Sruli Recht’s menswear collections and “non product” accessories, with names like “When gravity fails”, “Field dressing” and “Cast by shadows”, evoke images of a place somewhere between the Northern Lights and the great outdoors. No surprise then, that Recht is based in Iceland. Imagine Stig of the Dump clambering about one of Joseph Beuys’ elemental installations and you’d be halfway there. Tailored jackets and tapered trousers play utilitarian textiles off against odder surfaces so redolent of the Icelandic landscape that they could have been mined rather than woven.
Recht’s use of materials leans towards the outlandish – featuring feathers, sharkskin and even whale foreskin, a by-product of tribal subsistence hunting, all detailed on a webpage sardonically entitled “Shelve thine morals”. Other fabrics confront the environment. Military deadstock canvas and shearling comprises much of the outerwear. Everything is obsessively sourced and manufactured in Iceland, the outcome well balanced between primal and subtle: 21st century caveman if you will. Beards are optional.
Recht’s most enigmatic offering, “Non-product”, is essentially a range of accessories, from sculptural guns and an alarming black brass garotte, to more conventional wallets, silver jewellery and scarves. Rings are set with Icelandic basalt and belt buckles are made of poured concrete. Most memorable of all is a scarf stained a mottled crimson with ram’s blood, via a process closer to curing meat than dyeing fabric. Recht’s diary of this ceremony details even the music he worked to as he dyed. Wearable gore? Perhaps, but beautiful nonetheless.