At once a perennially emerging designer and a legend amongst fashion insiders, Andre Walker is one of the industry’s most elusive figures. At a time of live feeds, Klout scores and unflinching views beyond the drawn curtains of the beau monde, mystery is an art form—even more so for one of the fashion world’s most discreetly lauded members.
Coming and going over the past three decades, the London-born peripatetic staged his first fashion show in the 1980s, aged 15, in New York’s Oasis club and had his own fashion line by the age of 18. Following a move to Paris in the 1990s, Walker then lent his prescient design hand to Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton, and Kim Jones as a consultant. A design philosophy purposefully devoid of commercial intention saw a stop-start in the progress of Walker’s personal ventures before a brief revival in 2014 via an exclusive line for Dover Street Market commissioned by Rei Kawakubo and Adrian Joffe.
Above The Fold

Sam Contis Studies Male Seclusion

Slava Mogutin: “I Transgress, Therefore I Am”

The Present Past: Backstage New York Fashion Week Men’s Spring/Summer 2018

Pierre Bergé Has Died At 86

Falls the Shadow: Maria Grazia Chiuri Designs for Works & Process

An Olfactory Memory Inspires Jason Wu’s First Fragrance

Brave New Wonders: A Preview of the Inaugural Edition of “Close”

Georgia Hilmer’s Fashion Month, Part One

Modelogue: Georgia Hilmer’s Fashion Month, Part Two

Surf League by Thom Browne

Nick Hornby: Grand Narratives and Little Anecdotes

The New Helmut

Designer Turned Artist Jean-Charles de Castelbajac is the Pope of Pop

Splendid Reverie: Backstage Paris Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2017

Tom Burr Cultivates Space at Marcel Breuer’s Pirelli Tire Building

Ludovic de Saint Sernin Debuts Eponymous Collection in Paris

Peaceful Sedition: Backstage Paris Fashion Week Men’s Spring/Summer 2018

Ephemeral Relief: Backstage Milan Fashion Week Men’s Spring/Summer 2018

Olivier Saillard Challenges the Concept of a Museum

“Not Yours”: A New Film by Document and Diane Russo

Introducing: Kozaburo, 2017 LVMH Prize Finalist

Introducing: Marine Serre, 2017 LVMH Prize Finalist

Conscious Skin

Escapism Revived: Backstage London Fashion Week Men’s Spring/Summer 2018

Introducing: Cecilie Bahnsen, 2017 LVMH Prize Finalist

Introducing: Ambush, 2017 LVMH Prize Finalist

New Artifacts

Introducing: Nabil Nayal, 2017 LVMH Prize Finalist

Bringing the House Down

Introducing: Molly Goddard, 2017 LVMH Prize Finalist

Introducing: Atlein, 2017 LVMH Prize Finalist

Introducing: Jahnkoy, 2017 LVMH Prize Finalist

LVMH’s Final Eight

Escaping Reality: A Tour Through the 57th Venice Biennale with Patrik Ervell

Adorned and Subverted: Backstage MB Fashion Week Tbilisi Autumn/Winter 2017

The Geometry of Sound

Klaus Biesenbach Uncovers Papo Colo’s Artistic Legacy in Puerto Rico’s Rainforest

Westward Bound: Backstage Dior Resort 2018

Artist Francesco Vezzoli Uncovers the Radical Images of Lisetta Carmi with MoMA’s Roxana Marcoci

A Weekend in Berlin

Centered Rhyme by Elaine Lustig Cohen and Hermès

How to Proceed: “fashion after Fashion”

Robin Broadbent’s Inanimate Portraits

“Speak Easy”

Revelations of Truth

Re-Realizing the American Dream

Tomihiro Kono’s Hair Sculpting Process

The Art of Craft in the 21st Century

Strength and Rebellion: Backstage Seoul Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2017

Decorative Growth

The Faces of London

Document Turns Five

Synthesized Chaos: “Scholomance” by Nico Vascellari

A Whole New World for Janette Beckman

New Ceremony: Backstage Paris Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2017

New Perspectives on an American Classic

Realized Attraction: Backstage Milan Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2017

