Rediscovering

The Guild

Rediscovering The Guild, words by Liam Maher

We’re not sure when the lost history of the rural tailor’s guild was lost. Those of us in the industry who were paying relatively close attention at the time cannot even say for sure when it was found again.

But when indications that there was once a group of designer-artisans (they would more likely have referred to themselves as inventor-craftsmen or, in urgent situations, simply as “brothers”) began to emerge on the horizon it galvanized the suspicions and kindled the imaginations of a fairly wide range of observers within a short period of time.

When early Christians began spreading their message, they thought of its content as being good news. The word “gospel” means simply “good news”. I make this reference because many of us regarded the discovery of the rural tailor’s guild and the reemergence of its doctrines as very fucking good news. The possibility of a new menswear gospel. Probably many of us regretted we had missed the great –isms of early creative revolutions; cubism, futurism, fauvism, minimalism, expressionism, impressionism, constructionism, surrealism, situationism… – not to mention the irreverent ones like; Fluxus, CoBra, Op, Pop, Povera and Punk. If we worked in menswear we knew our own discipline’s versions lacked the urgency and sincerity of these examples. The most inspiring –isms of our trade came from music; folk, psych, prog, teddy, mod, rocker, ska, reggae, dance hall, punk, new wave, disco, new soul, blitz, b-boy, hip-hop, trip-hop, rave, house, madchester, la sape, electroclash, indie, new-rave… Great shit. Really. But without real substance or tangible fundamental quality. There. I said it out loud. These cultures ignited our passions in a hot-up-your-groin kinda way but we always knew there was something ringing hollow in each of them. We whiffed a bit of bullshit. They were borrowed from music. They had ample style inspiration. But they offered only arcane individual platforms in terms of tangible quality, craftsmanship, utility, philosophy and function. They helped us recognize quality in jeans, and leather jackets but that’s about it. We took some inspiration from sport: team sports, board sports, and outdoor. They also delivered a bit of style and attitude but, although their framework for quality was arguably deeper, it was even more arcane.

We knew we couldn’t get what we needed from men’s “fashion”. God no. Absolutely not. With apologies to everyone from Giorgio Armani (and his 80’s soft shoulder) to Thom Browne (and this century’s Pee Wee suit). With apologies to all the regional quasi-isms of Antwerp, Ura-Hara, Brooklyn, Copenhagen, Berlin, Barcelona, etc… We admired the sincerity and authenticity of these movements but we could see how quickly they were grafted on the artificial seasonal cycles of the fashion machine. Great to see in the wild, but sad to see once hunted, trapped and left in a cage by the trend-spotters and reduced to begging for scraps and grinning stupidly at visitors to the global fashion zoo.
In view of all of this it is no surprise we reacted so goddamn quickly to the rumors of something different when we began to hear them murmured. We wanted it so badly some are saying we willed it into existence. Some are saying we willed it with such force that we pushed it right into the past knowing we could then simply wait for it to catch up with us in the present. But we didn’t even know each other. There was no organized “we”. How could the rural tailor’s guild possibly have been the concoction of an interlinked crew of conspirators when the links themselves didn’t even exist? I didn’t know Simon Armitage, Joseph Corre, David Gensler, Sruli Recht, Shawn Stussy, Christopher Bevans, Steven Trussel, Darren Romanelli, Scott Morrison, Maurizio Donadi, Ilan Bitton, Jason Denham, Joe Perry, or any of the dozens and dozens of others with who have come togeher via a shared interest in the doctrines of the Rural Tailor’s Guild. Of course, thanks to Young Kim, I did know Rostarr, Davi Russo, Tommy Otago and Jose Parla – and I obviously knew a few others like my own brother Niall at Rogan (and now Double-RL). But this number was a fraction of the total that has surfaced since the rumours first began.

WHY NOW?
I’m starting to believe that gospels hide in history waiting for the time when they’re needed most. Depending on our age many of our lives map effortlessly along at least a portion of the timeline initiated by mass-production and progressing through to globalization. In a myriad of ways it is a uniquely inspiring time to be active in menswear but throughout our extended honeymoon we’ve been trying to shut out the sound of this whisper in our heads. Something is trying to alert us to danger. The danger isn’t ethical or moral (I wish our slates were clean enough for that). The danger is creative. Under the system we are allowed to create mountains of designs and we feel thankful for that so we don’t ask for more in fear our current privileges will be revoked.

But if we did ask for more, we’d ask:
Can we spend longer on a product to get it right?
Can we make it again if we didn’t get it right the last time?
Can we make it more personal?
Can we tie to our own history?
Can we manifest reverence for the work of anonymous forbearers even at the expense of easy-originality, the glamour-of-the-new, and the cult-of-the-celebrity?
Can we build it to last?
Can we pack quality so densely into the finished garment that you need a magnifying glass to see it?
Can we pack it even more densely so a magnifying glass is not enough and would need to be replaced with a microscope?
Can we take inspiration from our peers without it being a “knock-off”?
Can we build on each other’s advancements in order to advance the overall discipline more steadily and more convincingly?
Can we trust ourselves and each other enough to shift from Competitive to Co-Inspirational?
Can the machines be made to serve the designs instead of the designs being made to serve the machines?
Imagine the melon-twisitng excitement to find that we’re not the first to want these questions answered.


OF COURSE WE’RE NOT THE FIRST
It would really be a case of getting high on our own supply to expect to be the first. Of course there was a generation of designers, developers, artists and craftsman who would have been asking these questions even more urgently under literally life-and-death circumstances. That would have been the generation who stood at the threshold of that timeline. –Who felt the first furnace blast of change on their own faces.
Of course there was a rural tailor’s guild at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. How could there not be?

Of course it became militant. How could it not? There was a battle commencing and we know now that the losers lost big because we’re living proof that the winners won huge. Faced with a big loss, of course these “designers” dug their heels in and became militant.

Of course they went underground. How could they not? And once underground a culture doesn’t just hide itself from mainstream society, it also becomes invisible to the writers of history books.

So now we look for clues. There’s no question about the organism itself, only riddles as to how exactly it behaved and speculation as to whether it ever fully disappeared. For ourselves, we’re determined to keep looking. We look for signs in the past. Clues about the guild itself, but more importantly tangible foundations for better garment designs, practical parameters for more substantive quality and a more vital design ethic. These things lie partly in the past. We look for signs in the present. We respond to news about sustainability, marketing-fatigue, individualization, globalization, emerging luxury markets, the “40 year old boy”, and the rest of that shit, and we filter these messages from a new point-of-view. We twist the bad news into good news and refine our own gospel.

We look for signs in the current work of our peers. If more of us adopt the code of our predecessors, we can reinstall their contribution to a tradition in which we are supposed to be working. -And we can each become part of a more noble tradition ourselves.