BERLIN—Fashion once had a useful word for work that pushed against the mainstream: avant-garde. Kostas Murkudis is less convinced the term still holds. In a fashion landscape shaped by speed, scale, and turbo-capitalism, the question is no longer whether experimentation exists, but whether it has enough time, space, and independence to matter.

JOHN HUDSON WHITE: How do you perceive the current cultural landscape, particularly the way fashion is reacting to other advancements happening around us?

KOSTAS MURKUDIS: I don’t really think that fashion is responding to the current state of the world. We are running into a shift of power. It seems to me a pure decadence, a weird picture of our society. I don’t refer to the political changes, I can’t speak to having an answer on future concepts for a world of love, respect and education. But in the cultural landscape, I think turbo-capitalism is destroying what we...

BERLIN—Fashion once had a useful word for work that pushed against the mainstream: avant-garde. Kostas Murkudis is less convinced the term still holds. In a fashion landscape shaped by speed, scale, and turbo-capitalism, the question is no longer whether experimentation exists, but whether it has enough time, space, and independence to matter.

JOHN HUDSON WHITE: How do you perceive the current cultural landscape, particularly the way fashion is reacting to other advancements happening around us?

KOSTAS MURKUDIS: I don’t really think that fashion is responding to the current state of the world. We are running into a shift of power. It seems to me a pure decadence, a weird picture of our society. I don’t refer to the political changes, I can’t speak to having an answer on future concepts for a world of love, respect and education. But in the cultural landscape, I think turbo-capitalism is destroying what we have painfully achieved as a species over recent decades, while pretending that everything’s fine, like racing along the edge of a volcano.

WHITE: In your career, you’ve often been associated with avant-garde approaches. Is ‘avant-garde’ still an appropriate term, and do you think there is still a place for radical experimentation in the mainstream? 

MURKUDIS: I don’t think that the term ‘avant-garde’ is still the best term to describe creative reaction, or the need to experiment, or to take action against the boring mainstream.

Even so, I think it’s very important to think against the tide. It is difficult today to point out a diverging vision—not speaking of the superficial diversity that we pretend to live for—experimentation these days is quite limited to resources and access to a broad audience. A strong, powerful and long-lasting (and well-thought-through) reaction needs time to develop.

Time is the most precious resource. Small brands and creatives may be willing to experiment, but facing the power of the big brands gets you easily lost in the jungle of competition.

WHITE: You are not as well known in New York as I wish… 

MURKUDIS: So kind of you—

WHITE: Have you been here?

MURKUDIS: Actually a couple of times, for various reasons. The first time was in 1988. I loved it so much. Went to see the first retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe at the Whitney and had my my first sushi ever.

WHITE: Anything you can say about New York today?

MURKUDIS: I love New York and am hoping to visit the city quite soon again—I miss my friends there as much as I miss the energy of the city. And answering your question about New York today, I don’t know how much it has changed… but I am sure it has!

WHITE: What comes next for Kostas? 

MURKUDIS: Collaborations in new fields, like real jewelry. There is an interior project to come, among some ongoing collaborations that began last year. I would like to work on my “new – old archive,” which I started half-a-year ago, and create a book around all those pieces and ideally donate them to the right institution or person who loves and appreciates the work, making it public again.

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