rigas modes (riga fashions) project explores the obvious but neglected:
pensioners’ fashions in riga.

we started this project with a purely aesthetic interest, looking at combinations of colours and textures, silhouettes and cuts. however, photo-documentation of pensioners’ styles suggested other layers of meaning: inevitability of poverty and death - but also a possibility for wisdom that comes with old age.

as one grows old, one’s body changes, and the clothes that one enjoyed in younger years develop a new relationship with this body. Is it that riga’s pensioners cling to their 1960s and 1970s fashions just because they can’t
afford to buy new clothes? or do they hope to stop the flow of time?

our work at rigas modes has been proceeding in several steps. first, we produced photographic documentation of pensioners’ actual street styles. second, we photographed selected models in their own clothes in a professional studio. third, we applied the insight gained in the previous two and photographed our models in an urban setting – in a staged situation that tries to walk a fine line between 'fashion shoot' for a glossy magazine and 'reconstruction of reality'.

in this project, we are trying to understand something about riga. what is its true character? how does it change the human being? and, most importantly, in 40 years or so, what will we look like?