Erin Shin, a multidisciplinary artist and designer living in New York City, is interested in examining people’s unconscious actions and intentions when producing art. They dissect the fragments that make up someone’s identity and seek to extract their subconscious truths. They design and use surrealism to transcend boundaries of gender and categorization, and to visualize humans as individual beings. Influenced by the study of cinematography, politics, art history, and gender studies, they design and examine self-identity as well as the broader binaries that exist in our world.

Describe your background and how you got to where you are now as a designer.
At a young age, I was drawn to fashion and beauty, playing with sticker garments on paper dolls and styling myself in unusual, ridiculous ways. Furthermore, my mother was a natural creative whose dreamed of becoming a fashion designer. Her dream was halted by the responsibilities of raising my brother and me. She taught me how to sew and crochet at a young age. I always looked up to her style and taste, and it is an intimate connection that we share. While I was growing up, my creative energy went into movement (dance), and this has translated into designing because my understanding of the body stems from a deeply ingrained connection to body as art. During my adolescence, although I was innately drawn to fashion expression, I resisted it due to an internalized belief that fashion was “frivolous,” and I refused to succumb to a gendered version of femininity. However, while in school for pre-law, pursuing a degree in Global Studies and Philosophy, I was also freelance modeling and involved in the creative scene in Los Angeles. This inspired me to freely experiment with my style and creative pursuits. I released this internalized resistance and let myself actually just have fun. Through freeing this suppressed side of me, I found catharsis in creative expression through fashion that was irreplaceable.

What do you aim to express or question with your designs?
Ultimately, I want to create a movement and community that takes autonomy regardless of the dread of consciousness, to cultivate beauty and art in spite of the numbing of capitalism, to generate individual and communal catharsis and healing. I am a multimedia designer. I create and envision creating sculptures, installations, performance pieces, and films as well as wearables. There is so much potential in creating around the human body that isn't just a constructed piece of fabric to wear and waste. I want to serve and create a community of people who crave and appreciate art and beauty to move souls in little ways through cracks of mundanity.

As a multidisciplinary artist, how do you balance your many artistic interests and identities?
This brings to mind the question of whether fashion is art. In my experience, once capitalism takes control over the intention, it becomes a commodity, rather than art. With this tension of creating for profit versus creating for the sake of art (a principle of the Dada movement that I’m inspired by greatly), I aim to navigate creating in the context of fashion only through authenticity, and this is mainly expressed through the practice of automatism and emotional excavation. With my interests in fields of sculpture, visual art, photography, styling, philosophy, poetry, theory, on top of design, I aim to balance these with ideas and pieces that prioritize the concept through the lens of its aesthetic value and functionality. I like to play with the limitation and the infinite of the human body.

How do the different disciplines you explore inform one another?
In regard to critical theory, the collection (“Time is a thing the body moves through”) serves a good example of the way I filter this idea. The title comes from T. Fleischmann’s book “Time Is the Thing a Body Moves through,” in which they navigate the individual through space, friendship, and place, and ultimately leave their gender and sexuality uninscribed, unnamed. They explore how the spaces in between preexisting social and economic structures provide an alternative for how the individual can exist, unlabeled and uncategorized. I was drawn to this insistence on the absence of labeling, and digested this idea through a paradox of unyielding versus malleable forms: through the wool, metal, chiffon, tulle, and rubber materiality creating tension between the body’s movement and the variations in styling. I wanted to deconstruct “femininity” into split silhouettes (i.e., the metal bra and the cotton tie bustle) that hyperbolizes femininity in certain styling and subverts it in others. In this way, I like to incorporate theory in subtle, intentional ways that leave room for ambiguity and interpretation.

Overall, the research process (philosophy, theory, history, etc.) is a huge part of the creative process that results in the collection, and although I doubt wearers will read through the citations and references, I hope that the feeling and concept come across in the collection. I ultimately want to leave the viewer and wearer with a feeling.

What characterizes your brand? Are there distinctive features incorporated in your designs?
My brand characteristics include being sincere, post-apocalyptic, gender-free, fine-art-blended, subverted classics, otherworldly, erotic, sensitive, powerful, and elevated. I incorporate distinctive features including subverted pattern-making techniques, hand-craftsmanship, tailoring, sculpting, unconventional mediums, bias draping, up-cycling, potential for layering and styling, and distinct details and hardware.

