‘A_PLAN_APPLICATION is just about the clothes and nothing else. I also have my art, so when I’m designing clothes, I don’t feel like I have to fill them with meaning.I want wearable clothing that fulfils its function as clothing, so it can be a part of your daily life. It should be more than decoration. I’m not interested in what you might call ‘costume’. I mean, those kind of ‘fashion’ clothes are compelling as experiments, but going about my daily life, I have other requirements.

I’ve always felt this way about clothes. As a teenager inBerlin, I often made my own as I didn’t really have the money. Back then, many people were, or they were buying their clothes at army-surplus stores or at kilo sales. That was also a political statement: you wouldn’t buy Gap or H&M because you didn’t want to be seen supporting massive corporations. Later, when I was modelling, the clothes I had to wear were often more like costumes; they weren’t me. Which is fundamental because not only can clothes define your sense of self, they can also make you more you. As an artist, you are always creating your own world and I don’t think it’s an accident that various women artists, including Georgia O’Keeffe, made their own clothes. Artists are hyper-aware of visual codes, language, shape, and movement and art for me is that awareness.

I brought this sense of seeing, thinking and feeling to A_PLAN_APPLICATION. The label started after a conversation with Virgil [Abloh] and Peter [Saville, designer and Blessmann’s partner] about how fashion seemed to be either disposable or marketing-led. I decided I wanted to make clothes that concentrated on the essentials – silhouette, cut, colour, touch, texture, shape and movement – so I began by thinking about my own experience. Which piece do I always go back to? Which ones did I think I wanted but then never wore? Designing the collection has still been a big learning curve for me, though.

With a piece of art, you only need one person to like and buy it. But with a fashion label, you need to convince a bigger audience of retailers and then customers willing to buy into the vision it represents. Another challenge is the speed at which everything happens in fashion; it’s so much faster than art – even when you don’t want to take part in the race, which I don’t. I always say that A_PLAN_APPLICATION is for people with longer attention spans.

Now that the collection is out in the world, I’m just really curious to watch the clothes become part of people’s lives and see them actually worn. I’m fascinated by the idea of what they might mean to other people. How these complete strangers are going to make them their own and associate them to specific events in their lives. We all do it – that night you danced in a particular pair of shoes, the place you went wearing those trousers, or the coat you used as a cover when you slept in the back of the car. What I want more than anything is for these clothes to become an integral part of people’s lives.’