Time is out of joint

At a time when “time is out of joint” - as Hamlet would say to his audience - and a time when history is the leisure of the privileged, JANUE considers a different approach: distinguishing between three different steps of organizing the history of a house.

First, there is “JANUE, the prototype”: these are the cuts that make us think and feel. They are the balmy touch of a memory we cherish, the shape yielded by an instant we remember and that haunts us in future creations. They constitute the memory of the house, its own history, somewhere between the cut patterns and the actual collections, more as artworks than as series. In rare cases, a prototype may never become more than that and, in that case, it is a unique piece.

Second, there is “JANUE, the archetype”: we grow in different directions, the restless life of forms following the touch of fabrics we encounter. This includes all the variations on the existing prototypes and they can vary with season and fabrics. So, instead of counting series from year to year and season to season, the idea is to have a dynamic, sagacious, resplendent and growing relation between ideal prototypes and varying archetypes. 

Third, there is “JANUE, sui generis”: in case a client wants to adapt a piece to their own specific requirements, one can improvise on an existing archetype.

The main ambition of JANUE is not just to produce new shapes but to combine them with feeling, imagining and thinking. To mingle silent senses with subtle words. JANUE is an old dandy with antiquated ideas who thinks that words matter and reflection is important. She struggles on that border between an old medieval Brussels and the new boulevards. Without even knowing it, she is closer to Charles Buls, defender of the Mont des Arts and portrayed on the Grass Market with a handlebar moustache, a book and his dog, than to the modern. JANUE is a dandy following either the meandering steps on the rare cobbled stones of Brussels or exercising some cool strutting on what’s left of the new parts.

JANUE has two faces, so she is multiple, mainly under control but sometimes restless and even confused. It is hard to have one face, let alone two. She still resists growing in time, like a human being, from young to old age.

However, the choice is made for movements from the prototype to the unique, from the virtual, the sudden intuition to its repetition and to the exceptional. It is a different idea of time, made for those who are not bothered with ends, with straight lines, with bodies growing old. 

Concept co-produced by Céline Van den Bossche & Prof. dr. Vlad Ionescu