Hasta La Ideas

The latest menswear collection by fashion designer Sruli Recht of Iceland features leather made from dolphin skin, fabric woven from horse hair and silk extracted from a spider’s gland implanted in a goat.

Most of the garments are made from one pattern piece and cut from a single piece of fabric.

Accessories include glass slippers, a tinted plastic visor and a white saddle, plus a sniper rifle and knife carved in maple, sun-bleached and rubbed with horse hide.

Boots are made of the calloused skin over the spines of horses.

Called Field Dressing, the collection was unveiled in Paris last week.

Previous collections by Recht include coats made of blackbirds and stillborn lambs, concrete accessories and parchment gas masks. See all our stories about his work here.

Here’s some information and a poem by Sruli Recht:

FIELD DRESSING SRULI RECHT A/W 2012 Where the darkness divides

STORY – This is the third complete menswear line from Sruli Recht. “This collection was lost out on the hunt, chasing the goal to no end.” The collection in three words – tailored, pulsing, visceral.

MATERIALS

This season employs a global selection of wool, waxed cottons, leathers and silks, glass, timber and steel, complimented by Icelandic reindeer and horse skin.

All the buttons are made from metal alloy rods, designed, moulded and drop-cast in the studio, and blackened.

Feature materials designed or made by the studio this season:

Horsetail-hair Satin

Ásthildur Magnúsdóttir, a woman of iron will and a brain in each finger, wove 3cm a day in the dead darkness of an epic Icelandic winter. Made from the waste products of the horse farms and slaughterhouses, Ásthildur developed for us a hand-loomed satin from single strands of horsetail hairs

Cetacea Leather

And in those nets and on those beaches, leaving the water, the cold air it breaches.

Made by the man in the north, from bodies washed ashore, the Atlantic White-Sided Dolphin skin is nearly un-tannable, as the skin has structure more like an eye.

Spider-Silk Knit

We held down a spider, strapped its legs to a board, and reeled out its silk, for our silk spun hoard.

Our knit originates from the silk gland of a spider, carefully placed in the milk duct of a goat. The single filament is reeled out of the goat millimetres at a time to produce the most difficult to obtain fibre in the world. Having secured 2 skeins of the silk, each many thousands of metres long, we spent 4 days unravelling it to prepare for knitting.

A further week was spent gently coaxing two filaments into the knotted web of these garments… And then another week convincing it to become the emperor’s new clothing. Weight for weight, silk is stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar.

Icelandic Wool

With a local knitting house, we designed two new knits for this season:

A Felt – Felted 100% Icelandic wool from a structured waffle knit base.

And a Knit – Knitted and brushed 50% Icelandic wool and 50% cotton knit in a tight tuck stitch.

The wool of The Icelandic sheep – Íslenska sauðkindin [a patched history]

Pure descendants of the same stock as the Norwegian Spelsau, brought to Iceland by the Vikings prior to 900 Anno Domine, Icelandic sheep have been bred unmixed for one thousand, one hundred years in a bitter, harsh environment. The baron moss-fields of Iceland yield rare game and consequently they are efficient herbivores.

Icelandic skins come in many colours and generally are not dyed. The hide is quite soft and are on average 6 square feet (0.56 m2) to 8 square feet (0.74 m2) in size. Often left unshorn for the winter, the wool length can be up to 8 inches (200 mm) in length.

Icelandic fleece is dual-coated, and this wool is made up of two types of fibres: coarse and fine. The long outer coat is called Tog and the fine inner coat called Thel. Tog is generally classified as a medium wool around 27 micrometres in diameter. This wool is good for weaving and for use in other durable products and it is long, glossy, tough, and water resistant.

Thel, being the finer wool and classified as such, is generally around 20 micrometres in diameter. This finer wool is used for garments that touch the skin as it tends to be softer and more insulating, providing a high resistance to cold and possessing a unique texture and natural colours.

GARMENTS

The Field Dressing collection for Autumn and Winter 2012/13 consists of 35 total looks – from tuxedo to tracksuit, coats, tailored jackets and cardigans, to trousers, shorts and leggings, complimented by boots, shoes, bags, raincoats, gloves and silver jewellery – 75 styles, approximately 180 with material variations.

All garments and product samples are produced in-house unless otherwise stated. Shoes and boots are made and lasted in Iceland.

The majority of the garments/ items are constructed from a single pattern piece and one piece of material, where the width of the material allows. I.e. In the case of the shirts, the cuff and placket come from the same piece of fabric as the sleeve, which is also part of the body and collar.

Everything in the collection is made in Iceland.

Feature Pieces: Limited items from the new collection of Sruli Recht for Autumn And Winter, 2012/13, Field Dressing.

all items made to order only

SR420 – By Two Hairs – 308 Callibre Heavy-barrel sniper-rifle, from hand cut maple, sun-bleached, rubbed down with black horse hide and stripped of colour. Stock made by master Icelandic wood carver Muggi.

SR456 – Þungur Hnífur / Heavy Knife – A heavy black-blade hunting knife, with hand carved maple handle, sun-bleached, rubbed down with black horse hide and stripped of colour: For field dressing. Handle and sheath made by master Icelandic wood carver Muggi.

SR463 – Carradina – Atlantic white-sided dolphin-skin auto-erotic asphyxia belt, mounted to reindeer skin and provided with a door or handle hook.

oh, auto erotica who is this warrior?

SR414 – Saddled – White hand-stretched saddle, in modern pose, for the Icelandic and international Horse. Made with Sigurður Björnsson, master Icelandic saddler.

SR417 – Lens – A tinted sun visor, of vacuum formed Poly(methyl methacrylate) [PMMA] – fixed to the individuals shape.

SR471 – Glass slipper – Glass blown slippers, made with the breath of Sigrún Ólöf Einarsdóttir and mounted to heat formed PMMA for the clear path ahead.

I could be that man

one made of glass

just like the other

my life is sparse

and I could be that man

that man of class

transparent and still

an ideal to surpass

fragile and hard,

shining, miscast

ahead of some others,

but inside, still last

Sruli would like to deeply thank:

The team for their tireless, phenomenal drive and the uncountable amount of hours they put in whilst staring down this beast of burden, through injury, nuclear winter and broken bodies. A designer has nothing but ideas without a team to bring them into being. Megan Herbert, pretty much the greatest person in the world. From styling the collection, to producing our show, and holding us all together – this collection would not be, if not for her. Marinó Thorlacius – who was responsible for each and every image of this and all our collections, in his absent and focused ways. Marinó had made our brand identity what it is today. Emil Þór Guðmundsson is the best non-model model we have ever worked with – he brings our clothing to life. and Jarred Eberhart – who takes 6 months of overtime work, by 20 odd people, and puts it together into a look-book in one single day.

Photographer – Marinó Thorlacius

Models – Emil Þór Guðmundsson, Driton Kaleviqi Stylist – Megan Herbert

Lookbook Layout – wearenotyou

The Sruli Recht studio is a cross-discipline practice caught somewhere between product design, tailoring and shoe making. Based in Reykjavík, the studio rose to notoriety as it began in 2008 to produce one “non-product” every month from umbrellas to bulletproof scarves, tables, to belts and boots, and incorporating such materials as concrete, diamonds, skin and wool. The studio produces two seasonal menswear lines per year.