co-creators: RENAN SERRANO
Since child, Renan learned the importance of fine details, of those who were only seen with a magnifying glass.
It was with this mindset that Renan started at 22 years old to present creations and fashion shows in São Paulo, London, Milan and Tokyo.
Renan started to walk a path of responsibility and felt his life starting to have value when collaborating with people, teaching and learning at the same time. To translate new aesthetic standards, innovate new processes, build ecosystems, visit the past and create new dimensions of future is somehow inspiring, romantic and classic.
What is your current role? If you are not a designer, how do you fit designing on your daily life? How often do you design? To me, design is a part of life, it’s the moment in which I identify flaws in society, go through frustrating experiences and work hard to solve what is in my power. My daily routine consists on a long walk to take my kid to school, answer my emails, pick him up from school and then spend the whole afternoon together, exploring the city. In the meantime I get involved with projects and prototypes. I always find different people throughout the city and we discuss all the types of topics which helps building up my creativity. I consider myself as a hub, a translator of ideas.
What inspires you to create? The needs of people I talk to every day. I also research all fashion shows and brands from all over the world, from A to Z, one of my values is to channel my and materials’s energy for the prototype making, creation and manufacturing of the pieces to take the world forward. On the catwalk shows it’s normal to observe tendencies but I must confess I love to examine the deficiencies of the designers, I analyse what they are prototyping timidly on the runway and I see it as an opportunity to use my knowledge to improve the design of others and at the same time, my work evolves with the society.
How would describe your style of design? What do you think your design brings of new/original to the world? It’s always difficult to to talk about your own design… I’m always trying to bring technology to society, it’s a work of observing a story and working on top of a bias that Fashion let slip. That’s a vast field of exploration and it’s there where not only the aesthetics of the product can evolve, but also the construction of the fabric, it’s chemical composition, etc.
Who do you design for? I use a term called “multiworlds” which is an evolution and unification of the terms unisex (and all its aspects), sustainability, ethics and upcycling. I design for people who don’t necessarily get involved in all these topics but who need to be in different places during the day. Their clothes can’t influence how people judge them but on the other hand need to guide voice to what they want to say.
Have you ever worked on a collaborative project before? Do you think collaborative design can be the future for fashion? I never worked in a project like AWAYTOMARS before! The experience is being very smooth and it respects the conceptual points of the product. Then the team adapts the creations to the target market, available fabrics and etc…
What motivates me in creation is exactly this: understanding linguistic and anthropological concepts, analysing fabrics’ behaviour, modify its composition and building complex elements and processes using the simplicity of design.
In your opinion, what makes a product desirable? That sensation of “why haven’t I thought about this before?”
Who is your favourite designer or brand? Can you afford to purchase items from them? If not, where do you alternatively buy your clothes from? I focus more on performance art, Joseph Beyus and Japanese theatre, I even have some items but they are collectibles. In all designers and brands I see something that makes me think and it makes me respect them all. Before I worked with fashion, I would sell my old clothes at second hand shops and exchanged them for others, I had a very similar style that’s going on now, chino pants, oilskin and sneakers. I see that today’s youth has the capacity to manufacture the clothes they need and want, but do not push themselves to do it. They simply choose not to buy from a brand to become the brand, so far so good, but the problem is that for you to become the brand or product it ends up being much more expensive than the original. And then they have to sell it to other people, but the market gets saturated, making it difficult to see potential between the lines. My dream is to be able to buy what I need on the market and for someone who come into my store and “buy” the clothes he or she needs, both without money involved.
If you could be involved on the design of a piece of clothing or a collection from the past, what would it be? I always envision myself in the past, where knowledge was very limited: ancient Greece, Egypt, Japan. We know that you can not predict the future, but from this point of view, I force myself to understand limitations that people had at the time and compare them with all the knowledge we have today.
What music are you listening to now? Music, like movies, are things that greatly affect my day to day… When I listen to music, I span from Chopin to the Spice Girls (lol), but most of the time I’d rather spend reflecting and writing, which is the way I do my “design”.
Please share with us an artist or a piece of art that inspires you. Why does it inspire you? I can not, I am a very neutral person, and all kinds of art influence me a lot, especially the purpose behind it.
If you were given a choice of having one colour that you would have to only use it for the rest of your life, what colour would it be? Why? I can not, despite my creations being monochrome, the relationship between color and design is a very important matter to express the feelings that we are going through in a certain stage of life.
Please share a film you could watch over and over again. I go back in time with my work and force myself, putting several limitations. A film that marked me was Dreams by Akira Kurosawa, when he goes in the museum and enters into the Van Gogh work.
NEXT: discover the concept behind Renans’s co-creation in AWAYTOMARS’ #512 collection.
