USE

We spend a lot of time thinking about how things are made.

The shape and cut of a jacket. The weight of a jumper. The feel of a piece of steel in your hand when we make a knife. We make decisions about all of it, then photograph the finished object before it goes out into the world.

And thinking about it, that is usually the last moment it belongs entirely to us.

A jacket might end up on the back of a chair at work. A jumper gets pulled on for a cold morning at the park. Someone keeps a chip-fork in a coat pocket and forgets it’s there until the next time they fancy a chippie-dinner.

These aren’t the scenes we tend to see in clothing campaigns. They’re where the things we make begin to have a life.

Fashion often shows clothes at their most untouched. Even the signs of wear can be arranged in advance, as though a life can be added to something before it has been lived in.

I’ve never been interested in making a new thing look old. I’d rather make something someone wants to keep using, then let time do whatever it does.

The photographs we make for Mamnick can show where we come from and what catches our attention. That was part of the thinking behind previous Journal entries - DEPTH and REAL. But a photograph taken on a bus or in a Sheffield factory is still only one moment. The person who wears the clothes carries them into all the moments that follow.

They might wear a jacket in a way I hadn’t imagined. They might take it somewhere I’ve never been. It will come back from those places different.

I like that we lose control of it.

Use gives an object its own history. It tells us which details mattered enough to notice, which ones quietly did their job, and whether we made something worth reaching for again.

That’s what I hope for with Mamnick. That the things we make find their way into somebody’s ordinary day, and become part of it.

What do you think?

This Journal was never intended to be one-way.

If this piece resonated - or you disagree - leave a comment below.

Words and photos by Thom Barnett