The Militant Guild of Rural Tailors, a mysterious outfit we recently stumbled across online, seemed to be a cross between an elaborate imaginary historical narrative and a men’s fashion line. After writing about it we were totally delighted to actually hear from Liam Maher, founder of the MGRT, who cracked us up by admitting to “the irresponsible and arcane content related to my Young Meagher project and the Guild of Rural Tailors” and confirming what we’d guessed – the Rural Tailors is an elaborate fictional framework inside which he was able to create extremely well-made clothes while also meditating on the history of military and civilian traditions of tailoring as well as criticizing the waste and disposability inherent in the corporate fashion industry – “to provoke the industry on subjects that irritate me personally,” he says.

Maher lives in Amsterdam where he currently works as Head of Design for D E N H A M, who recruited him on the basis of Rural Tailors which has appeared at New York Fashion Week and ISETAN in Japan. Denham’s blog now bears more than a passing resemblance to the Rural Tailors aesthetic.  There’s an interesting interview with Liam at the beautiful Digital Temple Magazine and other glimpses into the MGRT project here, here, and here.

We love these clothes for the obvious reason that they are beautifully made and made to last – even through a war, hence the military tailoring methods, always sturdier than civilian clothes. Buttons sewn on to woven tape, etc. The Rural Tailors’ Standards and Ethics (or click below to read it) also show a definite anti-trend, anti-logo stance:

• If the spirit of the maker is INSIDE the garment,
• Then the name of the maker is also INSIDE the garment
• The name of the wearer is NOT NEEDED if men will recognize his FACE
• So never is there ANY NAME on the OUTSIDE of a garment.

and they propose “Meritocracy over Aristocracy, Producers over Poseurs, Damnation over Dandyism, Artisanry over Automation, Manuality over Management, and Natural Sweep over Fretting & Flattery.” Yes, it’s about authenticity and purity, but in a good way.

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Young Meagher’s Militant Guild of Rural Tailors seems to be a fashion line doubling as a museological collection of historical objects and textiles supposedly belonging to a revolutionary worldwide underground cult of rural tailors reaching back into early 19th C history. You can lose several hours if you fall into the web orbit of this extremely thoroughgoing narrative fantasy and its imaginary steampunkish realm. The combination of extremely high-quality tailoring (unfortunately only for men) and handcrafted fantasy props is, not surprisingly, very big in Japan, one of MGRT’s biggest markets. “Audiences” seems a more appropriate term than “markets,” because even though these clothes are commodities, they also seem part of a larger performance. The fact that these objects are presented as props and artifacts rather than as mere products seems to be a part of a rebellion against cheap meaninglessness of the commodity market and a hopeful alliance with quality and historical meaning, so that the company’s symbol – the hybrid brass knuckle scissors above – cleverly comes off as insignia rather than as a logo. As for the styles themselves, they seem to point to the American Civil War and more broadly to the 19th C in general, which seems to be a popular nostalgia at the moment and has ties to the eclectic antiquey references of steampunk. These photos are all from the Young Meagher website (be prepared for bleak, howling wind and antique train soundtracks) and their Flickr pool, which goes by the name Rural Tailor Research. Captions to photos below are from the Flickr pool. Thanks to B.C.M. for the tip.

Tailors Crown crafted from traditional scissor-parts taken from initiated tailors in exchange for the Brass Knuckle Guildsman’s Shears shown above and presented in clandestine annual ceremonies to bestow honor on the single guild member from across the international network thought to have most advanced the art of rural tailoring. The crown would be displayed in secret in the winner’s atelier for a year before it was then awarded to the next honoree (similar to the Stanley Cup).

Novice’s Veil Masks like this (and those below) were required to be worn by candidates seeking initiation in order to prevent nepotism influencing selection. Would-be guild tailors were referred to as “Fresh Faces” by the inner guild which refered to the practice adopted by candidate of decorating their masks in order to show a little bit more of the tailorwise dexterity during their application regimine. This reproduction and those below were created for GenArt during New York Fashion Week.

Reproduction Silk Hanger garment hanger covered in silk re-used from vintage neck-ties used by guild members to display new designs for consideration during the ceremony described above. Hangers like this would be hung from scissors which had been “stabbed” into the wall of a guildhall to present garments by rural tailors competing for the Tailor’s Crown. Created by L. J. Maher (AKA Meagher)

Commisioned from by Barney’s New York for use in holiday windows. Hand-cut silkscreened words from Handle’s Messiah printed onto strips of lambs-suede and hand-stitched through a fiberglass form. Hand sewn ostrich feather wings with cowhide banding brass snap-clipped to copper wing armatures. Hand=hammered shoulder and neck cladding leading to antique violin peg-head finial.

