From the Inside Out
Plenty of ROA’s research since its conception in 2015 has been based on the needs of the everyday person and their ever-changing environment. Whether on rubble or carpet, mountain or floorboard, ROA holds hybridity at its core. Much of the intriguing patterns and elements from ROA’s design team (and their placement between the human co-existence with nature) play across these lines — their research replaces reliance on images with physical exploration and environmental immersion — and their fascination with the craft of creation would suffer without such passion.
However, this presentation was not about clothes — not as an end product. Insofar as the design of garments was concerned, ROA and DEEP went into the wild, exploring ecological intervention and analysing methods such as the seasonal burning practice of Noyaki in the hills bordering Mount Aso in Kyushu, Japan. Like Indigenous backburning practices in Australia, this form of swailing aids in managing forests and their surrounding environments. Another example of such intervention is closer to home for ROA: The Apennines that spread from the shin to the toe of the Italian peninsula. In the mountain ranges, rewilding is a preventative necessity that digs into landscape and ecosystem protection.
Even in a White Claw Crayfish breeding site, some changes can alter the framework of a forest or the face of a mountain. Reintroduction programs (such as the ones shown in the documentary displayed in ROA’s head office) offer glimpses of the labor and intense engineering nature that sometimes needs to keep thriving. Seasonal heatwaves and fecund hills shift like wind currents, and dry grass needs to be shed before new grass can grow. Human intervention can support this revitalisation, and as shown in the video, there are ways that this ‘interference’ can help. Promoting a biodiverse environment requires awareness and management.
The documentary footage flies over, around and inside natural landscapes in Japan and Italy. The searing yellow and red of the fires smoked into a birds-eye view of the charcoal rocks, the sloping ridges, and an honest, potent scene. The small crayfish are swaddled in the white bucket of a wildlife conservator, and the strands of sediment we call cills stretch around the open air in perfect silence. The tiny animals and the fresh grass following a burn are symbols and fragments of a bigger picture. One that DEEP and ROA explore to both educate and inspire them in making material changes, crafting with a corpus and direction in mind.
The effect of the presentation goes far in showing the audience a glimpse of insider knowledge. There’s more to fashion than meets the eye and more on a designer's mind than the clothes at hand. While the design team works away upstairs, the audience breathes in. There is a refreshing sense that the brand makes more than just ‘practical’ and ‘functional’ clothing. They are designed by experience in the real world and are reactionary. The forms and dictum respond to the environment in palette and purpose, and the brand wants to give back.
