lewis chong

Mystery. It’s the word that describes Haider Ackermann’s sensibilities best. He’s not one for the attention that such a position necessitates now. Interviews are thin on the ground. You can’t follow a trail of selfies or DM him on social media*. The nearest Ackermann has ever come to artistic disclosure is the issue of A MAGAZINE he guest curated a couple of years ago; the pages a psychoanalyst’s goldmine—including the extremely long exposure shots of seascapes by Hiroshi Sugimoto, a couple of Francis Bacon’s, Roger Ballen’s photojournalistic studies of the marginalised and mentally ill, and an essay on elegance by fashion commentator Colin McDowell.

As the boundaries between public and private, reality and manufactured realness become ever more murky it is admirable that Haider Ackermann prizes privacy. He gets that in the 21st century the biggest luxury might just be anonymity. Or as anonymous as a respected fashion designer can be.

Born in Bogotá, Columbia, adopted by French parents and raised in Africa and the Middle East, Haider Ackermann has since his childhood been a global citizen thanks to his cartographer dad. He’s lived in Chad, Algeria, Iran and Ethiopia before settling in the Netherlands. At 25 Ackermann moved to Anterwerp to study fashion at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, from where he was expelled for failing to complete any assigned collection due to his tendency for perfection. Forcing or rushing ideas is not in the Ackermann rulebook. It’s these atypical nomadic experiences, the outsider looking in effect, that significantly marks his collections. Ackermann’s first memories of fashion are of Persian women passing by on deserted streets, shrouded to the viewer, the ever lessening sounds of tinkling jewellery and rustling cloth left in their wake.

There’s a tension in his aesthetic too. Take look one from the autumn winter 2016 collection: an overcoat is cut extravagantly long in brushed tweed, its mohair, fleece wool and alpaca yarns woven into a shadowy checkerboard. Beneath it, the tuxedo lapels of an otherwise minimalist tailored jacket are just visible. A darkening of traditional menswear codes. Or in look 11, for volume a crinkled velvet MA1 bomber in dark sapphire blue is gathered in the body and ruched in the sleeves. A poeticising of sportswear; sentiment grounded in the everyday.

As Haider Ackermann makes his debut on oki-ni we managed to pin down the notoriously hard-to-pin-down designer to talk travel, his autumn winter 2016 collection and the nuances of the Haider man in this exclusive interview.

OKI-NI: The nomadic experience is a big part of your own story—how do you interpret distance?
HAIDER: Distance is something quite relative, as perhaps being far away from home and your loved ones makes you in those moments even more closer to them. You might think of those particular moments that on a daily life would have escaped you. This reflection, to be more focussed and to absorb all new images, living in the unknown, only helps me to translate culture and differences into my man.

OKI-NI: So what cultures, or places, do you feel more at home in?
HAIDER: Away from our civilisation, away from any media connection, exploring endless landscapes where damage has yet to be done by human beings… Where somehow time is standing still.

OKI-NI: You have said that "A man is about attitude, about gesture.” How does your man hold himself?
HAIDER: Straight, as in one needs to stand straight in life.

OKI-NI: Tell us about your autumn winter 2016 collection…
HAIDER: It is a marching of bohemians, well-travelled daydreamers with a more angular straightness than in previous seasons; a more decadent mood due to the opulence of the velvets, with a rocker energy from the leathers and golden pythons.

OKI-NI: Your colours too are very atmospheric, can you explain your approach?
HAIDER: In the past [the Haider man] preferred to be in the shadows. All my colours were muted, dusty and faded. He was the observer. Nowadays he has come into the light: electricity, brightness and enriching colours give him more nobility and tension.

OKI-NI: You talk a lot about moments of solitude, walking alone in the street—where’s he going?
HAIDER: One does not want to know where this person has spent his days and nights…

OKI-NI: What is it about the contrasts, between evening and sportswear, fitted and flowing, rich and simple, that inspires you?
HAIDER: The force of any fragility is a mental feeling, it is hard to translate this with any garment, though the choice of the fabrics and their contradiction might help to create a certain mood.

OKI-NI: On the topic of mood, you have mentioned that with your womenswear you like to have necks free because it’s a woman’s most sensual part. Is there a male equivalent?`
HAIDER: Any gesture of a man with his hands will give him a kind of elegance, a certain attitude.

OKI-NI: When you travel you don’t take pictures, to remember inspirations independently, why is that?
HAIDER: I simply hope that my mind will sort it out and let me remember what is left from my journeys. It should stay vague and misty for me to be able to appropriate the moods, gesture, colours and feelings. There is no need to copy anything directly. What remains is the most desirable.

OKI-NI: Where are you exploring next?
HAIDER: Buthan, India, Tchad, Iceland and Mongolia.

OKI-NI: Your passport must be exhausted. Would you ever consider writing a book about your journeys, almost like a travel diary?
HAIDER: Every collection is a chapter of a book, every line is a new gesture. There is no need for me to write a book. I'll leave that up to the writers.

*You can in fact DM Ackermann now, he joined Instagram as of 13th April 2016.