What aspects of surrealism and absurdity influence your designs?
I would say the Dada movement is a big influence for me currently. I believe in creating for art’s sake, for imbuing absurdity into the fashion context; but, nevertheless, rooted in authenticity, brought to life by my practices of excavating the subconscious through automatism.

What is the intention behind your “Swallow Leviathan” collection, and how have you used form and materiality to explore the human psyche?
The “Swallow Leviathan” collection started from the myth of the sea monster “Leviathan,” whose myriad of historical and mythological references include a female sea creature that swallows the souls of the damned, Thomas Hobbes’s political theory advocating for a social contract by the rule of an absolute sovereign, and a term regarding giant whales. I was also greatly inspired by the song “Leviathan” by Flavien Berger. I interpret the human form into a past-human form, through the silhouettes and materials of the looks (a latex egg-like dress sandwiching the body, a steel metal dress with welded pattern-making and human hair extension). I dived into traditional garment-making techniques such as needle felting, couture corsetry, and pattern making, then combined it with practices of laser-cutting, latex hardware and details, and flipping the needle-felted wool inside-out to highlight the fuzziness rather than the traditional needle-felted texture.

The first look/chapter, “expulsion of Guts,” symbolizes the vulnerability of birth and coming into existence, one fantasized through the literal externalization of the human spirit coming into the physical world. The cotton bobbinet push-up Bustino Robe features needle-felted wool, a front zip, and latex straps. This is paired with the low-rise, drop-crotch trousers made with up-cycled leather and wool that has been laser-cut with the shape of human-intestines. It has a cotton-bobbinet trouser lining on the inside for comfort and wearability.

The second look/chapter, “The Illusion of Freedom,” symbolizes the life struggle of power and control in which we are vulnerable to the elements of life and struggle for autonomy over our path and body. It features a copper-patina steel rod suctioned between a rubber latex strapless dress.

The third look/chapter, “Metal-Morphosis,” symbolizes the transcendence of the human form in death/ transformation. It features a steel DRESS with a welded gusset wave, leather side lacing, and human hair. There is a separate lining for this made from up cycled leather with the same patterning technique for the front piece. Through these chapters, I divulge into a hyperbole of the life cycle of the human psyche: birth, life, and death/rebirth, through the metaphor of “swallowing the leviathan,” the leviathan being the great, ambiguous evil.

Upcycling garments is a part of your design practice. What does sustainable design mean to you?
Because the fashion industry is based on an inherently wasteful and unsustainable system, I strive to work in sustainable ways that use what is already existing, to transform waste into value, and therefore engage in a resistance against the unsustainable, wasteful system. Most of my materials are either deadstock fabrics or up-cycled garments.

Many of your designs are photographed outside or in industrial spaces, how do you establish these concepts and what do you look for in terms of location, lighting, and composition?
Photographing the garments and designs is an integral part of my creative process, as I need to see them on a body and in movement to push the story forwards. In terms of location, I am greatly inspired by the tension between nature and humans. This can be in abandoned industrial spaces, in the otherwise invisible spaces that we pass by with little attention, in the spaces that are no longer used for their original function but have either been transformed into another function or functionless space or have adapted themselves into a new context. Often I’m drawn to how people interact with public spaces, and how these mundane spaces can serve as a set for the visual story of a shoot. The liminality of these spaces (abandoned train stations, construction sites, etc.) fascinates me. I work with photographer collaborators, particularly my close creative mate Louis F. Cota, to compose visual narratives within these spaces.

