Streetwear satire: This Montreal duo is finding the humour in high fashion
WRKDEPT's clothing comments on an industry its creators think takes itself too seriously
"There's a lack of humour in fashion," says WRKDEPT art director Tinashe Musara. "We take ourselves so seriously when we hold our $3,000 bags and put them on a 15-year-old girl wearing lots of makeup."
WRKDEPT — created by Musara and designer Andy Long Hoang — is a reaction to that. Both of them had worked in the fashion industry for years but felt like they wanted to take their art to a different level. Their partnership started out as a parody t-shirt line in 2012, but now the Montreal-based brand includes full ready-to-wear collections.
"We work in a really repetitive industry that's really lacking in fresh ideas, and having two different perspectives of people who didn't grow up in this culture and then watching how this culture interprets itself," Zimbabwe-born Musara says of himself and Vietnam-born Hoang in the above video. "I find we share a lot of similar values in that way and experience, and then getting to work together, you explore and take each other to further creative spaces."
Watch Exhibitionists on Friday nights at 12:30am (1am NT) and Sundays at 3:30pm (4pm NT) on CBC Television.