Avant-garde
Anti-fashion
Norm-averse
Obscure
Discomfort
All words that have been used in an attempt to capture the hemisphere of fashion that was Carol Christian Poell, or better, is, as the designer’s legacy has never seemed as relevant as today. With new generations unfamiliar with the work of cult designers from before the millennium, interest is piqued anew, and with it, stories are rediscovered. Austrian enigma Carol Christian Poell is one such name. Marked by a current resurgence of fascination, as was the case from 1995 until 2005, Poell is the perfect example of the understated designer whose work is to be felt rather than understood. The subtlety of his unmistakable silhouettes emerges from a well-balanced play between impeccable craftsmanship, elegant extravagance, and slight obscurity.
Trained at the Costume Michelbeuern School for Tailoring and Dressmaking in Vienna, Poell’s always visible seams and absence of lining are all the more noteworthy. Considered basic steps within the manual of classic tailoring, for Poell to discard specifically these elements is radical to say the least. In doing so, he makes a statement for the idea of having to learn something before you can let go of said thing. Here, that is, to let go of the established and preached means to the envisioned end: seamless stitching and impeccable lining for exquisite tailoring. The end itself, tailoring, is not to be lost or sacrificed; the precision Carol Christian Poell shows speaks of a degree of tailoring that exceeds the status quo, as his decision to work with unlined garments then requires an enormous accuracy in seam work. Both need to be perfectly aligned; everything, quite literally, stands or falls with this structural conjunction. The craftsmanship of Poell’s designs is on another level, one sometimes hard to comprehend, as it is riddled with subtlety and intricate techniques.
His boundary-pushing design yielded him a pioneering role within the experimental fashion scene. And although ultra-niche, Poell managed to build an extremely loyal constituency. From the outset, however, he was very clear about the separation between his work and his identity. For the label to bear the name ‘CCP’ was more than a measured move. To some extent, the acronym allowed him this envisioned ‘’disparity between person and profession. Of course, there will always be an autobiographic element to a designer’s oeuvre. For Poell, his DNA shone through the most in his complex use and mutation of materials, specifically leather. Born into a family of leather developers, he managed for the leather—no matter how manipulated—to never look out of sorts. It more so appeared otherworldly. His understanding of forms and construction methods made something that can easily look forced or artificial seem as natural as anything. In layman’s terms, a grunge aesthetic can often be dismissed as coarser, rougher, in short, unrefined. When, in fact, oftentimes the complete opposite is true. However, it requires talent to make something seem off the cuff when, in reality, tremendous thought and consideration have gone into a certain design. It is not given to everyone. But Poell mastered this rare ingenuity.
The misinterpretation that designers like Poell are prone to by those outside the fashion sphere might well be one of the main reasons for the designer’s upheaval in archive circles. Insiders—those with knowledge—are the holders of a fair share of information that mere beholders lack. This can add to the appeal and mystique of a brand, to feel part of an inner circle of people tied together by the actual materiality of garments and accessories. It involves knowledge not just handed to you, but for which you have to be truly invested to discover it or for it to reveal itself to you. It is about a connection to the clothes one cannot feign, especially considering the anti-conventional allure of the pieces, actively defying fashion norms as we are implicitly taught them when growing up. The wearer has to wholeheartedly believe in the philosophy, for it will not work otherwise. When the aesthetic becomes conscripted, with clothes forced onto a body without any knowledge of the ulterior motive, all attention to detail and experience are lost, and with it the whole groundwork of a brand like CCP.
The secrecy told of in the garments and accessories—in a whispering voice rather than a raised one—is equally recalibrated in many of Poell’s show concepts. Perhaps most outstanding was Spring 2004, by which he doubtlessly put his name on the map. The brand’s layeredness—as Poell had built it since the launch in 1995—was already reflected in the title alone: MAINSTREAM DOWNSTREAM. As early as 2004, Poell broached the debate on the state of then-current fashion affairs. Seated at the banks of the Naviglio Grande canal in Milan, the crowd had to be appeased upon a sight they had never thought possible. What started with one seemingly dead body floating on the water—initially causing distress among the beholders of the event—soon turned out to be an intentional stream of floating bodies. A stream of consciousness of a cautionary tale, with a slight whisper of “Be wary”. With the scene set, the resemblance to John Everett Millais’ Pre-Raphaelite painting Ophelia was irrefutable. And whereas the visual language of Pre-Raphaelite artists and Carol Christian Poell at first seems to be miles apart, the mystique both leaned into transcends any of the obvious differences. The dead-end element made the whole scene appear as if the bodies weren’t even really there, as if all that was left were the individual garments, floating on the water, hinting at the absence of a wearer that once was. There and then, the foregone conclusion of body and garment as one faded into thin air, or in this case, thin water. Bodies floating into nothingness, succumbed to the mainstream, as a metaphor for Poell’s open-hearted critique of fashion at large, floating into nothingness.
His design philosophy refused to give in to the constant subordination of garment to body. Poell offered an alternative with his take on clothing, wherein garments could exist autonomously, without a body present. The body was ever-important to Poell, but just not quite in the sense one would expect from a designer. In his refusal to glamourise the body, he neglected it entirely: "I do not think of a dress as a complement to the body. Rather, I seek to annul the body. I consider it only a volume and a three-dimensional form." The body only comes in at a later stage, at second glance, almost. It is his designs which, in and of themselves, demand space, both physically and mentally. Poell’s anti-fashion challenged the wearer to consider the emotional and philosophical dimensions of clothing; to consider not only the aesthetically pleasing, but to surrender to the autonomous entity of a garment, experiencing what might be a less evident sense of wearing. For the wearer to leverage their overall resilience. It is not so much about him not taking into account the physical body as much as it is about his approach to clothing as a stand-alone being. Designs by Poell don’t necessitate a body as such. In turn, their very presence can come to be felt as overwhelming to the body. The discomfort frequently associated with the brand is then not such a big leap.
Ironically, Poell’s statement to move away from the mainstream would ultimately become a blueprint for modern menswear (and, by extension, womenswear, albeit with a unisex cut, rooted in classical elements of traditional menswear). Yet another testament to fashion’s fickle nature; an industry practically impossible to forecast. But for Poell, keeping up with trends was far from a priority. Instead, it was his mannerisms that he kept in mind. Any design by the hand of Carol Christian Poell is unmistakably his, or CCP, evermore inscribed with a taste for the occult. On the verge of classic and futuristic, there is a sense of longing for the past that lingers in the matter, while it too recalls a future one can only speculate on. Time, as a notion or concept, proves compelling for understanding the brand in all its nuances. Unless his creations seemed coherent to him, Poell neither produced nor presented them to any given public. The time had to feel right.
