Ann-Sofie Back is a champion of the everyday and the banal in her clothing, often rendering the invisible visible and celebrating the details of the disposable.
That may not sound too promising a premise for desirable garb, yet with her skill as a designer Back transforms those ideas into collections which are paradoxically avant-garde, strangely elegant and always compelling.
"I am always inspired by normality and the mundane, the fantastic has never really interested me," states Back emphatically. "I find it really odd to be around all of the 'design' that surrounds you all day long... you can never seem to escape slick 'design concepts'."
In fact Ann-Sofie Back comes from the land of 'slick design concepts', she was born in Sweden, but draws her inspiration primarily from where she grew up in Stenhamra, a decidedly downbeat suburb of Stockholm. Now based in London, (where she completed her MA in womenswear at Saint Martin's in 1998), and having achieved her teenage dream of escape into the heady world of fashion, (showing a pret-a-porter collection each season since October 2001), her clothing collections and styling work are in many ways defined by a rejection of that aspirational fantasy land and looks at her own awkward place within it.
It is the social and cultural aspects of fashion that inspire Ann-Sofie Back as a designer. The way we aspire to a certain status, class or originality and how we dissemble and confuse to attain those things through our clothing. For Back fashion is seen as being slightly dishonest, a disguise, but it's a lie that will always get you found out in the end. As she says, "It's like going to the supermarket and noticing how somebody is dressed, thinking how that looks funny, or they've tried hard. But ultimately I say to myself 'that's me, that's me, that's exactly what I do.' It's about that trying and failing, you always look sort of rubbish."
Failed everyday glamour, accidental embarrassment and the transformative properties of clothing have been frequent motifs in Back's collections. There is also the signature incorporation of faux 'aspirational' fabrics and accessories that lie about their true identity by endeavouring to look glitzy and glamorous. Mock lame, fake gilt buttons, leatherette and velour are often mixed with more day-to-day grey marl and white cotton. The T-shirt shape is also a staple, although Back is often an experimenter with silhouette.
But look inside those clothes and the design details are quite lovely, in fact there's a certain hidden beauty and democratic spirit in all of this. As she says of her styling work, for which she has won many plaudits including the s/s 2001 Miu Miu campaign and continues to contribute to Dazed and Confused, Self Service, Purple and Doing Bird amongst others, "I try to put things on my level, make them fit what I understand. When I'm styling and I receive clothes from other designers, I'm actually quite scared of them in a way, because I don't understand what they're about. They look really precious and are so expensive that sometimes I simply don't know what to do with them. They have nothing to do with my life or my reality or anything, so I have to put them in an environment where I can make sense of them."
In many ways Ann-Sofie Back seems to have made her own 'fashion paranoia' into an art form, taking it out of the realms of the ironic into something at once everyday and quite touching. This is evidenced by her inclusion in group design and art shows spanning London's ICA and the Victoria and Albert Museum as well as Paris' Palais du Tokio and the Musee de la Mode de la Ville de Paris. Most recently her work was included in the 'Reshape' show, featuring on the official schedule of 2003's Venice Biennale.
In her expertly handled garments, Back at once celebrates the hidden beauty of the everyday, democratises the fashion game and injects some intelligent humour into womenswear. While not quite transforming clothes into precious 'lifestyle' objects, Ann-Sofie Back celebrates them for what they, and in turn we, are.
She's such a wonderful,refreshing personality
