In the world of fashion, there is a never-ending desire for change and innovation. Yet we are – more than ever – aware of the impact our consumerism has. Martin Niklas Wieser is a Vienna-based designer and was awarded the Fashion Award of the City of Vienna during the Austrian Fashion Awards 2024. We discussed fashion’s toxic relationship with capitalism and the challenges of making luxury accessible to the working class.

In the beginning, I think this claim was very true. Now I’m not entirely sure about it and would probably rephrase it. It is still true that these are the core belief systems that we have. But we try not to be as theoretical or academic about it. We don’t specify the gender we target. However, fashion is very categorized and conservative. So it is not that easy to keep these brackets open and undefined. That’s why we say we do menswear. But mostly women wear us. I think anyone can wear our clothes. Our sizing, for example, is quite funny because we do some really tiny things, and then we do some really big things. We don’t tailor to a specific body. And when it comes to class, it is about finding a solution to an everyday problem: That we might not have a lot of money, but have to make the most out of it. 

I think the creative industry can be a bit elitist. My first conflict with this elitist system was in education. Fashion education can be very exclusive. At first, I wasn’t really aware of this because I went to a public university in a former East German state where there was a strong working class, kind of socialist approach to education. But I felt its influence later when I applied for the Royal Collage of Art or the Central Saint Martins in the UK. I was entering a kind of bourgeois or upper class consumerist circle that I hadn’t really experienced before. It made me remember that it is important to me to do my work with a critical eye and consider class when thinking about price points, affordability and the idea of luxury.

Luxury in colloquial terms has a negative connotation for me. Mostly because it is a lifestyle and marketing term that gets overused. Along with it comes the idea of a value that you buy into. For me, high value means craftsmanship and the time spent on creating something. Luxury items don’t necessarily point that out and are more of a psychological, capitalist idea.

I would say it’s definitely a more pricey product that we’re making. And then it automatically gets put in the luxury segment. I get that. But it’s not something that I really aim at. I just cannot make it any cheaper because of the processes that are involved. For example, we work with a traditional tailoring workshop in the south of Italy that puts quite a lot of handiwork into our pieces.

I don’t think I can detach from it personally. I agree you can only read those cultural codes if you have a little bit of training, which is usually education, which is usually expensive. However, I think some things are just beautiful and they’re beautiful to many. And I don’t really have a problem with this trained eye perspective. While I do believe that knowledge is out there and you can acquire it outside costly education as well, someone needs to point you in the right direction. I have the feeling that when you grow up working class, you just intrinsically understand or intuitively know that some things are not made for you. And I think this is used as a very powerful tool in society to keep people out. For instance, when I walk through expensive stores with my childhood friends or my family, they would know the products don’t address them. And they then would reject these products because of how they identify themselves. “This is for someone else.” 

When we press the seams or when we age things, it makes the items more accessible in a way. When I have this really beautiful suit, and then I press it and age it or destroy it a bit, it becomes a little bit more approachable. It’s not this luxury item behind a shiny glass anymore. It becomes real and I can touch it. I don’t treat the items like they are made out of gold. They should be something that is used and worn and maybe destroyed along the way.

There is a certain heaviness in Vienna which I quite like. There’s a weight to ideas and sort of an intellectual soup that you can swim in or dip your toes into. And the interest in fashion is not entirely driven by luxury or showing off. There is an interest in longevity and long-standing ideas. I don’t think Vienna is trend-driven. Maybe because there is a tradition in thinkers or writers and other artists. I think Viennese fashion is a bit intellectual. It’s because there is enough time here. It’s a very slow city, so there’s time given to processes, ideas and questions. You have to come out with something that lasts quite a while because you can’t come out every second month with a new idea. 

In the beginning, when we started this brand, I was interested in including a variety of topics in our collections. And now I’m interested in really working with the pieces. It is less of a society answering machine now. Now I want to tap into technical solutions and shapes, how the fabric feels and how I can treat and manipulate a garment. And then I am fascinated by what happens when someone wears it. What does this connection to the body do to the personality and characters that you’re creating? This is something very subtle in fashion, yet central to what I want to do.

I think we’re very much governed by the capitalist system that we face every day. However, I don’t believe we hold that much power and can have a huge impact on it. But I do think we have the creative power of imagining and creating something that is more human centric. And that is what we are doing now. We put the human at the core. We dress the person. Obviously we also try to manage our money, our cash flow and our monetary situation. But at the center of our ideas is always the person, the human.