Vestoj: On Slowness (Issue 5)

Description

In Slowness Milan Kundera, the Czech writer, remarks that ‘there is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting’. In the fashion system this bond seems to take on a particularly poignant meaning, with the degree of velocity often appearing directly proportional to the time it takes to forget a style that just moments ago it seemed we could not live without.

So, allow yourself to be idle, to dwell a moment, to delay and iterate. Use your hands to make something a machine could make much faster. Look for the beauty in the impermanent, the imperfect and the incomplete. Take your time. Because, as the writer Rebecca Solnit once so succinctly put it, ‘Time always wins; our victories are only delays; but delays are sweet, and a delay can last a whole lifetime’.

– vestoj.com

Michelle Bastian, REFASHIONING TIME
Father Michael Casey (as told to Laura Gardner), THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
Susan S. Bean, SPINNING FOR FREEDOM
Donald B. Kraybill, SLOW TIME IS GOD’S TIME
Nathalie Khan, BETWIXT AND BETWEEN
Karinna Nobbs (with photographs by Polly Brown), DWELLING TIME
Barbara Vinken, A TIME FOR DRESSING
Karlijn Slegers, THE DIGNITY OF BEAUTY AND FITNESS
Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada, ON THE BEAUTY OF THINGS IMPERMANENT, IMPERFECT AND INCOMPLETE
Lydia Davis, WHAT AN OLD WOMAN WILL WEAR (flash fiction)
Edward Steichen (photographs), DRESSING IN SHADOWS AND LIGHT
Nilgin Yusuf, FASHION FREEZE FRAME
Giacomo Leopardi, DIALOGUE BETWEEN FASHION AND DEATH (flash fiction)

CONVERSATIONS ON SLOWNESS
Dries van Noten, ON AVOIDING TRAPS, TRICKERY AND OTHER SHENANIGANS
Hussein Chalayan, ON BEING PAINTED INTO A CORNER AND GETTING STUCK
Margaret Howell, ON BECOMING LESS SELF-CONSCIOUS, AWKWARD AND GAUCHE
Christophe Lemaire, ON AIMING FOR THE IDEAL WHILE ROOTING FOR REALITY
Nigel Cabourn, ON TRAVELLING THE WORLD AND TELLING STORIES

Mark Borthwick (photographs), IDLE DAYS
Frances Corner, SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE
Junichiro Tanizaki, IN PRAISE OF SHADOWS (flash fiction)
John Barker, FASHIONING REBIRTH
Ying Yan Quek (paintings), THE ENDLESS STREAM
Anja Aronowsky Cronberg (with photographs by Justine Kurland), THE ART OF JEANS
Maria Fusco, MACHINE OIL SMELLS SWEET
Hortense Calisher, THE MIDDLE DRAWER (flash fiction)

NOTES
CONTRIBUTORS
THE VESTOJ MANIFESTO

Additional information