Building a Vague Hypebeast: Fragmented Fashion by Joshua McGarvey

By Ian Babineau

Feb 27, 2020

Walker Publishing Filed to Design · Part of Gradient Archives

All photos art directed, styled and shot by Joshua McGarvey

Joshua McGarvey is a Minnesota-based clothing designer, fashion artist, and installation/video artist who creates garments under the name Uselding Fridays. The results are often loud, colorful pieces—uncanny mashups of styles, brands and silhouettes which frequently collage together elements of second hand or deadstock garments. On the surface, these chaotic amalgams offer concise, wearable critiques of the love/hate relationship we have with our hyper-capitalistic environment, often reducing brand symbolism down to abstract texture (a technique he refers to as “ambient distraction”). But as expressions of his broader practice, these living collages are incredibly personal, reflecting McGarvey’s ongoing fascination with the contradictions inherent to personal definitions of humility and authenticity. In this interview we talk with McGarvey about why he does what he does, and the unlikely connections between reality television, throwaway culture, and hunter orange.

IAN BABINEAU (IB)

Tell us about Uselding Fridays. What is the conceptual framework that informs the art direction of your pieces?

JOSHUA MCGARVEY (JM)

Many of my projects deal with the idea of humility. For example, my first solo exhibition, Dressing the Future in my Humility, consisted of sewing 107 copies of the sweatpants I wet, on-stage, in kindergarten during play rehearsal for The Three Little Pigs. I was the pig with the stick house. The pants, tokens of my humility, were gifted to anyone that entered the gallery. In a similar way, Uselding Fridays is named after my counselor, Dr. Uselding, whom I saw on Fridays when I was a teenager and beyond, so for me Uselding Fridays is another narrative of personal confession exploring the idea of humility.

I like to think of the typeface selections as an extension of the collage themes in the clothing, as well as visually representing fluctuation in a minimal logo design. My recent projects consider the fluctuations of conceptual, emotional, and physical space. One example is the way the artist's studio oscillates between public and private. The studio represents a personal and private refuge while also needing to be a place to perform and present for guests. I have been drawing a comparison to furniture showrooms, more specifically a bedroom. A showroom is designed to display constructions of the private in public, and the bedroom is one of the more private spaces of a dwelling. I am trying to deal with, accept, or highlight fluidity in what are perceived as concrete forms.

My work has developed through several mediums including video, photography, sound, fashion, performance, and installation. Many of my sound projects are engaged with research that suggests white noise at the right volume is capable of distracting a human's reason enough to force the brain into abstract thinking. The clothes (and the videos that the clothes were born of) became an experiment in visually exploring these functions of ambient distraction, and they also offer a chance to recycle aspects of throwaway culture into this visual white noise. Fashion in general is incredibly wasteful, like how luxury brands burn excess products from their collections (although European nations are beginning to pass laws that prohibit fashion houses from destroying their excess product). So when I'm making clothes I try to be conscious of this. I don't make a ton of products, and most things I make are one-offs. I mostly sell through message on Instagram (@joshuadmcgarvey) but also have some things at a designer run shop called Everywhere Space in Portland, Oregon.

You mention humility, confession, and the interplay of public and private while creating your artwork. How does your background set you up to express this in your work?

I often connect dots to my life as a preacher's kid and how my father's profession demonstrated a fluctuation between public and private. I think he often was balancing between performance and authenticity, which relates to my explorations of humility and confession. But I am also entertained and influenced by reality television, especially the sets designed for the personal interviews that often accompany the real footage. I see reality TV as a complex experiment in trust and perception, so I try to exploit the commentary/interview format in my videos by continuing to blur lines between truth and fiction or performance and authenticity.

I am engaged by the interplay between all the concepts I have been discussing: performance, authenticity, honesty, humility, romance, function, futility, and the oscillating contradiction between all these concepts. I think my clothes are trying to confront complexity, anxiety, and confusion with experiments in acceptance.

I'm interested in how your work pushes a certain comfort zone; finding this place that's uncertain in how the design/aesthetic might land in relation to cultural trends.