That’s according to the New York Times, and since nostalgia seems to work in 20-year cycles, I guess anyone could have seen it coming. If, as the article says, the 90s were the sci fi thing and the Breeders, then excellent, but … what is that orange outfit! Do I not remember the 90s correctly? No matter what they were, though, anything is better than the 80s, the decade that just makes me go Reagan Thatcher Reagan Thatcher Reagan Thatcher Shoulderpads in a loop. I realize this view is unpopular. Sorry. From the NYT’s blog The Moment :

Show after show this week in London, the Y.B.D.’s were designing like it was 1995. Topshop’s Unique collection, in the hands of the stylist Katie Grand, mined the junkyard-rave aesthetic of the cult classic “Tank Girl” to mixed results. Charles Anastase’s “autobiographical” collection paid homage to the unsung icons of grunge — think the D.I.Y. style of Kelly and Kim Deal, of the alt-rock band the Breeders, and Rayanne Graff, the too-cool-for-school character played by A.J. Langer on the teen drama “My So-Called Life.” Chances are that only the hipsters who crash his shows will be savvy enough to appreciate this.

See also Aeon Flux and read this review on gawker.

“Dazzle painting,” devised in Britain during WWI, was based on the theory that its complex optical patterns would confuse enemy naval rangefinders by disguising a ship’s speed and direction. It employed a number of visual tricks including the painting of false bow waves on portions of the ship other than the prow. There’s a fascinating explanation of how it was meant to work here. Interestingly, the concept was invented by an artist, a marine painter named Norman Wilkinson. When devising dazzle painting Wilkinson adapted some of the abstract, graphic style of constructivism and cubism even though he himself was a much more traditional painter (click below). Women artists from London’s Royal Academy of Arts dazzle-painted small scale models for optical studio testing before the design for each warship was finalized. It would be impossible to make this kind of stuff up, though perhaps it’s not surprising that historically it’s been standard practice for artists and designers to devise wartime camouflage. In the end the military effectiveness of dazzle painting was uncertain, but it did have the effect of being very good for ship’s morale, and it produced some surreal and beautiful ships. More photos in our Flickr pool, and see also the Tate Modern article on their camouflage exhibition, and more historical information here.

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Why can’t more civilian bags be like this – free of bling, glitz, chacha, weird anatomical looking folds, pointless, slouchy, ruched wrinkledness, and dopey hardware? We don’t understand the bags being churned out by the big couture houses at the moment. So many of the bags we like are either military or close to military, probably because they’re beautiful by virtue of their pure functionality, simplicity and complete lack of pointless, purely decorative features and general fussiness. This ridiculously beautiful bag is the No. 95 Shoulder Satchel by Billykirk and it’s a fairly faithful copy of a WWII Belgian military map case. It’s entirely handmade and the company casts its own white brass hardware.  This Billykirk bag is quite transcendent, too, and click below or here for an interesting interview with the designers.

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This post is a personal addendum to our earlier post about a discussion amongst readers of another design blog about whether one designer had copied or “borrowed” another designer’s idea. We certainly didn’t mean to imply that the second designer copied the first, because those things are impossible to know, and he may well not have, and in any case his design diverged significantly from hers. Anyway, here’s a trivial case from our own experience, and it’s just one among many. It’s about army blanket pillows, which we had thought were our exclusive idea but which of course were not.

We hadn’t seen the others until ours began to get some press, and then we realized other people were making them too. Who came first? Do others think we’re copycats, or are they copycats, or is affordable army surplus just in the air, like the warfare version of Depression-Era Chic? It’s nearly impossible to know, and anyway the very idea of pure originality is suspect. Design is a fertile field of rampant cross-pollination, and we hope it remains a fertile field rather than a minefield of intellectual property rights. In any case, as they say, there’s nothing new under the sun. Click below to follow our design process. The photograph at very top is from here – we think the pillows pictured are probably by Red Barn. Directly above, one of our favourite photos, bench pillows from Italian Elle Decor, Summer 2004. Below, pillows by us.

PS You can make your own army blanket pillows. We’ll post a DIY soon. In the meantime, check out your local army surplus for blankets or look here. Our story about why we decided to make these pillows, below.

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