Sarah Lévy – The sociologist of add-ons

TLmag: You came to accessories quite past due. Tell us about your adventure?

Sarah Levy: I turned into firstly an architect. It changed into a comfy preference, but even lower back then, it didn’t certainly resonate with me. The fashion schools, especially La Cambre, made an impact on me. I didn’t sense at domestic. At the end of my research, I worked for a decade as an architect. I additionally started a thesis on city planning. As a part of this, I became invited to look at the Parsons School of Design in New York. There, in which I was in touch with two jewelers, I found accessories, in addition to working with artisans. Back in Belgium, I enrolled at Arts et Métiers. I studied there for two years at the same time as completing my thesis. But after a year as a city planner, I felt stuck with the task’s institutional aspect. The add-ons section of La Cambre had opened. It was a manner to start a change without transitioning from one task to any other. I jumped in.

TLmag: And this time, you belonged

S.L.: We had been only 4 students, including a photographer and a clothier, overseen using outstanding professors. That’s wherein I discovered the universe of leatherwork. The first year, I gave myself overall freedom. At La Cambre, I become driven to move past my barriers, to comply with my intuition. In the 2d 12 months, once I
become running on my graduation collection, I started a real mirrored image on the human frame. My idea was to translate, through accessories, our current habits. I reflected on the ones ordinary objects which have to grow to be our new fetishes: the telephone, the digital cigarette…Objects that have created new gestures. My aim is not to criticize these manias but instead to imagine the add-ons in song with our existence ‘rituals.’

TLmag: The series is even called Creatures of Habits.

S.L.: These add-ons have modified our posture and our morphology. So I created prostheses that,
on the one hand, we ease our day-by-day gestures and, on the other hand, highlight the obsessive aspect of those addictions. I labored with a prosthetist and orthopaedist. In precise, my studies led me to transpose the prosthetics strategies into the area of leatherwork: greater particularly, glove making. For instance, I imagined a long leather-based glove stitched to a cell cellphone case. My whole series performs on this ambiguity among self-belief and constraints. I could collaborate with French glovemakers Lavabre Cadet, who helped me create a number of the seven portions inside the collection. Working on gloves, an item regularly is taken into consideration to be out of date; however, which calls for

Actual expertise also involved me plenty.

TLmag: This collection inspired the jury on the Hyères pageant, which, as we recognize, is the first-rate springboard for designers. Was it this that made you need to use? S.L.: Hyères is an outstanding area of expression for any young clothier. The humans I met for the duration of the pageant sensibly think about style. When you take a method that isn’t always at all business-oriented, being a finalist inside the opposition represents an enormous possibility.

TLmag: You are based in Brussels. Do you declare

Belgian roots?

S.L.: Even again, when I became the reading structure, I felt very rooted in this. I very plenty revel in being part of this Belgian dynamic and being able to paintings in Brussels. I am no longer claiming that I belong right here. However, I hope to construct an undertaking right here without always having to move to Paris.
TLmag: Do you feel close to any Belgian clothier particularly? S.L.: I work with Ester Manas, who became a finalist additionally at Hyères in the fashion phase, final yr, and for whom I layout add-ons. Having grown collectively and worked on a shared task may be very pleasing. For my next phase, I’m not final any doors. I would love to find out how a big-style residence operates. And additionally to collaborate with different creators whose imaginative and prescient I share. In any case, developing my logo isn’t a lead to itself.