Yes! I love the convoluted nature of trends and designing ways in which to challenge that energy and maybe redirect it. I like blurring lines of distinction in my designs, so challenging the fluidity of an object with an aesthetic balance of earnest, ironic, ugly, cool, uncool energy feels on vague brand. I also just love bright, intricate illustrations on shirts (i.e. Grateful Dead or Racing), and reinventing that material is rewarding to me aesthetically and beyond. So that vague balance or imbalance hopefully begins to transcend the space between cool and uncool or beautiful and ugly. But it's also so easy to just get lost in trend thinking because it fluctuates so rapidly, like transitions between cool and uncool to ironic uncool being cool then back to plain cool or whatever. Fashion has a tendency to compartmentalize and package things seemingly as a means to create cycles that promote consumption. I would like to think that this vague space can transcend trend? I'm not trying to seek uncool to be cool, which in time becomes uncool again and the inverse, I think. But I want to transcend those definitions by keeping everyone guessing, including me. Is that self aware or unaware?

All of your pieces feel like they have a geographic specificity to them, samples and culture that reflect the Midwest, and they all seem relevant and contemporary in a global context as well. Is this something you think about while you create work?

I think it’s weird to explain how I think about being relevant in a place that the question assumes is not relevant? I'm not interested in the topic of being relevant in certain locations because to bring it up immediately puts the frame of inferiority complex around the response. To address it is to have to defend it, but I don't think the defense is necessary. I think pulling away from this thinking is a better avenue for creative development. I am trying to make things that question this ideology.

I am from Indiana, which is big on racing, like the Indy 500, and most of the world encourages the pursuit of speed. If you want to connect my work to that, I think I am trying to contain acceleration in a meditation on the effects of that pursuit. But again, I also just really like the graphics on racing shirts, Grateful Dead tie-dyes, and other dense illustration style shirts.

I have to ask about the mask. Is that a picture of your face printed on it? It’s amazing.

For the past two years I have been making videos featuring a mask of my own face. The function of the mask is always evolving, but most recently the mask is being used to explore the concept of emotional anonymity in confessional-style videos. A mask of a person's expressionless face confronts contemporary surveillance with a compliant, yet poetic protest, by presenting identity that maintains anonymity emotionally. I also found inspiration in the work of artists designing makeup to camouflage a person from facial detection software and similar measures being taken to confront a future of facial recognition surveillance. I have been connecting these ideas with reality TV–style commentary interviews. I like the loose use of the word "reality" in the context of television and how that warps perception, just like how a mask of my own face blurs the idea of authenticity. It's just a more complicated observation of "don't judge a book by its cover," but then weaponizing the inverse and offering up the concept that one deserves the right to hide behind a book cover.

Earlier you mentioned new laws in Europe that prohibit destroying excess product, which reminds me of the work by Helen Kirkum that the Walker is featuring in our upcoming design show Designs for Different Futures. Are you familiar with Helen Kirkum's sneaker collage work at all (I happen to know you’re quite the sneaker head yourself)? Can you tell us more about your practice of sustainable fashion as well?

I am familiar with her work and love it! Kirkum's sneaker collages are incredible. I really enjoy sneaker design, especially in the past decade where the designs seem much more abstract and unique. It's just so expensive to be a sneakerhead, and counterintuitive to thinking sustainably. But I do battle a love of objects with a need to think about consumption in my day to day, which makes me appreciate the designers like Helen Kirkum that make such elegant use of waste. Art and fashion are wasteful, so in my video sets and clothing I mostly use secondhand or dead stock items. It works well in my process; sifting through the things people have discarded is engaging for me.

After I scavenge, items are dissected and reassembled into collections of disparate fragments. Some pieces sit around half-constructed waiting for the right thing to finish the garment. Other pieces that remain unsold for long enough (ranging from a day to several months) will be deconstructed and integrated into new constructions. Things slowly build as my process illustrates the visual form of "ambient distraction," which prompts a more abstract reading of symbols, logos, and designs. If fashion is about communicating self outwardly, wearing fragments attempts an authentic expression of identity by embracing complexity, anxiety, and confusion.