Dematerialization: “Escape Attempts” at Shulamit Nazarian

“XOXO” by Jesse Mockrin

Brilliant Light: Backstage London Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2017

The Form Challenged: Backstage New York Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2017

Art for Tomorrow: Istanbul’74 Crafts Postcards for Project Lift

Inspiration & Progress

Paskal’s Theory of Design

On the Road

In Taiwan, American Designer Daniel DuGoff Finds Revelation

The Kit To Fixing Fashion

The Game Has Changed: Backstage New York Fashion Week Men’s Autumn/Winter 2017

Class is in Session: Andres Serrano at The School

Forma Originale: Burberry Previews February 2017

“Theoria”

Wearing Wanderlust: Waris Ahluwalia x The Kooples

Approaching Splendor: Backstage Paris Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2017

In Florence, History Returns Onstage

An Island Aesthetic: Loewe Travels to Ibiza

Wilfried Lantoine Takes His Collection to the Dancefloor

A Return To Form: Backstage New York Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2018

20 Years of Jeremy Scott

Offline in Cuba

Distortion of the Everyday at Faustine Steinmetz

Archetypes Redefined: Backstage London Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2018

Spring/Summer 2018 Through the Lens of Designer Erdem Moralıoğlu

A Week of Icons: Backstage Milan Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2018

Toasting the New Edition of Document

Embodying Rick Owens

Prada Channels the Wonder Women Illustrators of the 1940s

Fallen From Grace, An Exclusive Look at Item Idem’s “NUII”

Breaking the System: Backstage Paris Fashion Week Men’s Autumn/Winter 2017

A Modern Manufactory at Mykita Studio

A Wanted Gleam: Backstage Milan Fashion Week Men’s Autumn/Winter 2017

Fashion’s Next, Cottweiler and Gabriela Hearst Take International Woolmark Prize

Beauty in Disorder: Backstage London Fashion Week Men’s Autumn/Winter 2017

“Dior by Mats Gustafson”

Prada’s Power

George Michael’s Epochal Supermodel Lip Sync

The Search for the Spirit of Miss General Idea

A Trace of the Real

Wear and Sniff

Underwater, Doug Aitken Returns to the Real

Petit h, Plentiful Possibilites
This season, Walker returned with a presentation on the steps of Paris’ Musée des Arts Decoratifs; a collection based upon works from 1982 to 1986, sourced from the private collections of Patricia Field, Kim Jones, Christiaan Houtenbos, Kim Hastreiter, and Henny Garfunkel, to be made available for wholesale purchase from 2017 to 2020. Full of the curvilinear lines, extruded silhouettes, and engulfing volume for which he has been so well known, the assembly extols the unique wit and humor of Walker’s free-cutting technique and design hand.
Sitting down to talk to Document outside his Paris showroom, the day following the presentation, a steady stream of buyers and editors halt the conversation to heap praise onto the designer. Whether he wants to or not, it’s clear Andre Walker will not be disappearing again any time soon.
Divya Bala—The pieces you revived for this collection came from 1982-1986. Was the legendary runway show you did at 15 during this time?
Andre Walker—Yes, it’s from the East Village Boy Wonder period. [Laughs]. I actually don’t have an archive.
Divya—So, how did you source the original garments?
Andre—A lot of them came from Pat Field. She had about 13, maybe 20 pieces, something like that. And then Kim Hastreiter has five really amazing coats and one skirt. Then Christiaan [Houtenbos] had that one short-back cape—I don’t even remember making that. But the reason I don’t have any of the clothes was that after any of the collections I would show in New York at the time, I would take all of the collection and dump them into Pat Field’s boutique so they could sell them. They were all originals. There was no production but there was a huge stock. The collections I was showing were 40, 50, 60, up to 120 pieces of clothing each.