How do you see yourself as a designer in the future, and how would you like to reach consumers?
I see “the Air in Sin” in the future as the following:

This is my vision for the brand/movement:

THE AIR IN SIN IS AN ARTISANAL MULTIDISCIPLINARY AND MULTIMEDIA POETIC MOVEMENT WITH A FASHION CONTEXT WHICH EXTERNALIZES PRECIOUSNESS. AUSTERITY AND ABSURDITY ARE

INTERTWINED INTO A MUTED SATIRE OF REALITY THAT PUSHES FORTH A POST APOCALYPTIC FORM OF the “PAST HUMAN”. THE AIR IN SIN’s PURPOSE IS TO EXTERNALIZE A VISION OF A FUTURE WHICH FAINTLY ADDRESSES THE AGONIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS WITH AN EMPOWERED, POETIC, AND EXPERIMENTAL REINCARNATION FOR A NOT-SO-DISTANT FUTURE THAT MERGES THE INSTINCTUAL “ITCH” OF BEING HUMAN. THE “ITCH” BEING THE CRAVING FOR KNOWLEDGE, FOR ART, FOR MEANING. INTO A CONTAINED ENTROPY THAT ALLOWS FOR INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNAL CATHARSIS. THE AIR IN SIN SEEKS TO EXTERNALIZE THE SUBCONSCIOUS CRAVINGS OF LUST AND HOPE IN RESONANT FORMS OF FAMILIARITY THAT SUBVERTS THE PAST AND PRESENT EXISTING FORMS INTO A BINARIES OF THE ANTHROPOCENE, THE AIR IN SIN SABOTAGES THE SOCIETAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL CONDITIONINGS WHICH OPPRESS THE SOARING OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND AUTHENTICITY. THE AIR IN SIN CATERS TO THE NIHILISTIC AND EXISTENTIAL TENDENCIES OF THIS GENERATION/DAY-AND-AGE TO REGURGITATE A ‘PAST HUMAN’ PERSPECTIVE THAT LIBERATES FROM THE NUMBNESS OF THE COMMODIFICATION AND DESENSITIZATION OF LIFE, OF VITALITY. THE AIR IN SIN PRACTICES PRECIOUSNESS IN DEALING WITH

MATERIALS AND RESOURCES BECAUSE THERE IS A GHOST IN ANYTHING TANGIBLE. THE AIR IN SIN BRINGS FORTH A VISION OF REINCARNATING ELEMENTS OF HUMANITY WITH HEDONISTIC

AUSTERITY.

How has your interest in evolution and the subconscious been explored in your collection, “Time is a Thing the Body Moves Through?”
In that collection, I explore the entropy of subconsciousness through the paradox of textures and layering of the pieces. Heavily influenced by principles from the Dada movement, the pieces can intertwine with each other to create multiple silhouettes and textures that contrast the physical body with the manifestation of the inner “self.” The linear progression of time that manifests in our bodies is contrasted with the nonlinear progression of time that we experience through our concept of self, and I’ve explored this feeling in this collection.

What is the significance of contrasting textures in this collection?
Textures are a significant part of my design language. I’m fascinated by binaries and love to exaggerate and subvert them. For example, in the Steel Choker piece, I’ve contrasted the cold hardness of the metal with the delicate, deconstructed tulle and leather lacing in the back. Parallel to this idea is the pairing of the Steel Bra with the Hand Sewn Distressed Leather Corset with the Cotton Voile Lining. Pairing a dense material with a skin-like material reaches for a post-human version of the feminine body. The Tube Tulle Tutu also contrasts cotton tulle with rubber tubbing, and the heaviness of the tubing plays with the drape of the soft, feather-like tulle on the body. Furthermore, this collection explores how texture changes when placed in different contexts of silhouettes on the body.

Are there aspects of the fashion industry you would like to influence with your designs?
I would like to imbue a sense of preciousness in the fashion industry. A preciousness that acts as a resistance to the numbing overconsumption and waste that the industry produces, and to bring together the community that defines the collective and individual “preciousness” within the fashion context. I want to reemphasize the miracle of the human body in a utopia/dystopia lens that pushes forth the understanding of what we wear and how we present ourselves.

Social Media.
Instagram: @the_air_in_sin
Website: https://theairinsin.com/

CREW CREDITS:
PhotoBook Editor-In-Chief: Alison Hernon
PhotoBook Creative Director: Mike Ruiz + @mikeruiz.one
Talent: Erin Shin
Photographer: Louis F. Cota
Tearsheets by Daniel López, Art Director, PhotoBook Magazine
Interview by Mia Fyson, Contributor, PhotoBook Magazine