Don’t miss the new book:
LUXURY HACKERS

Hackers are in the digital sciences “those programming with passion”, without commercial greed. Fashion will be merchandable again when stopping to be commercial. Having some scattered “luxury refugees” is not enough because history is repeating, but never in the same way. Fashion as known up to now, like Walter Benjamin’s Angelus Novus went forward looking back (heritage), while Luxury Hackers, from Margiela on, go back looking forward (détournement). The succession of the two “Techno Luxury” and “Heritage Luxury” conventions, held in Berlin and London by the International Herald Tribune, is realizing how alive is the tension between the desire to restore fashion by going back to the values of the origins and the awareness that this sector needs to restart from new models of design and business for returning to be at least interesting. This tension is not requiring one’s deployment because in both the cases this would become ideological and utopian. Rather, the tension should be mantained and sustained. Heritage means often to exploit the name and the historical legacy of a founder to sell new products that look like the old ones without the achievement of the same quality/design standards. A pure commercial speculation. Trying to go further: “new” is not always meaning innovative and creative, and “old” is not always meaning conservative and dated. Innonovation and heritage should not be considered so distant because avant-garde is indicating the future by collecting elements already available, forecasting some others, and inventing the rest. Heritage is indicating the past by collecting elements survived to the time passing, post-casting some others, and inventing the rest. Both the activities ask for a good dose of imagination and creativity. Therefore, the point is not to “restore” the values of the past but “put them back in life”. Ok, but how? Pushing the buttons “erase”, then “rewind” and then “record”. How would be the world without a story to be inherited? How would be a new company acting like if nothing had existed before? It would be a return to past values without the trouble of having to re-edit forms and patterns. It would be old and innovative. Craftsmanship and technology.

Technoprimitive. Luxury Hackers, small kicking brands with a sleek identity, by interpreting the major breaking moments of our times, have now the opportunity to turn luxury from the aesthetics of power to the power of aesthetics. They have the opportunity to be original rather than go back to origins. To be the future archeology. The time has come to choose if being part of the problem or, instead, part of the solution. © 2010

Translated abstract taken from the forthcoming book:

Title: “Luxury Hackers”
Author: Danilo Venturi
Introduction: Linda Loppa
Publisher: Lindau, Turin, Italy
Date: May 2011

Contacts:
Italian readers willing to grant their copy in advance: Unilibro
Italian bookshops and concept stores willing to put into storage: Lindau
Publishers out of Italy willing to distribuite in their country: Lindau