Selva Gens, with no academic background in fashion design but furniture, with an artistic tangent of expression and exhibitions, explains his recent work via a series of projects that lead him to get into fashion. His work involves not only the integrated conceptualization but also synthesized approach to our social behaviors.

What role does gender fluidity play for you?

Personally, I found gender fluidity as a self-expression that might change over time but doesn’t mean it requires an identity transition. Said this, I believe we are all fluid gender in a certain percent of our personality, regarding the mood and behavior given the situation. Feeling as female, male or none of those is a natural human expression, from which no one is exempt.

Fashion as a medium to create identity exposure, What various other mediums do you work through that help you to do what you do?

Fashion is just one of the disciplines that help me to develop my identity and creative expression. Jumping from furniture, and functional art through painting arriving metal sculpture is my medium of expression and all those together became one discipline for me and my ID.

How did fashion ever happen to you? What's the story?

Since my main medium used to be furniture as I define it myself as Brutalist Functional Art Movement) BFAM and sculptures it all begins while showing those at opening exhibitions that I create myself at ATM Banks all around Berlin. Without agreement from the bank authorities, I started to showcase all my work inside these white cube rooms, which gives me the opportunity to showcase my work and make it visible to random people that are not necessarily looking for art.
Here is where fashion enters to stay as part of my work. Happened that I started to include performances interacting around my pieces, paintings, and furniture in my exhibitions.
So I always wanted to create an original outfit for them to perform, not necessarily I was thinking of doing fashion but including all disciplines in one exhibition. Since then I kept on doing what I call interventions in public spaces. My last recent is a month ago in Kyiv, Ukraine at a metro station where I show all my white collection worn by models doing an improvised runway inside a train van and hallway.

The creative process is almost like an artistic flow, how would you describe your own conceptualizations in that regard, especially with your signature white color?

An idea can come at any time, and I really need to develop it at that moment and see it, physically. Immediately. You can also see material-wise, I go around the streets and I bring all kinds of discarded material, and I always work in series, thinking about a series. Not about just one piece. If you see my fashion collection, you will see a series of works. Another thing is using the material and fabric, and using it until I totally run out of it. Or even until I run out of ideas for that material also. Until it’s totally done, used, and finished, I will not run out of ideas on how to use it. My process is very experimental too. Without fear, without being afraid of mixing textures, colors, fabrics, or materials. Go forwards or backward all the time. It’s a process of creating I learned from studying architecture. There are steps, and you go forward, try this, and go back again. Go right back to the beginning, and try again. But the work is spontaneous, and I push the limits of the materials as much as they can offer me, and what they can do. But from this comes a sense of continuity. You can see there is a sense of series, a relationship, but without becoming identical. As I always say, “like a marriage. They’re different, but they belong together.”
The white color is a commandment of my work, doesn’t matter the medium I’m working in, this is the icon. It all started when I needed to make changes in my work, in terms of designs, colors, shapes, etc. Here is where I found the color white as a place of no contamination, empty, like the sky, like flying, I thought this would help me find another palette of color, fresh designs, and shapes, with thinking of what I have done or seen before. Like a just-born baby. Imagine what can u create without knowing the established standards.
At the moment Im still researching a new pallet of color, but it seems I feel quite comfy here, and that’s also ok.

Can you describe the ambiance of your studio? What kind of challenges do you go through on a regular basis and how do you work through them?

My studio located inside an old factory in east Berlin is without a doubt entire and filled up out of white plastic sheets and white led tube lights, almost empty, with no heating, no windows, standing my rack clothes with the white collection and a mattress in the center of space. I need it this way studio looks like a bridge to see clarity in my mind for developing my work.
In the room behind is where the sewing set workshop, heavy-duty machines, fabrics, random materials, and paint coexist together. The opposed lightweight-heavy and dirty-clean are the main images you can find in my studio.

Do you fear anything of the world that is on its way to being experienced in the physical, what kind of sustainable practices you have gone through for yourself?

I transit personal fears every day, to be honest. It is part of life I learn every day to coexist with, I’m introverted and extremely shy, and I’m fine with that, is also important and visible in my work. I can’t hide it. In terms of natural events there’s not much we can do nowadays, what humans have done to fuck up is done. On another hand, for example, I’m not scared of death because I do everything I want every day and that feeling keeps me alive daily and conform by the end of the day, gives me calm.

In your imagination, what do you think 2050 would be like for fashion?

2050 in fashion? This question reminds me of the first fashion piece I ever constructed myself out of packing plastic bags. Here is an intro of how I see fashion in a closer future.
“ANNORAK KNUD”. (Ice coat) - Year 2074 - ATM x Selva Colletion. (2020).

How global warming will affect the way we dress?

How the fashion industry will adapt to design, taking into account the high temperatures produced by climate change. (human beings can suffer up to a max. of 131*F- 55*C).
How to adapt to these consequences without losing aesthetics.
Anorak Knud alludes to what in the not-too-distant future, the world of fashion will begin to have in mind. Based on a one-piece mesh made out of a succession of small high-density polyethylene bags, filled with dry ice. Which are refilled daily in a closet freezer. The use of it allows you to stay hydrated and lower your body temperature. The body absorbs the water that spills for a long time without letting it melt onto the ground. The total hydration time is a maximum of 12 hours, runs, after this period it must be reloaded in its freezer.
Metaphoric and a bit exaggerated still, we are not too far to start developing fashion having in mind climate change.

How much do post-modern concepts and philosophies impact the way you proceed with your ideas? What intentions do you entail?

I dig and rethink the fashion industry and art in the apocalyptic mood of dystopia, questioning our values, existentialism, and worth of creativity in a post-global Neo-capitalist frame, that’s kinda my technical vision.
As main commandments of life/philosophies;
I use and expand both passion and pain as the energy impulses of creation, which in my opinion are the engine of every human being. Through them people can become big or small, can laugh and cry, and can make and destroy in a matter of seconds.

Last but not least… What innovation are you looking forward to incorporating in the coming future?

I believe ill keep on researching recycling materials to include in my fashion pieces. All kinda materials are welcome. I’m still in the process of developing my work ID, probably will never end. I'm also nowadays starting to work in collab with 3d fashion designers, I can see my work as a virtual experience as well.