Andre Walker featured in Document Journal No. 3. Photographed by Catherine Servel.
Divya—How did you put those collections together?
Andre—With the help of a fabric store in New York called Diamonds. I can admit today that I was actually pinching money from the till of my mom’s beauty salon! Plus, I was making t-shirts when I was 11 to 13. Hand-painted t-shirts, fringed, cut with scissors, and ripped and slashed and tied back together. Sometimes I would rip the body off a t-shirt and add it to another to make a dress.
Divya—What was it like being a kid designing in New York City back then?
Andre—I have no idea. All I know is that my brain was buzzing. It was full of Vogue Italia, Vogue Paris, W Magazine, City Magazine, and Jill—I was a magazine junkie. Blitz, The Face, Soho News, After Dark, Playgirl. You know what I mean? Everything! For me it was just teaching myself how to make clothes, that’s all I wanted to do. All I wanted to do was compete on the international fashion scene with the designers in the magazines I was reading.
Divya—So why that period and why now?
Andre—Because that was all that was available to me. My mission was not to create or reproduce an archive but that was the intellectual property that was screaming at me at the time. Friends were nudging me and saying, ‘Hey, I have a garbage bag full of your stuff. Come pick it up if you want.’ It just occurred to occur.
Divya—What do you think of the state of the industry now? It’s so different to when you were first designing.
Andre—I feel like I’ve been super unattentive. Like, mal cultivé. Maybe over the past ten years, I’ve realised what I’m dealing with. And maybe in the past five years, I’ve realised how I can participate in a coherent manner. I was forced into that by my affiliation with Comme des Garçons and Adrian Joffe because it was an opportunity I could not refuse. It was so prestigious, good, and cool. It was like a medal of honor, I guess. I think the only reason I could be sitting here with the collection I have now in the showroom is because of them. Before, all I knew how to do was entertain with my designs.
Divya—What do you mean by that?
Andre—It’s more like a laboratory. Like, a culmination of intellectual property, ideas, philosophy, and ideology are the rewards of your efforts, and not so much monetary. So that’s been my life. The prestige of being affiliated with like-minded people who are zooming way ahead has kind of been my distraction and predilection over the years, for sure.
Divya—What do you think about fashion as communication?
Andre—I was just talking about that today. It’s all about communication. The more you hold back or the less you share, the less you get. But I don’t know, it’s not necessarily true. There are some people who like the presence of absence, they live on that. Whereas I live on the opposite in a sense. I like the presence of presence. I like to know what’s happening.
Divya—Do you feel liberated now?
Andre—I guess. All I know is that you just have to do what you have to do. Someone was saying to me, ‘Oh fashion is so difficult [these days],’ and it’s really not at all. I was saying, ‘If I can do something in fashion, anybody can.’ Seriously.
Divya—Why do you feel that way?
Andre—Because I never thought about it as a business. It’s just been a hobby and a joy and a preoccupation for me. A distraction. I didn’t study fashion. That’s why those clothes were cut the way they were and why the collection is called ‘Non-Existant Patterns’. The most technical thing I did with those clothes was lay the fabric on the floor and fold it over, so that it was the same length in the back and the front. Every single one comes from my drawings. It was all imaginary designs from my sketchbooks that I ventured to realize in the freehand cutting of fabric on the floor. So it wasn’t freehand pattern cutting, it was freehand fabric cutting. You cut the fabric and then you head over to the machine. Super interesting. And I’m going to hold on to that principle. It’s how I do it. You know how Azzedine Alaïa has his way of piecing bits around the body together? I have something too.

Fabric swatches. Image courtesy of Andre Walker.
Divya—Your pieces can look quite foreign on the hanger—they are not simply a denim jacket or a t-shirt—you have to engage with it and consider how to wear it. Who do you see wearing it?
Andre—It’s for fanatics and the adventurous. And for people who happen to be surprised when they try it on and discover, ‘Wait a minute, I like this.’ I also love the fact that this collection is one size fits all. I like the fact that it can fit lots of different body types. I think fitted clothes are overrated anyway—with a few exceptions.
Divya—Has the way fashion fits into society today changed?
Andre—Well, what is society today? Society has been infiltrated by media and technology so there’s another player involved now. The emotion has been zapped out of society. In fashion, people have become so gluttonous for aesthetic and reference and culture and relevance, which is really unfortunate. What is relevance? What is culture? What is aesthetic? A lot of those terms are devoid of any need for emotion or emotional value. I’m much more interested in the heart at this point in time.