for the FW97 show. What was it like to work with him?
B
A lifetime experience. It was strangely unspectacular and very spectacular at the same time. If he wouldn't have hired us, forcing us to sign a contract and therefore quickly found a company, BLESS wouldn't have come to life.
FP
For Collection N°42 “Plädoyer der Jetztzeit,” you had customers “plead” or offer interesting ideas instead of money to purchase products. Is there anything you gleaned from this unique bartering system that applied to future projects or collections? Can you recall any interesting ideas or interactions you had as a result of this system?
B
We had people pledging, for the bedsheet lake, to overcome fear of drowning; the textbelt, to underline a new love; the bellywarmer—because it seemed to fit no one, but this person looked stunning in it; someone wanted some shoes but pledged for a necklace to say sorry to his love; someone picked a piece to get married in (and did it and send a picture). Quite often, people thought it was an easy moment to get something for free, but our aim was to get in touch and to exchange on another level, beyond a monetary exchange. It was an interesting experiment, but no long-term relationship or collaboration arose directly from it.
FP
Can you explain your N° numbering system? Are these collections? Concepts? Single projects? Art installations? All of the above?
B
We can’t remember why we originally started to number our projects. In the beginning, we started numbering our designs in opposition to the fashion seasons—our season is something that lasts until the edition is sold out. Lately, in the process of archiving everything, we realized our initial plan to stop with N°100 gives a good pattern, and everyone can see how long we are planning to still be “in service.”
FP
How do you incorporate upcycled or recycled materials in your works? What do you look for when deciding to incorporate these kinds of materials into your works?
B
Since the beginning, we have created mainly by modifying existing garments and objects. This kind of ready-made technique includes a hybrid aspect of pairing already prefabricated or repurposed or reworked material with a new one. In addition, and for the sheer fact of an ongoing cleaning-up process, we overwork our own leftovers constantly and find ways to use up non-sellers.
FP
Can we talk specifically about the work for Manifesto? What inspired this collection?
B
The motifs that feature throughout the collection feature hidden areas of Espace Niemeyer, places the public can’t go to, like the roof for example. So there are blankets for people to chill and hang out on, some cushions which can be used as platforms to read, work or eat on, and others with pockets that can be used to store books and small items. We’ve remade two old pieces, Chairwear b and Cablejewellery, and a new edition of our holidaytshirt series, all of which have been remade to reference the architecture of the building.
FP
There’s also an extension cord available.
B
It was actually a wish from Kaleidoscope, which we followed happily, matching it to the location by making it out of concrete. It also aroused our desire to make the whole project "N°46 The Kaleidoscope" series. This wasn't planned but came along naturally.
FP
You’ve presented your work in many spaces around the world. Manifesto 2024 is held in Espace Niemeyer. What do you think the space brings to your work, and has it affected how you’ve decided to present your designs?
B
The building's beauty, paired with the fact that its design was given as a present to the French Communist Party, has motivated us to help uncover the hidden beauties of the building, and also that of the festivalm in using the properties, such as the unexplored hilly outside landscape as an invitation to the public to linger.
FP
Looking forward to the next 25 years: Where will BLESS be in 2049? What do you hope to be producing then?
B
We keep thinking in numbers. We will stop with N°100. We can't prevent BLESS from ending, but we can determine if the end comes sooner or later.
