English Version | Editor's Letter: The Kitsch Issue, February 2024

Kitsch please!

Avery Richardson
Jamie Nelson

No one knows for sure how the word kitsch was born, although everything points to Germany, at the end of the 19th century. Above all, no one really knows how to define the word. But we all recognize kitsch when we see it. It’s present in the most varied artistic (or anti-artistic) formats that surround us and embedded in the pleasure of so many of our childhood and adolescence memories. And these memories end up being collective, in each generation.

I was born in the 70s and my adolescence went through the 80s, periods that were particularly rich, and crazy, in kitsch references and a lot of plastic. From the psychedelic and loud patterns on the wallpaper to the tiles that covered the trendiest houses at the time and the decorative excesses in fashion, a look that excelled in simplicity seemed not to be complete until it was polluted with big, loud jewelry - and if it was in plastic and neon colors, even better. The excess buttons, zippers or other accessories that were completely unnecessary and intended to be merely decorative were topped off with the cherry on top of the shoulders: absurdly disproportionate padding (especially for someone just over 5 feet tall, like me). Almost everything captured in photos, which my generation spent the 90s and 2000s trying to hide, as if a sense of taste for clean design and simplicity had always been part of our choices.

Nyaueth Riam
Pierfrancesco Artini

In this issue, we pay homage to kitsch, with its playful and naive side, and leave on hold concepts such as good taste, elegance, sophistication or subtlety. We play with the most judged, criticized and despised aesthetic ever, throughout the pages that follow, and let those who have never sinned or who have no skeletons in the closet or a guilty pleasure kitsch, be it a song, a “cute" doll or that "cheesy" or excessive piece of clothing, but which was (or still is) irresistible to us, cast the first stone.

Ironically, if on the one hand kitsch is accused of being fake, it can be the most genuine and true fake, more than many pretentious “originals” that are not so honest in the emotions that define us as human beings.

Luz Pavon
Pierre et Gilles

Translated from the original in The Kitsch Issue, published February 2024. Full stories and credits in the print version.