Uncommon Forms

Gülbin Yavuz is standing at her work table, where she's likely to be any time you enter her tiny Culver City fashion boutique and art gallery, Indie Collective. Her studio is in the back of the shop, and, like most artists' work spaces, its four walls seem to contain an invisible tornado, a force of energy whirring with ideas on the verge of manifesting. Then there's the physical evidence: copious fabric rolls and scraps; sketches, tearsheets, and tools; garments in various stages of completion.

"I'm constantly searching for something new, a new way of doing something, always pushing my mind. A skirt has to do this and that, and it has to be new and at least reversible," Yavuz says after the CityBeat photo shoot, during which the crew had marveled at the originality and flexibility of her designs.

"My new things are multi-use. It's just a natural part of me that comes out all the time - to make things as useful as possible."

"Multi-use" in Yavuz's conception translates to apparel that looks great in more than one way. Almost all of her clothes have variation built in: You can wear them inside out, upside down, snapped or folded in different places. You can even change what they say.

"I feel pretty disgusted with the way things are in this world," she continues, explaining her design philosophy. "How wasteful we are, how obsessed we are with buying things cheap, without thinking that all these gazillions of clothes are manufactured by people who actually suffer - I mean, why? And then everything is homogenized. Everything is an imitation of the thing before it, or an imitation of the things from the [past]. There is of course new and original stuff out there, but the majority is what I call 'regurgitated fashion.' Even go to Dolce & Gabbana - hardly anything new."

Yavuz opened Indie Collective in January, her first retail venture after only a few years designing. But she's not new to the industry: As a teenager in her native Turkey, she became a model to satisfy her mother's wish that she develop good posture. "I really hated that side of work," she says, "but I learned a lot - I learned the business, how things happen. And I learned a lot about taking care of myself."

Yavuz moved to L.A. in the '80s with hopes of becoming a filmmaker but quickly discovered Hollywood wasn't particularly friendly to women, let alone those interested in making art films. ("I was such an elitist about pure cinema," she says.) She took a job as a film costume designer, which proved a good fit. Soon, she started styling commercials and music videos, preferring their fast pace. Although she had no formal training, Yavuz was, as she says, "a natural," and became one of a handful of stylists who decreed the importance of fashion to the nascent music video genre.

She remained in that line of work for 17 years, almost literally earning her stripes, until the pressure wore her out. "You know how men go to the army and they become tough? That was my army. I became tough, and I learned a lot of discipline."

She took a yearlong break, returning to Turkey "just to get back to normal." During this time, she started making things - "whatever I could find, wires, little sculptures. I enjoyed it so much that I said to myself, 'I really want to do something that I love doing from now on in my life.'"

Slowly, she started making fabric cuffs - "They're really good adornments, and arms are such beautiful limbs" - and T-shirts. Both are still staples of her output and the epitome of versatility. Her first collection, in the late '90s, was composed of skirts and tops she only pinned together because she didn't yet know how to sew. But the pins were functional and aesthetically appealing, and, after an independent sales rep happened to see that collection, it and her "People's Couture" line of T-shirts and accessories were sold in L.A., New York, and Japan.

She didn't get rich, but she did become increasingly inspired. Yavuz, who admits she is very quickly bored, next started figuring out ways to create her own fabrics by "fusing" two pieces together - also a big part of her practice today. Her layered wristbands, for example, involve fusing silk and leather scraps, "which makes the leather really strong and delicate, and reversible."

The "Morph" skirt and halter (see cover) look like they're made of wetsuit material but are actually constructed with a fusion fabric of black wool on one side, cranberry-colored rayon on the other. The process took her a year to perfect. "It's a good thing I don't give up!' she says. "I always know it's going to be good someday."

In fact, the Morph ensemble and a "Collapsible Urban Armour" top (see above) - which folds tidily into its own pouch - were innovative enough to impress judges at the 2005 California Design Biennale, where they were first displayed. Now you can see them in her boutique, which also features works by other fledgling artists and designers.

"I dreamed at one point, not a store for myself, but a store combined with other people like me, like a little co-op."

The goal was to provide a mini-refuge for designers of things that "don't fit the mold," she explains. "You get mistreated by the stores, by reps, even fabric sellers - the industry is set up not to let someone like me through.

