Finally, the contemporary art object set has found his home. Dessert Place – Art And Communication Space. Stabu Street 40, Riga. http://www.dessertplace.org. Still 3900 Euro!
This is a story about a miracle, business experience, or great hopes fulfilled. It’s a legacy of possibilities and people.
Imagine. A woman, whose beauty, is so pure on the inside & outside. The strength of thought and spirit, combined with shy sexuality. A woman, who covers her body with textile colour – purple. Who, with the help of her body and the colour, puts her energy on a piece of fabric, which then is processed and cut in two pieces. Smallest piece is used to make a front details for underwear, biggest piece is used to make a painting. The result is clearly unique, 12 very unique briefs and a painting. Briefs are packed in oak box with 102 nude art photo cards. From some point of view, the owner could wear a painting meanwhile getting pleasure to enjoy painting and art pictures.
This is a story how unique underwear transform to unique contemporary art project.
This Blog has been made to promote this unique underwear which is only in one sample. To take a chance of finding the owner for this underwear and painting.
Maybe this VIDEO could be as introduction -ADVERTISEMENT
In the summer of 2008, I was sitting in a café by Riga city center. While drinking some excellent white wine from Sicilia and having some light salad, I finally went through all the countless ideas I had about what should be done. In one moment my cravings for the need to make something unique, something that would be really worthy, were satisfied by a clearly set goal. I wanted to create a piece of clothing which could really be made only in a single copy. Clothing with its added value.
As my first experimental variant I chose a T-Shirt. I intended to spread a big piece of fabric in a shooting range and shoot it with different kinds of weapons. A piece of this fabric would be used as a trademark / patch but the T-Shirt would be printed with various weapons. I didn’t really like the idea, and since I had countless ideas for the T-Shirt concept, I could not decide on one of them so I dropped all of them.
As a second experimental variant I chose to design pants. To realize this idea, I found a creative tailor who, reportedly, was very talented. I was ready to share everything with him, because obviously every action causes expenses. In return I expected only work. I saw this tailor as a partner. I created an added value conception, meaning, on every pair of pants, I decided to sew on a piece of a painting created by popular new artists in Latvia. As you buy these pants you also get a copy of the whole painting, which gives you an opportunity to see how the real painting looks. Paintings are painted with textile colors that protect these pieces from any situation that would be bad for those pieces. After the concept was done it was necessary to create prototypes for these pants. A lot of different fabrics were bought and the time came for the talented tailor to replace his words with works. I asked him to sew a pair of pants for me. The result of his work disappointed me, so I had to find different options to realize my idea.
One of the problems I found when I looked at the consumer market was good quality briefs for reasonable price. I couldn’t understand why the price of Calvin Klein briefs is the way it is, since a big part of the money I pay, goes to pay advertising faces like David Beckham. I decided to create briefs. For added value I would use painted fabric on their front. A naked woman covers her body with textile color. With the help of her body she fills the fabric with her energy and covers it with color. After processing the fabric it is cut and sewed unto briefs. Good quality briefs are created. Each and every one of them are unique.
I decided to realize my project.
To realize my idea I needed two raw materials: high quality fabric and textile color.
After few weeks of searching for fabric and a reliable supplier in Latvia, I understood that there was nothing here that would work. I started my research outside Latvia. As a small company, I had a hard time communicating with big companies in European Union; most of the time they didn’t even answer my emails or only answered after several requests. I knew that without good fabric this project would fail. Then suddenly, I received an email from a German company, the biggest cotton producer in Europe, with information that said they have a trade agent that could show me fabrics that I might be interested in. I contacted him immediately. I chose several fabrics in black color. When I received samples I made briefs with different cuttings at a sewing-shop “next door”. I wore them for few weeks to understand which fabric was the most comfortable. I decided that the best one was with 93% cotton and 7% elastic.
It was more difficult to decide on a color. I bought countless different colors for textile. The biggest problem was that the fabric was black, so it made no sense to put color on it, because the fabric just ate it all and the color could not be seen. After long experiments my whole dining room was covered with different colors and mixes, but I still couldn’t find the right one. After talking to textile artists I found out that there is special color for black fabric. That made it more complicated, because they didn’t offer that in the store, so I had to special order it from the producer. A few weeks later I found DEKA, a dye producer that offered special textile colors for black fabric. I decided to choose purple. Primary raw materials were found.
