Latex fashion and clothing can often require learning a new approach to garment design. The material requires unique skills, which are often focused on the creation of pristine pieces and outfits. In many cases this results in eye-catching, powerful and provocative garments with clean lines and slender shapes. With an income to earn, many latex brands and designers follow a well tested path whilst also aiming to be as creative as possible.
But one such designer is aiming to take this creativity to a whole new level, and to turn her already successful brand into a unique offering within the latex fashion industry. Join us as we speak to Emily, formally of ‘Shokushu Boutique‘, as she talks exclusively to Latex24/7 about her very personal journey, the rebrand of her hugely successful business and her aims to discover a new level of expressiveness from her work.
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Can you tell us a little about who you are and your experience so far?
I’m Emily. I’ve designed, made and studied clothing and visual culture for almost twenty years. I’m currently studying for a PhD focusing on depictions of historical fashion. My main research interests are how clothing has functioned as a political tool, particularly in relation to elite women.
I worked in design and styling teams for a range of businesses, from streetwear to fetish wear, throughout my twenties, and in that time, I created my own clothing brand selling latex clothing ‘Shokushu Boutique’, inspired by Japanese street style, Kpop and my own mixed Asian/white heritage.
So, explain why you’re rebranding?
After I finished my Fashion Design undergrad in 2013, I ran Shokushu Boutique for over 10 years. Unsurprisingly, a core part of keeping that afloat was that it needed to turn a profit. Over time, rather than inspire innovation this just completely stunted my creativity. The more financial success there was, the more I found myself doing soul-crushing, repetitive work for wholesale orders. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for all the opportunities we were given because of this, but it wasn’t sustainable and it wasn’t great mental health-wise.
So, I shifted my focus to making sure that my day job took the lion’s share of bringing home living expenses for a few years (post pandemic hasn’t really been the ideal time for that). I tried to make it clear that the brand was going to operate differently and that I’d only be making pieces as a creative outlet, but a lot of clients really struggled to understand this so it felt like the right time to just start from scratch.
Tell us about the new Brand
So, the concept is essentially, what if ‘dress’ or ‘fashion’ was Art?
It’s not really an original concept, but it’s one the British Fashion industry has drifted pretty far from in the last few decades. The rise of gen AI requires a rethink of how we view creative activities. AI will streamline things in a way that will mostly make humans obsolete on the commercial side of things, so we need pleasure, creativity and chaos. That’s the Art bit. If it happens to serve an aesthetic purpose, great, but its primary goal is not to be functional. I’m not making clothes to wear to work, to the gym or even to a fetish event. I don’t wanna be SHEIN and I don’t want to make anything replicable and marketable. It’s all got to be useless.
So, to be clear, you don’t sell anything anymore?
In short, no. Full transparency, of course I’m still going to sell offcuts and occasionally sample pieces. If somebody wanted to buy something from me, I’d take that as a great compliment, but I’d want to know what they want to do with it.
It’s so taboo to be in my generation and say you don’t want your focus to be money. It is a very privileged position to be in to be able to make a statement like that. I have, and have always had, a day job alongside doing this because it has never been an option not to.
I’m continuing to pursue funding opportunities for artists, though alarmingly few exist if you take this stance in regards to clothing. I’m currently reliant on a bit of funding that comes from my Patreon and the little I can spare from my own savings to invest in this.
How did you come up with the E.Rivessa name?
A core difference between the new brand and Shokushu Boutique is that it’s just going to be me. Shokushu boutique had quite a few people in the team over the years but that wasn’t financially sustainable post-pandemic, especially if I want to keep people on fair wages. I’m very keen for collaborations but essentially from here onwards it’ll be a product of my own labour and my own madness.
So, when I explained this to a friend of mine, she took out her scrabble tiles and started playing with variations of letters in my name. I still want a degree of privacy, so we thought an anagram could work well.
We tried a few combinations and felt like ‘E.Rivessa’ had a nice ring to it.
So, who are your inspirations for E.Rivessa?
Grayson Perry, Gilbert and George. The remnants of the generations where working class people still had a hope in hell of being artists.
Also partial to a bit of Kandinsky…his colour palettes, his chaos.
Any Fashion designers?
Iris Van Herpen. She gives no fucks about wearability.
Anything else you want to add?
I know it can be such a bullshit greenwashing buzzword but it’s entirely relevant to mention sustainability here. When I started thinking about how I’d pay for material under this new model I was pretty concerned. For years, I’d been conditioned to think that latex garments had to be sleek and pristine- pretty much the antithesis of what we tend to associate with reworking or second-hand garments. Somebody once joked that I could patchwork all my offcuts – I’ve acquired stacks of boxes of these over the years- mostly from wholesale orders. As soon as the concerns about sell-ability weren’t in play I thought, why not?
I won’t pretend I’ve been perpetually driven by a selfless need to rescue the planet. Wasted material is wasted money. This is a little discussed issue though, because we’re not talking about latex clothing because of its association with the fetish industry. As a result, we’re also not talking about its wasteful practices, which follow a pretty similar model to those of many luxury brands.
So yeah, sustainable practice and latex aren’t mutually exclusive necessarily, IF you can move beyond that ‘need’ to have everything be pristine. Which leads me to another point which is a bit more personal…
So, I realised during my undergraduate that I have dyspraxia (if you’re not familiar- a gross oversimplification could be that it’s like dyslexia but for your co-ordination skills) and this is the first time I’m publicly disclosing that because let’s be honest, it doesn’t make me sound like an ideal person for cutting garments meticulously. So, I’ve spent a lot of time overcompensating for that and living in fear of not living up to the expectations people have when they purchase latex clothing. What I didn’t know initially was that this was compounded by the fact that I had undiagnosed inattentive ADHD. I could speak for hours here on how often this is missed in women or how I spent a lot of my life around ADHD men with so little ability to manage its symptoms that I failed to see any connection between myself and those people.
The key thing here is that I worked very hard to not let this impact the business. Consistency and attention to detail are not the fortes of this diagnosis. Having said that, I’m not INCAPABLE of them. My favourite explanation for how to understand these kinds of neurodivergence symptoms is this- EVERYONE needs to pee sometimes. But if you were struggling to pee, or if you were peeing 5 times in an hour, we’d consider that a ‘symptom’ of a chronic problem.
So why mention this NOW? Because a key part of the shift to E.Rivessa is that I’m embracing imperfection. Bland Perfection is becoming easier and easier to achieve right now with technology advancements. My strength is going to be in producing things that are unique, spontaneous and imperfect. Watch this space 🙂
We most certainly will! To follow her incredible journey be sure to check out the new E.Rivessa website and subscribe to the brands Instagram profile.
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