T’s Spring Men’s Fashion Issue: Their Way – The New York Times

We love rebels — or, at least, we say we do. After all, much of American cinema can be seen as a long celebration of disobedience, of the thrill of defying the status quo.

But though we may fetishize iconoclasm in our entertainment, our support is less full-throated in real life. The appearance of someone who seems not just unafraid of breaking with tradition, but indeed unapologetic about doing so, is often greeted with wariness. Sometimes this circumspection is justified — the line between iconoclasm and narcissism is easily smudged — but often our reaction is more complicated: We can find ourselves unexpectedly invested in the maintenance of institutions of power, and while seeing someone willing to set those institutions aflame can inspire admiration, it can also engender envy (why can’t I do that?), self-recrimination (why didn’t I do that?) and fear (can he really do that?). The rebel, initially welcomed, becomes the subject of suspicion instead, especially when it becomes clear that, no, we don’t necessarily have to follow the path to success that we’ve been told we must.

In this issue, we profile three people — the Korean conceptual artist Haegue Yang, the American designer Kerby Jean-Raymond and the Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto — who have all, in their different ways, rejected not only traditional routes but also the idea that their achievements must be validated by a small group of people in order to be considered legitimate. At times their defiance has resembled something more like passivity: Shortly after graduating from the University of Tokyo in 1994, for example, Fujimoto decided he would do nothing. For six years, he slept until noon, took long walks and considered the urban environment. It might not be the flashiest form of resistance, but in a culture that deeply values diligence, it was (and remains) a shockingly transgressive move, an opting-out from society’s expectations while remaining a part of it as well. That dedication to following his own North Star, one visible only to him, has resulted in a series of structures that, as Nikil Saval writes, astonish for their idiosyncrasy and strangeness; they are pure expressions of form, inimitable iterations on his particular vernacular of shape.

Then there’s Jean-Raymond, whose seven-year-old label, Pyer Moss, is, as M.H. Miller writes, “a strikingly personal and singular narrative about his own life as a black designer in America.” Jean-Raymond’s clothes are beautiful, but they are also deeply emotional; the designer is inextricable from the pieces he makes, and all of them are profoundly infused — in ways visible and not — with Jean-Raymond’s personal history: his experiences as a Haitian-American, as a black man, as an artist. His rise and his unwillingness to follow prescribed pathways to success in the industry are inseparable from each other. His success is subversive, and vice versa.

But maybe the thing we fear most about rebels is their aloneness, their apparent lack of need — for approval, of course, as well as for people in general. Being alone doesn’t necessarily mean one is lonely, but the possibility is greater. Haegue Yang may have been born in Korea, and may now live in Seoul and Berlin, but part of her discipline is belonging to nowhere, and refusing to be a part of anything. She is single by design, and has freed herself from the burden of being nice (a syndrome that particularly besets women artists). She is a nomad, constantly shuttling between countries, but she is also an ascetic: Her work bristles with things, everyday objects that we all accumulate over a rooted existence, but her own life is stripped clean of possessions. Comfort, she believes, is the enemy of art-making, not to mention intellectualism, and she has dedicated her existence to living without it.

It’s not a life I could live myself, as much as I admire her steel and her will. A book editor I know once told me that every artist’s credo should be “Compromise when necessary, but never concede.” It’s good advice (note, however: the same doesn’t apply to a politician or an elected official). Though what if we never had to do either? A rebel shows us it’s possible, and that is something we can all find hope in: Never compromise, never concede. The road is long. But it will always be yours.

Read more from T’s March 8 Men’s Fashion issue.