As with every moment within this project, this one had to be full of pleasurable feelings and positive emotions. Therefore, I started the evening with dinner together with Aiga, the photographer, and Rita, the model. After good food and great wine we could start our experimental photo session, which proved very important. Because one of the aspects of the product is added value, these photos would give future owners the opportunity to see artistic photos of the creation process. This would be aesthetically pleasing and would work as a proof that these briefs are authentic.
However, this was only the first step towards realizing my dream. Up until now, everything more or less was theoretical—now, everything turned into practice.
The experiment worked better than I hoped. Usually, when you start doing something you have planned, things don’t always work the way you imagine. This time, everything happened the way it was planned. The result was wonderful. The photographer understood what was necessary for the next session. And our model understood what she had to do and what she was expected to do. I could automatically sketch our next photo session, which would be more serious. All of this made me believe that I had to continue.
They say a successful outcome mostly depends on how ready you are for the things that are happening. This event proved that’s true. At first, get ready, and only then do it.
Suddenly, it was the 13th September, 2009. The last moments of summer were still floating in the breeze and the big day for the project was here.
This was a most interesting and eventful undertaking. It was my first time organizing a photo session that was also a manufacturing process. What could be more enjoyable than planning something and seeing the fruits of my labors which took so long to prepare? A couple of hours of painting later, and the fabric and professional photographer’s work were finished. For this event, I owe a huge thank you to the bartender Māris, who went through whole day making sure that everyone would have fantastic cocktails. I also owe a thanks to the cook Valdis (of “Gallery Room”) for the fantastic lunch that made all our taste-buds happy. Special thanks to Pebo and Siga who took care of our technical needs, our hairdresser, Artūrs Pērkons, cosmetologist, Una, and our photographer, Aga. Rita, our model, cannot be left without a huge thanks as well! She was on top of her tasks, and gave an amazing amount to this project. I also want to thank all the others that helped and were with me – Linda, Elīna, Kristaps, Līga, Līva.
Finally the moment came when it was possible to create the product. As quickly as possible, I found a wonderful dress designer named Indra, who made the cuts for the necessary briefs. I personally created the package design, which is 100% handmade, even though initially it was very hard to learn how to work with cardboard. Now I can cut and model anything from any cardboard boxes at home. The last step was to find a sewing shop, which got the job done very quickly, although the costs were very high. First 20 M-sized samples were ready.
I was very pleased with both quality of product and appearance, so I began to find out what others thought. The majority of respondents thought that the product was great and interesting, because it not only provides an opportunity to wear unique underpants, but also provided the owner with an opportunity to view artistic nude photos by entering a special code at the project’s web site. Most respondents emphasized that our country is too small for a product of this magnitude. It was necessary to look outside the country for a market.
Thanks to the large number of people who worked on this project, it was not even a couple of days before local television stations became interested in my product. They shot a scene about me and my project. They also gave me an opportunity to take part in fashion show in connection with its anniversary. I immediately seized the opportunity and made performance concept as fast as I could. I worked with DJ to create a composition which worked as a background for live trumpets to play. Performance consisted of three models that came out during the musical performance. As part of the show the professional trumpeter was dressed only in underpants.
This was one of the most interesting parts of the project, but it took a lot of work. A huge thanks to Uldis, who helped organize my chaos. For couple of months I worked around 16 hours per day. I found nighttime to be the best working time for me. I started at 8pm and finished work around noon, when I would go to bed. When I woke up, I’d go back to work. It was a wonderful time.
Because of the unique value of this project, I did a little market study in which I found out that the 13 biggest European countries import men’s underwear in a capacity of 533 million per year. Clearly I understood that there is no need to be trivial. As the field of action I chose all of Europe and Russia. I made a detailed sales and production plan for next 5 years, which would lead to stable production and a sales capacity of 300 thousand units per year. It was interesting that the second year of working would only occupy 0.28% of the total import market and the company would already have worked to a profit. I created a two-year action plan for myself and all the necessary 78 work candidates. I was convinced that a 1.5 million euro investment, combined with easily attainable materials, would bring an investment return of 29%. Not to mention the projected earnings, because I looked at those from a really pessimistic point of view. I thought that with this product, everything is possible. It turned out to be the opposite; people are not ready to risk such large sums or to take part in these kinds of projects.
