For his first collaborative project with Stone Island, Aitor Throup has created not only a special edition concept piece, but he has also generated a new generic approach to garment construction.
Based on his own on-going questioning of conventional garment design and manufacturing techniques, Throup has defined a construction process that defies conventional pattern making and sewing methods. Aitor Throup’s conceptual functionalism offers an evolutionary interpretation of Stone Island’s strong heritage of innovation.
Throup’s personal Justified Design Philosophy generates a need for a reason, purpose or function behind all design features. His fascination lies more with the anatomy of the human body, than with fashion itself. Throup sees garment design as a way of clothing the complicated structure of the human body – an approach which instantly refuses to use existing garments as a point of reference. Instead, he creates his own patterns / blocks through processes based on the specific exploration of each project, using the human body as the starting point.
The Modular Anatomy concept redefines ergonomics by de-constructing traditional garment construction patterns. Rather than using standard sleeves, armholes and full body panels, this innovative method generates multiple individually shaped modules, reflecting the structural complexity of the body itself. Each modular segment is directly dependant on the structure of each surrounding segment. The Modular Anatomy process generates an extremely ergonomical product through a unique and innovative approach to garment construction.
The first Modular Anatomy project is an interpretation of the traditional down jacket. The generic stitch lines traditionally found in a down jacket are re-interpreted as actual structural seams, stitched using a unique edge-to-edge method which eliminates all excess stitching bulk. Each segment is an individually down-filled cushion. Only once all separate cushion segments are seperately filled, finished, and numbered, is the jacket stitched together.
Aitor Throup was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1980. He has also lived in Spain and finally moved to the northern English town of Burnley when he was twelve. It was in Burnley that Throup developed a passion for the technologically advanced garments from labels such as Stone Island and C.P. Company. It was a mixture of Aitor’s interest in these ground-breaking products and his own passion for drawing and designing comic book characters that led him to begin a BA in Fashion Design at Manchester Metropolitan University, from where he graduated with first class honours in 2004. In 2006, he completed an MA Postgraduate Degree in fashion menswear at the Royal College of Art in London.
Aitor is fascinated with anatomy and his main interest is drawing. Aitor’s hand drawn characters become the primary tool in the exploration of his ‘justified design philosophy’, which highlights the necessity of a reason or function behind all design features. Aitor’s design process utilises innovative methods of design and construction, in particular a three stage construction process of ‘drawing, sculpture, garment’. Throup’s graduate collection from the Royal College of Art was entitled ‘When Football Hooligans Become Hindu Gods’ which had a strong narrative thread running through it and a diverse selection of influences from generic military garments to Hindu symbolism, around which his unique and innovative design and construction processes were incorporated. He has exhibited his work at London Fashion Week, as part of the MAN show, for the past two seasons, although not creating seasonal collections; but rather displaying selected ideas and concepts. His last project was entitled ‘The Funeral Of New Orleans : Part One’, and was exhibited at MAN in September 2007. The presentation of this collection defied conventional ways of exhibiting fashion, by choosing to show the pieces on life size sculptures (also created by Throup) rather than models, each in a different stage of transformation. The presentation also incorporated a film created in conjunction with SHOWstudio, which acted as a sort of animated instruction manual, allowing the viewer to not only understand the transformational mechanics of each piece, but also to learn the narrative behind the collection.
At ITS#FIVE (International Talent Support #5) Aitor won the Collection of The Year Award and the i-D Styling Award, and as a result he was a member of the jury at ITS#SIX. He has also won awards from Levi’s, Umbro, Evisu and Royal Society of Arts amongst others. He has worked on stories as an Art director/stylist with i-D magazine, Arena Homme+ and V-Man, and has so far worked on two separate projects for SHOWstudio. He has exhibited his garments, sculptures and drawings at The Library, London. He also works as a consultant and is working on his first graphic novel.
