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Helmut Lang Explains Why He Destroyed His Entire Archive Of Clothing

by Justin Fenner | 2:18 pm, July 22nd, 2011

Helmut Lang destroyed some 6,000 pieces of his fashion archives to create a series of sculptures, and he did it with one of those big machines that people use to make mulch out of dead trees. How could someone who was so influential and so beloved by the fashion community leave it only to destroy some of the coolest things he created? The former designer talked with Hint Magazine and explained just that.

In the interview, Lang says a fire at his New York studio is what got him thinking about the idea of destroying fashion and the transience of a piece of, well, anything. Once he saw the charred remains of what had until then been his life’s work, he couldn’t help but think of the symbolism of destroying some of it himself. As we’ve reported before, that work is going on display at the Fireplace Project gallery in East Hampton, New York this weekend, in an exhibition called Make It Hard (and yes, sexual innuendo is a part of the name.) Our favorite parts of the interview, in which Lang explains how he remade his clothes into things that look a lot like birch trees and why destroying something doesn’t necessarily mean erasing it.

Was there a particular part of the archives you most wanted to destroy, and why?
In 2009 and 2010, I donated a large volume of my body of work in fashion to the most important fashion, design and contemporary art collections worldwide. After a fire in the building where our studio in New York is located, which could have destroyed the rest of the archive, and after going for months through the pieces to see in which condition they are, I slowly became intrigued by the idea of destroying it myself and using it as raw material for my art. I shredded all the pieces without remorse or preference. It was about erasing the difference of what they once stood for.

In a press release, it’s said the exhibit is an “erasing of the past.” Which area of the past are you most interested in erasing?
I’m not interested in erasing anything from my past. My past is part of my DNA. In the release, Neville doesn’t refer to erasing the past in terms of me and my work, but the past in terms of the hierarchy and the temporal meaning of the materials.

There’s a lot of speculation that the new work is a statement on the fashion industry, a rejection of its commercialism. Is it?
No, it is not.

And there you have it. Read the rest of Lang’s interview here, and if you’re in the Hamptons this weekend (you lucky devils, you), find out where you can see Lang’s exhibit here.

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