Spotlight on...Astri Ahlander

Author: Alexxa Gotthardt

The Middlebury Campus: How long have you been designing? In what kind of design do you specialize?

Astri von Arbin Ahlander: I am a jewelry designer and have been doing that since about 2002. It wasn't until last year when I started thinking more conceptually about clothing. I've always thought about it on a personal interest level, but then I got pulled into the fashion show last year. Originally, I was going to do the accessories and then it just got crazy and I ended up doing a lot of the designing. We did a lot of deconstructing vintage - a lot of breaking down and reworking old things. This year, I have a little project that I'm working on with Christina Galvez '06, a good friend of mine who also worked as producer and designer on the show last year. It's not quite clear what exactly the show is going to consist of yet, but it will be about designing more concretely on the clothing level. We'll be going more in depth this year.



The Campus: Do you have specific inspirations for your designs?

AV: I think different things. Jewelry design I started before I came to Middlebury, and the inspiration there was that nothing was big enough. I'm the kind of person that I know what I want, and I want that. A friend back home designed jewelry for me exactly the way I wanted, but I was also spending a lot of money. Finally I said, "Wait, I can do this." I started designing and experimenting with technique and I just loved it. The clothing aspect just exploded when I came here. I'm from Stockholm, which is a really trend-sensitive place where people are really into fashion almost to extremes - at absurdum. In the scheme of things in Sweden, my style wasn't that strange. I came here, and I was just hit with sweatpants and North Face, and literally, after first semester, I felt this claustrophobic "I can't breathe" sensation. As a semi-insecure freshman, I thought maybe I should be conforming to this majority style. I went home over Christmas and I just breathed out. I said, "I'm not going to conform." It was then that I started wearing what I always did at home, but to the extreme. That desire to break away inspired me to go further than I would have originally. I started wearing things that would even make me laugh at myself when I looked in the mirror. Like "Ha! I'm wearing this. Cool!" It's when I got to that level that I started thinking a different way.



The Campus: How is Middlebury fashion different from the fashion you're used to at home in Sweden?

AV: Midd fashion...is there Midd fashion? Well, that's the question. There's the antithesis of fashion. There are people who I would say aren't very fashion-sensitive, but clearly that's a style too. I think it's more of a general American fashion. I lived in the states when I was younger and I feel like fashion here hasn't changed at all since then. It's still based around jeans, a T-shirt, a sports-team logo. It's very basic and very streamlined. Some of it is elegant, but I don't think it goes streamlined enough. You know what it is? American fashion is stuck in the middle. I think if it would just go one step further, then we would get the sleek look. If you want to be sleek, go all that way, if you want to be crazy, go all that way. I think Middlebury, as a whole, is in this middle ground.



The Campus: With the fashion show you worked on last year, and with any projects that are in the works right now, are you hoping to promote a certain idea? Are you trying to make Midd more fashion conscious?

AV: I think those are two different things. Making Midd more fashion conscious, perhaps. Trying to promote a certain idea, don't think so. This is my opinion: I don't have to like what you wear, but if you have a clear statement behind it, I'm all about it. I'm sensitive to people criticizing other people's style. I wouldn't say I'm promoting a certain message, but if anything, I'm hoping to make it more acceptable to be different, which I think is hard here for a lot of people. Fashion is such a blown up word, people look at that and are almost afraid of it and what that means. I come from a family of all girls and my mom says, "Why are you doing a fashion show? It's all about negative body image and negative female representation." Yeah, the fashion world has a lot of negative things, but my personal view is the opposite. Fashion is an outlet, another creative form and another art, and idea that people ignore a lot. There's definitely a sort of prejudice against the fashion world that it is not an art form. Maybe because it's so mass-soul and directed toward the masses. Basically, people are duped. I hope to make the campus more aware and appreciative of fashion as an art form.



The Campus: So you consider fashion a fine art?

AV: I do, but there are many levels of it. Again, fashion is a huge word. It ranges from the big designers right down to the chains. The question is, are they both art? That's hard too, because a lot of designer stuff is hugely mass-produced. Producing a white T-shirt at Old Navy, is that fashion? Is that art? Where do you draw the line? I think that's a question with sort of all the plastic arts. Any of the arts, actually. What is art? Everything that is fashion isn't art, but I do think fashion has the potential to be art in how you manipulate it and work with it. You look at the fashion industry and you look at it as clothing, as selling, as something people wear. On the other hand, you look at designers like Victor and Rolf who make these insane creations that just blow you away and you think, "Wow. This just has to be art." Here's another one of my practical mother's comments "I don't understand this fashion show. You can't wear that." That's the art. That is an exhibition. You're at a gallery, the art just happens to be walking down a runway. A white T-shirt, it's a more practical thing. Sure, if you make something original with that white T-shirt it's different. The original white T-shirt when it was invented as a form - yeah, that's art. What's walking on that runway, those cake dresses and unbelievable things - think Derelict Zoolander - wherever you want to go with it. It's not really clothing, it's fashion.