Kiko Kostadinov Talks Artistic Influences and Reinventing the Mackintosh Name

Since Mackintosh announced that Kiko Kostadinov would spearhead its creative direction, the young Bulgarian-bred designer has been tasked with reinventing the storied label while remaining central to his own artistic philosophies.

As designers continue to embrace the progressive ideologies of technologically-advanced fabrics and practices, Kostadinov opted to focus on the movement of industrial textile applications. The result thus far are two collections — Mackintosh 0001 & 0002 – which aims at showcasing quality craftsmanship, fine tailoring and silhouette structures.

Below are some excerpts from SSENSE‘s recent interview with the designer:

On his references to Arte Povera for the Mackintosh 0001 & 0002 collections:
For Mackintosh, it felt like it was the right opportunity to really explore things and artists that I really like. To take some of their principles by repetition of materials, implementing more of an industrial approach that’s not so digital or technological.

On his take towards the term and trend of “utilitarian:”
My garments are fashion, first and foremost. I don’t do performance. The only performance I try to address is that I wear these clothes, and I think, “What do I carry most of the time around town?

On his influences and design language:
I think the perception of me and what I do has been dictated by the work I did with Stüssy. A lot of people expected me to move into that very graphically-driven kind of territory. That’s not what I like or wanted to do. It was very much about trying to escape that and to be able to build my own design language for my own line. Mackintosh is helping me reinforce that.

On his extensive garment archive:
I have really big designer archives and a big military and workwear archive. And some other odd things.

On working with Mackintosh:
The level of manufacturing blows me away. When we came to see the collection, I was skeptical, but when I held the machine-made pieces, the rubberized material, I was like, “This is something I can definitely work with.”

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