The ‘Wabi Sabi’ Couturier
Australian designer Alistair Trung could be described as the Zen monk of the local fashion industry. His approach to art and clothing is more akin to that of a Buddhist ‘roshi’ than a fashionista.
This philosophically minded artist/designer is far from your typical commercially driven couturier. Trang eschews fashion trends and ‘seasons’ in favour of clothing that is “trans-size, trans-age, trans-seasonal, trans-occasional and trans-gender”. He describes his designs as abstract and his style as ‘opulent minimalism’, employing simple cuts with an emphasis on fabric, texture and drapery. His inspiration comes from tribal and eastern cultures, where a single length of cloth can be folded and worn in a myriad of ways.
Wandering through the modernist rooms of the Art Gallery of NSW, Trung describes his long love of abstract art, borne from his days as a young child visiting the gallery and admiring the work of Peter Upward and Tony Tuckson. He came to Sydney at the age of 11 as a Vietnamese refugee, among the exodus of ‘boat people’ who arrived in the 1980s; later studying fashion and textile design at the University of Technology in Sydney.
As a result, the designer sees himself as sitting on the borderline between cultures.
“I was raised in Vietnam so my formative years were shaped by eastern cultures and then my other life is in the West. When you have both maybe you get an overview that is richer. People look at my work and they say it’s an Asian aesthetic but I never think about that. Fashion is very Eurocentric; we need other voices.”
Setting up his own business straight out of university, Trung had to develop his own processes of working, rather than following mainstream designers in the industry. One of his singular beliefs has been that dressing should be connected to real life. “It’s not about just dressing up when we go to a wedding and the rest of the time giving up and wear a tracksuit.”
Another formative idea for the designer is that he likes to work with the ‘imperfect’ body. He remarks that: “Fashion is dominated by western designers and western ideas of beauty – the classical Greco-Roman ideal of perfection. That has been perpetuated through the ages and in clothing it’s the same thing; it’s too much to live up to.”
He continues: “My most fantastic clients, who are so resolved in themselves, are older women. They have decided ‘I’m not going to be invisible. I’m going to celebrate who I am.” His high profile clientele includes such arts luminaries as Gene Sherman, Jane Campion and Wendy Whiteley.
The designer has found his own version of beauty in the Japanese concept of ‘wabi sabi’. He describes this as the acceptance of all things as being incomplete, imperfect and impermanent. It also refers to the understated elegance and serenity that comes with age and the passage of time.
“For me, this concept is totally wholistic – it’s how you see things; it’s the interior that you live in, it’s a space or environment that shapes you; it’s a clothing that shapes you. It’s all of these things that build up your character.”
Trung adds: “In the West all design is about symmetry and perfection; the Japanese have devised this concept of asperity and asymmetry, irregularity.
For this reason, Trung has looked to the Japanese designers that came to the fore in the eighties – such as Yoji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake – who challenged the status quo of European fashion ideals, designing clothing to be worn away from the body. Similarly, his clothing is loose, with flowing layers, to be worn by women of all ages. “I get lots of different women – from young women who are 19 up to women who are 85. They all share the same designs.” He goes on: “Forget demographics – my demographics are just human beings that come in all sizes. People come in all shapes and fashion designers tend to forget that.”
The simplicity of Trung’s designs focus attention on the richness of his fabrics. “I love the pure meaning of the word cloth – I work with quite incredible fabrics. In my latest collection, I have clothing that has been dyed in a natural fruit in Vietnam 100 times, then beaten with a hammer; it feels like lambskin. I have silk that is covered in mud and the mud actually colours the cloth. I often use cloth that has gone through a natural process; that resonates for me more. But I also love fabrics from Japan; they have a lot of man-made fibres that actually make magnificent fabrics.”
After years of avoiding the mainstream fashion world, Trung finally agreed to participate in the 2011 Australian Fashion Week, where his show received much critical acclaim. Does this imply that his clothing, previously described as ‘avant-garde’ and ‘boundary-pushing’ will soon enter the mainstream?
Alistair Trung considers his vision to be broader than this:
“I don’t think of just a fashion career. I’m interested in architecture, interior and landscape design, fine art, film, I could see myself doing all this. I’m very interested in creating things that can shape our way of thinking and feeling.”
Perhaps it comes back to the concept of ‘Wabi Sabi’ – this innate sense of aesthetic order that can be applied to any medium. We can only eagerly await where Trung will focus his creative energies next…
