Photographer Mert Alas’ New Venture

The Business of Fashion Podcast

The Business of Fashion

Fashion & Beauty, Business, Arts

4.6 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

BoF’s Tim Blanks speaks with one half of the renowned duo Mert and Marcus about finding new creative avenues.

Renowned fashion photographer Mert Alas — one half of the renowned duo Mert and Marcus — has spent the last four years immersed in the world of gin. While pandemic pivots to new creative ventures have become commonplace, Alas was looking for a new creative outlet long before the current crisis. In crafting his new aromatic gin — named Seventy One after the number of nights it takes to rest the spirit in oak casks — he found many parallels with fashion’s creative challenges. Just like in fashion, gin making has suffered from a focus on speed over quality. True craft requires patience and time, Alas says.

On this week’s BoF Podcast, Alas speaks with Tim Blanks about finding new creative avenues and resisting the pressure to produce more and more and more stuff.

Alas approached his new gin like any other creative project as a “relentless journey for perfection.” He immersed himself in the process, learning about every step, from the drink’s perfume basis to how many days were required to settle the alcohol. “It became this like a domino effect of ideas and in reality, an experience,” he says.
As Alas thought about how he wanted to position his new brand, he spent a lot of time reflecting on the “selfish” nature of the fashion industry. During lockdown, he wanted to create “some kind of an artistic give back,” using Instagram to connect with young creative followers and give them feedback.
Creatives should hold on to the time they had during the pandemic to focus on their craft, Alas says. “I was very much on a go, go, go [mentality] for the past 30 years… What I realised [during] the pandemic was that we also never stopped... I was doing a lot of quantity, but now I realise I missed craft.”

Christopher Kane’s Pandemic Pivot

The Art of the Crisis Pivot – and the Brands Getting it Right

How to Pivot Your Skill Set During Covid-19

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm hoping we take more time now with our work, with our expression.
0:08.0	We are going through a very big renaissance of understanding and expression
0:14.0	because we now have a lot of digital contents.
0:18.0	We now are changing the way we approach to image. We're changing the way
0:24.1	or we look at shows and fashion and so on. So we have one thing to do, to get on with it.
0:38.3	Hi, this is Imran Ahmed founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion.
0:42.4	Welcome to the Bof podcast. It's Friday, July 16th. The fashion photographer Mertl Alice,
0:48.8	one half of the renowned duo Mertin Marcus, has spent the last four years immersed in the world of Jinn. While pandemic
0:56.3	pivots to new creative ventures have become commonplace, Mert Alice was actually looking for a new
1:01.9	creative outlet long before the current crisis. On this week's BOF podcast, Mertz speaks with Tim Blanks
1:07.9	about finding new creative avenues and resisting the pressure to produce
1:12.4	more and more and more. Here's Merr Alice Inside Fashion. You are launching a gin, but you're
1:22.2	also doing it in this very interesting way, I think. The way you've set the gin up is as this extremely decadent
1:28.9	drink, that your references. When I was reading all the material you sent, I kept thinking of
1:36.4	the Hoisman book, Auro, against nature. And the main character of that book lives in this
1:42.4	incredibly, incredibly decadent world of this highly aestheticized environment
1:51.0	where everything is a celebration of gorgeous artifice.
1:58.0	And you evoke him and you evoke Oscar Wilde and so there's this sense of of
2:05.6	something quite luscious and something I guess more than decadence something even transgressive a little bit to make a gin which has, you talk about the orchid cactus, you're almost
2:20.1	eroticizing this drink in a way. And that seems to me, given your work, which, you know,
2:28.8	your work has produced some of the most erotic images of the last few decades, seems very much like,
2:36.3	am I wrong in saying in keeping with your own kind of outlook on life?
	...

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