Take Me To The Sea: Siki Im SS18
Spring/Summer 2018
As someone born and raised in the city, the sea has always held an otherworldly fascination for me. The smell of the sea, the feel of the sea breeze, the inevitable shrill squall of seagulls as they swoop down to try and steal your food (distinct from the occasional seagull you get in London, which are somewhat less bold when it comes to stealing food from people) - it all seems thoroughly magical and romantic to me. Confronted by what seems like infinite blue, merging with the sky at the horizon on a clear day, the sea makes me feel at once simultaneously small and larger than life.
It seems an odd comparison, but I am reminded of the feeling I get when standing in front of a Rothko painting, wherein it becomes an almost mystical experience. The vast expanse of colour allowing you to delve inwards as you look outwards. You have an awareness that it is finite, and yet you can lose yourself in it, and that is a beautiful thought to me. Albeit not physically, because I am unable to swim, so getting lost at sea would more than likely ruin my day. I crave personal experiences when it comes to art - to feel something, to feel understood, to understand something, and it is much the same with fashion.
The Spring/Summer 2018 collection from Siki Im might not look like the most obvious beach-appropriate attire, but for me it makes perfect sense because it is exactly the type of clothing I would wear to the beach. The packable anoraks in the waist bags are perfect for a Spring drizzle, and the collarless shirts are what I would wear in the height of Summer. I am not a sunbather and do not usually tend to reveal all that much skin, preferring to roll my sleeves up where necessary, so you will usually find me layering even in the warmer months. I obviously enjoyed the somber colour palette, as someone who only wears black and white, and have to say I found the off-white colour particularly appealing. It is not actually a colour I have worn much before, as I usually wear a clean white, which I think goes well with solid blacks (I know many people enjoy faded blacks, but I prefer wearing a full deep black).
The inspiration for this collection was Georgia O’Keeffe’s double wardrobe. While her public wardrobe was austere and monastic, with black clothes and a peek of a white from underneath (a uniform I fully endorse), she actually had a far more laid back wardrobe when out of the public eye, with denim pieces and lighter colours. I find that duality fascinating, and so did Siki, exploring that dichotomy within this collection, merging pieces from his Den Im line with his mainline. The most obvious comparison I can think of is one that was highlighted by lockdowns during the pandemic - the division of home clothes and outside clothes, and the difference in aesthetics between them.
To be honest my home clothes and outside clothes are predominantly one and the same, I just tend to gravitate towards the cosy end of my wardrobe when at home. I have never really had a noticeable division between them, but I find it interesting to see in action in other people’s wardrobes. The wardrobe is where the multiplicity of identity unfolds, and I am forever intrigued by how people construct identity through clothing. I suppose in O’Keeffe’s case it was essentially her public facing identity as an artist, versus a more personal and social self at home.
To make a random comparison, I always wonder what Rei Kawakubo is like behind closed doors, when she is lounging around at home (if that ever happens, because for all I know, she goes home, takes off her sunglasses and powers down for the night like a robot). When you have a clear image of someone’s public persona, it can be very odd to think of them outside of that context. Much like seeing a teacher outside of school when you were a child I suppose. There are so many people in our lives for whom we have a set image, and yet that is only ever a small part of who they really are.
I wonder how many distinct dressed identities the average wardrobe contains?
Georgia O’Keeffe, Abstraction White Rose (1927)
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