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Hiroko Koshino, between painting and couture
by Modem – Posted July 15 2011
© Modem

Interview

During Couture Week, Hiroko Koshino presents her paintings, calligraphies and couture designs at the Arts Décoratifs Museum. Rencontre avec la créatrice.

- Through this exhibition, you are showing that you’re not just a fashion designer, but also a painter. How long have you painted for ?
- When I was little, I loved to draw. I did all my drawings in black Indian ink or in red acrylic paint. Ink-wash paintings, which are typified by minimal yet powerful gradations of colour,
suit the mood of this time of reflection.

- What inspires you?
- I’ve always been inspired by nature, it’s omnipotence, its changes over time and its cycles. Today we are hungering to find our spiritual values. At the heart of our materialist society, I feel very strong creative desire oriented towards finding essentialism and purity. At the time of the earthquakes in Japan last March, I was once again aware of the power and the force of nature, against which the human being can do nothing. It’s precisely this sentiment that I wanted to represent on the canvases that you saw in red, for example.

- Does the red represent blood? The exhibition room where all these red paintings are on display bathed in a red light – does this bright red ambiance reference those who died?
- No, not necessarily, but red is a colour that I like very much. My aim wasn’t to express a dreadful environment.

- Do the prints in your clothes recapture your paintings?
- I’m not repeating motifs such as those but, following the motifs, there could have been applications derived. What’s important to me above all is the image, the tonality and the ambiance.

- Is this the first time that you’ve shown in Paris?
- Yes. For this season, Haute Couture Autumn/Winter 2011, I wanted to exhibit my paintings next to my couture pieces. Last year, I’d organised an architecture exhibition. In Tokyo, I presented a prêt-à-porter catwalk collection.

- Do you wish to focus more on painting or stick between the painting and making clothes ?
- As far as fashion is concerned, I have a professional approach, an expertise. Painting is passion, but I’m not a professional. For many years, I’ve done calligraphy work in this way that really impassions me. This time, though, I looked to sublimate it in the form of clothing, by expressing the spiritual aspect of the calligraphy works through fashion design.

- Does that mean that these paintings are for sale?
- If people want to buy my canvases, I would gladly sell them!

Interview conducted by Florence Julienne©Modemonline

© Modem