I tried to find ways to realize this project and to raise the necessary funds. I cooperated with various financial advisors, all of whom needed a real indication of the consumer market—which is absolutely correct—but in this case, the life cycle of this product cannot be more than 5 years. That meant that everything had to be done very quickly. The plan of development foresaw that on the second year it would be possible to design a full collection of clothing, which would make the company into limited company. From any point of view, if the income would not recover 100% of the contributed capital with briefs, it could be easily done by issuing shares on the stock exchange and with putting out a full line of clothing, where the suits come along with paintings, sweaters come along with caricature, etc. Basically the briefs were only the beginning, and were a tool to make sales channel. They also worked to get fast publicity and were an element for developing marketing connections.
The basic idea of the communication plan was to produce an added value in Moscow, Berlin, Riga; in other words, the transmission of a virtual environment as well as the promotional activities to all countries. Mostly, my intent was to make 3 art centers. In one of the rooms at these centers we would paint the fabric, while in the other room we would create that added value for other products. Everything was thought of through to the very littlest thing, starting the necessary tools and ending with the necessary people. In my mind and elsewhere, everything seemed so real, but I had no money for anything.
This entire plan, no matter how ambitious it might be, was only a small part of the opportunities that would open up in the future. Looking from any point of view, this idea can be an alternative to satisfying the demand for fashion products, and somehow even create a new style of fashion, which would combine the design with other art forms. Somehow it would let us produce consumer products, but also make them absolutely unique and unforgettable. In its own way this idea is revolutionary.
I had no money: interests without money are many, but it is impossible to evolve without resources. Only capital can raise capital – the law of market. I was never focused on profit, but I always thought of profit as the thing that would be needed for the shareholder. I had to look for other routes.
Since all funding attraction had reached a dead end I made a proposal to the biggest men’s underwear producer in Latvia “Vaide”. I propose to use this product as a tool of communication in marketing to enter other markets. “Vaide” cannot be considered as world-class producer, but it is the only serious producer in Latvia. I arranged a meeting with its management.
In order to enter foreign market circulation, every manufacturer interested in foreign markets should hold clear-cut preferences for using this product as a limited particle included in one’s collection. In comparison with other goods produced by the same manufacturer, this product would raise an unbelievable opportunities for publicity and public discussion. Meanwhile, fabric painting might be included in programs of various art projects in different countries. Besides, in order to provide a virtual access to the process of painting, rooms with shop windows facing street might be rented in various capitals.Homosexual males were considered as an alternative audience who would receive the fabric painted by men exclusively, which in turn would definitely rise an additional publicity. However, both the owner of the enterprise and marketing manager were unable to appreciate the potential of this product, for their production politics is based on low cost strategy and their export largely is focused on Russian market. Even though I offered them to use my idea for free permitting me to work and participate in the process of production, they did not consider it to be topical for them. Instead, they prefer production of new and cheap clothing intended for already loaded market competing with China controlling the low cost politics. I wonder, just how ambitious is the management of a company to choose the market sector already controlled by China.
I had to consider other options, for there was no financial opportunity for me to communicate with large-scale European enterprises.
Eventually, the only though running around my head was how I could finish this project and record the experience of it. It was absolutely clear, however, that it was necessary to create something completely unique; something that did not already exist, and only make one. Thus I clutched to this radical thought process and understood that I had to look at this project as as work of art.
The thought that I would be able to share this product with great masses lead me to the thought that I had to find some person on the planet who could understand and support this project. So, I decided to divide the remaining fabric from the painting into 12 briefs and try to give, together with the painting, those briefs to some person who could think like me in exchange for financial support.
I fabricated 12 large-size briefs, and housed them in an oak box, together with 102 photo cards, which testify of the briefs’ authenticity and offer aesthetic pleasure. The remaining fabric became a cover for the frame, creating a painting 170CM x 135CM (67in x 53in). I also created a web page for this project (www.12briefsandpainting.com), on which the future owner of the underpants will be able to obtain high-quality digital photographs in any situation.
For now, this work in it’s entirety can be classified as a contemporary work or art, or at very least as 12 very special pairs of briefs.
Emuārs par un ap finansēm | Assets exchange… on Finally |
Bērnu stundas MOBILE ART SPACE YOUR HEART BEAT MUSIC MEET YOUR ARTIST Lēdiju kluba tirdziņš DESSERT PLACE About Mr. Arturs Koks Atdodies Mākslai
12 Briefs And Painting Blog 