"I'm trying to carve some alternative to this by treating everybody equally and very nicely," she continues, adding that she prides herself on creating a store that "is a relaxed, comfortable space where people who do interesting stuff will bring their work to show and sell." She also displays fine art on her one spare wall as part of rapidly rotating exhibitions.

Yavuz is a multidisciplinary thinker. Collectives, collaborative projects, and the technical work involved with each piece of clothing reflect that - combining fabrics, innovating construction, her penchant for rough, unfinished edges on sleek materials. Multiple ideas thread each garment; some of them are familiar, but the completed piece is always a study in elegant nonconformity.

"I'm not a regular designer. I don't have that kind of education, and, really, I'm glad that I don't have it," she says. "I could go and learn it, but I prefer not to, because when you're not trained to do this, this, this, this, you try to find other ways of doing that, that, that."

Her work calls to mind the geometric shapes and careful engineering of André Courrèges, who in the 1960s became known as the "Space Age" designer for his functional, uncluttered, geometric garments that managed to balance softness with austerity. Yavuz cites the civil-engineer-turned-designer as a great influence, along with fellow Frenchman and futurist Pierre Cardin (who also made his own materials). "This was all when I was growing up," she says, "so it's ingrained in me."

In addition to her fabric-fusing technique - see the reversible "panel skirt," which sells per one-of-a kind panel (two make a skirt) - Yavuz has recently discovered, quite literally, the power of designing with magnets. "Magnets are fantastic - they're good for your body, and it's a great energy to work with," she says. "But they're kind of naughty."

Her new line of "Magnatees" - several of which are currently on display at L.A.'s Naked gallery - are T-shirts with two magnets on the front, embedded between cotton layers, intended to hold a reversible, magnetized cloth strip with such slogans as "Middle Finger," "Leave Jesus Alone," and combinations such as "Protagonist" that then flips to "Antagonist."

On a larger scale, magnets are also the basis of her year-in-the-making "Magnetic Fields" collection, a six-piece "artwork" of interchangeable, magnetized items that range from a tubelike dress/skirt, to a cape/breastplate, to straps/belts and a big black bow. The items are sold as a set, limited to an "edition" of 10.

The kit, inspired by Barbie clothes, is whimsical and full of surprises, but it also "creates a magnetic field around you that is super-healing," Yavuz says. "It increases your circulation, it calms you down, it keeps you young. I did research." Talk about added value.

In Yavuz's hands, cotton jersey, too, amazes. For her "Multiplicity" line of tops and bags, she discovered that stacks and layers of jersey "sort of take on their own life. They become a flower within themselves." The "Re-Form" line also reveals an alchemical touch: She takes apart clothes she's purchased and manufactures something entirely new. "I deconstructed this '80s dress, and three pieces came out of it - one is an asymmetrical black skirt with silkscreen red shapes on it, then a crop-top with gold beads on the hem, and the magnetic bow for Magnetic Fields - all from that one dress!"

Each of Yavuz's creations is one-of-a-kind, if only because each is handmade by the designer herself. Some styles repeat, and she'll make others on demand, but she'll still change the fabric or some small detail. The concept, Yavuz says, is "street couture," which, like "People's Couture," means approachable, accessible, but ultimately unique in design as well as how it's tailored to and fashioned by the wearer. It's a cross, she says, between couture and ready to wear.

"Everybody's talking 'green' right now, and I think the essence of my work comes from a very ecological way of thinking," she opines. It's true that, in addition to repurposing materials, her garments' inherent, accessory-like variability, plus their tasteful aesthetic restraint, provide an alternative to throwaway trendywear. "I'm making items that people can love and wear for a long time," she says.

One challenge Yavuz always wrestles with is where to place her tags. Yet even here, she thinks atypically, once again more social- than self-oriented. "I was thinking of inventing a label that the customer puts on only if he or she wishes," she says without a trace of cynicism. Then again, her labels are so artful, why wouldn't people choose to wear them?

"That's another thing I take great liberty with," she says, inadvertently alluding to her larger view. "I reserve the right to change my labels. They're very fluid, and they constantly change. They're never the same."