Stephen Willats

‘The designs presented in Multiple Clothing express the concept of self-organisation. This idea of self-organisation is equated with the creative freedom to organize and express our personal identity and feelings within society.
The determinism of normas and conventions originating from contemporary society is psychologically reductive and inhibits personal creativity. In contrast, each Multiple Clothing design provides a radically different approach to the display of interpersonal codes that is responsive to the complexity and relativity of people’s self-expression, enabling the wearers to construct whatever they wish to say about themselves..’
Multiple Clothing, Designs 1965 – 1999, Stephen Willats, Walther König, Cologne, 2000
In By Various Means, three different means of personal self-expression are combined to form a public outface on the side of a practical object - the bag. The possessor of By Various Means can compose the various expressions to say something about themselves, or can ask other people to say how they perceive the possessor