Vice Style

Turkish-born Norwegian Sahzene Nilhan Durmusoglu Johansen gave up editing a music magazine back home to relaunch herself as fashion designer, mostly because music had ceased to be fun anymore. So it should come as no surprise that her menswear label Sn. DJ is pretty silly. As well as crochet bank robber outfits and singular boob t-shirt prints, her two collections were named How I Learned to Hate Rock n Roll and More Weird Hits, More Weird Fits.

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VICE: So, why give up a stable, interesting job to start designing clothes?
Sahzene Nilhan Durmusoglu Johansen: Well, I hate the idea that I was meant to settle on a profession for the rest of my life. Writing and reading about music every day suddenly became boring and I started to analyze everything I heard too seriously and forgot to just enjoy it, which I took as a sign I had to move on. It was also a time when I was exploring the different aspects of my personality, especially my masculine side, for example, and I had a real urge to make things with my hands, so men's fashion seemed a good way of channeling that.

Yeah, better that than just wearing ill-fitting guys clothes, I guess. Did your background in music inform the way you design at all?
Yeah. I mean, I've never been a professional musician, but my background in music journalism helped me to find a way to hear the many different sounds, characters, and personalities going around in my head, which is very much related to the design process.

How, exactly?
Ha ha, I don't think there's a way to explain this, actually. It's far too complicated and overwhelming.

I reckon I can handle it.
I suppose it means I can hone in on what would really make a design work. Like, if all of my ideas and influences put together were jumbled into one song, I can find the specific notes and nuances within that song that really work for the piece, so I don't use all of my ideas at once and produce a scrambled mess.  

Is fashion a better way to express your ideas than music, then?
Well, I'm not a musician so I don't have the ability to fully express myself through music. In that way, fashion is a better form of expression for me, but more on the basis of what goes into an individual piece of clothing, rather than fashion as a whole.

I read that a big part of designing More Weird Hits, More Weird Fits was coming up with a playlist to design to.
...More Weird Hits was all mixing old favorites in weird ways. Work on This is How I Learned to Hate Rock N Roll began with unconsciously collecting references. Phyllis Galembo's books, the tits of a girl I met that became part of a print on a t-shirt, and my all time favorites—camouflage, letter press, hand-made tablecloths my mom gave me when I was leaving Istanbul, and Spoek Mathambo’s music. So yes—hits, fits, and tits.

I interviewed another designer recently who said Phyllis Galembo's work was a huge influence. What is it about her photos that do it for you?
It's more about the certain African cultures, their clothing, and the masquerade costumes she documented in books like Maske.

Did growing up in Istanbul have an affect on what you do?
Istanbul's incredible diversity of cultures and multiple historical layers, built up over thousands of years, somehow influences everything I do, directly or indirectly. When I go to bed in Istanbul I can still feel the city buzzing and vibrating out there. It's a great feeling.

How do you think your next collection will go down when you show it in Istanbul? All the shows I've seen at Istanbul Fashion Week still look quite conventional, whereas your stuff isn't at all.
Actually, even the show I did at Oslo Fashion Week left me with a big 'what the fuck was this all about?' feeling. The next project I'm working on is actually with other menswear designers and friends from Norway and South Africa—Camilla Bruerberg, Ferdinand Diener, and a photographer, Simon Skreddernes. We'll be traveling together to the cities we originally come from—Istanbul, Oslo, and Cape Town—and working in those places.

Why are you so knitwear focused?
I really like the imperfections of hand knitting. With hand-sewn garments you can see the uneven stitches peculiar to each tailor. Anything that personal is easy to become attached to. Having people work up an attachment to my designs makes me really happy, because I'm a bit like that too—I wear the same outfit for weeks. It's a pity some people think being fashionable only means wearing something completely different everyday.

Very true. Lastly, let's talk about the crochet bank robber outfit.
I designed it for a character that's a bit out of control, a sort of fashion victim, in a way. He saves and spends all his money on the most trendy and expensive clothes out there just to fit in. On the other hand, he is actually so fed up with being constantly broke that he decides to rob a bank. The hilarious part is that he wants a haute couture bank robbery outfit for the occasion, but the only threads he can afford is his mom's knitting. I just really like making fun of things, basically.

 

JAMIE CLIFTON

TAGGED: Norweigian Sahzane Nilhan Durmusoglu Johansen, Sn Dj