Chat: Depression

Throughout my life or rather my educational career, I have at times been in "states of depression" where I don't know where I'm going and I don't know what I want to do. I used to like take my own "off day" from school (my parents were well aware, don't worry) go to a cafe with my notebook and a cup of coffee and contemplate, brainstorm and release my frustrations on what my future career was going to be. I guess i never exactly found a career that appealed to me greatly until I graduated and started to "play" and just explore and experiment. That's when I found photography and felt that ok, I'm going to be a photographer.

So when I met the guys Andrew and Kenny from Depression, their stories really spoke to me because I realized that there's always this state of frustration or slight depression that makes you want to do something. One just has to break out of it and then the creative juices are free to flow.

Sitting down on this metal bench in the concrete plastered store at Parco with the guys. Kenny turns on the music and grabbing their starbucks, we settled in to chat about how the guys started on this adventure and the story behind their name.



"I was an art director at an advertising agency," says Andrew, as he pulled up a stool near to the laptop "I was there for 10 years and Kenny was the copy writer and we worked as a team there. Advertising is fun for me, but the creative culture is still rather conservative in the asian market. So this really made me feel like doing something that is my own."

"We were at yakun that time and had just quit our jobs" explains Kenny "and we felt depressed with no direction. So we came up with the name Depression. It's also very anti-establishment because most names are very positive and happy. But for us it's more important to have a reaction then to have no reaction."

"We wanted to do something that impacted people's lives more directly and still create things." says Kenny as he takes a sip of his green tea latte. "Fashion is just a different canvas for us. It's a great satisfaction when you see people wearing our designs."





"While we were still working, we set up our first T-shirt store with a lot of graphic prints. Did you see our website?" Andrew asks, "Those hanging dolls...haha"

Kenny then goes on to pull out the look book for the new collection called "Dysfunction". So why Dysfunction....? "Because we're not the traditional designers, we don't really considers the traditional cuts of a dress." says Andrew. "You know like why must a dress fit at the waist or cut that way? Or why should a blouse just have one collar? In fact, we did a 3 collar piece for the new collection and you can wear it either way." explains Kenny as he scrolls through the pictures on his macbook. From uneven sleeves, to an upside down dress to uneven collars and extremely large collars and those protruding polka dots, the collection has a strong identity that just says DEPRESSION...well in a good way that is!

"And that's why it's called dysfunction. basically things that don't look like how they are really supposed to look like." concludes Kenny.



DYSFUNCTION 2011 will be launched on Christmas Eve 2010 and will be available at DEPRESSION stores at Milenia Walk, Parco #P2-21 and Far East Plaza #04-41.