Do you think of your practice as bootlegging? Are there any inspirations from that culture that you’re drawing from?

My interest in bootlegging started in the parking lot of jam band concerts. The Dead, Phish, or String Cheese Incident parking lot T-shirts represented an alternative economy that followed these types of bands from show to show selling things to pay for gas and/or tickets to the next show. Some shirts were just poorly printed versions of those sold by the actual bands. The better shirts featured designs that combined/collaged themes from songs but also name brand logos. I romanticized this scene so much when I was younger. It was definitely some kind of updated simulation of Kerouac’s On The Road for me.

I think the collage pieces play into the idea of sampling. I literally cut apart logos and secondhand clothes to create something completely different, which also makes use of clothing waste to create wearable art that conceptually confronts the personal curation of cultural identities. Perhaps, wearing fragments of many logos simultaneously is a more accurate representation of any contemporary identity.

You use many colors and patterns specifically linked to hunting culture in your designs. The camouflages, safety orange/yellow, and some patriotic sampling as well. Are there specific motivations for these choices?

In terms of the appropriation of hunting attire like blaze orange, I see it as a response to gun culture. Wearing blaze orange outside the context of hunting represents a gesture that attempts to utilize the gun user code of ethics: you don't shoot towards these specific colors. Blaze orange is an example of the type of color used by hunters to enhance personal visibility in the wild, so I find it a powerful gesture to utilize these materials in fashion, especially in context to the threat of gun violence in schools and public spaces in general. Not to say it is hunters that are responsible for gun violence, but making use of a gun culture code as a means to make visible issues with gun control.

How does this look in specific pieces you've designed (above)?

1. Blaze Red V-Back Top

This sweatsuit was my first experiment with using a hunting-related textile for a sexy sweatshirt. The V-cut on the back with fringe offers a fun, striking reveal on the back while the front is a large solid swatch of day-glo color. I put an awkward pocket, asymmetrical sleeve styles, and a sloppily attached neckline to emphasize the surprise of the clean and minimal back exposure. The sweatpants are just classic sweatpants.

2. Blaze Orange Turtle Neck

Another example of combining unorthodox style and shape with hunting orange fabric, the blaze orange turtle neck has neon fringe on the bottom and a thick fleece turtle neck. I think the use of the camouflage next to an American flag points more directly to hunting culture while exploring a less traditional shape and style.

3. Version 002 Print Sweatshirt

For the printed sweatshirts, I only design the imagery that is printed onto the fabric. The Version 002 sweatshirt is a bootleg sample of my own bootleg sample. Influenced by parking lot tees, the imagery is varied, from Grateful Dead to Édouard Manet, with very vivid colors and a swirl of Uselding Fridays spell-outs. Unlike the pieces I sew myself, the printed garments are all about the print and less about the construction of the top or sourcing of materials.

Although your louder and more maximal pieces can draw attention right away, I’m seeing a lot of nuance in the sublime relationships you create with color and shape in some of your more minimal and delicate garments. Is there a specific expression of contrast you have in mind between the types of pieces you create? Are you creating the more maximal and more delicate minimal pieces for specific customers and audiences?

Much of it comes from the materials I find. Sometimes I source remnants of fabric like patterned wools and sweatshirt fleece. The raw material then requires more construction in the process, so it forces me into pattern making. I think it is another reflection of a fluctuation, because Uselding Fridays is not a concrete form. I love making, so I am always experimenting and trying different things out.

Beyond the fact that your garments are absolutely beautiful, what do you think is the applied impact they have when worn in an everyday setting? Do you think there’s any application of the concepts they are born from?

Well, thank you! An applied impact I see is the dilution of brand/logo visual power by collaging several brands together; sometimes pairing brands that contradict or somehow engage each of their contexts. It’s like building a vague hypebeast. If I am thinking about the everyday use-value of wearing one of my collage shirts, they are often made from used shirts sewn together in very busy images, so it's harder to see stains and the shirts will wear well over time. Such great practical value. But in general, I want to encourage creative thinking. I value creativity as a means to navigate functions of understanding—understanding in the sense of orienting one's perspectives.