In conversation with the boundary-pushing designer ahead of his show at Wings Independent Fashion Festival.
If fashion has long been a mirror to society, then Joash Teo, better known by his design alias Jotéo, is shattering the glass and stitching the pieces back together (into an intimidatingly sculptural, yet wearable, silhouette).
As he prepares to showcase his newest collection, titled Vampire of the Vanities, at this Friday’s Wings Independent Fashion Festival, I caught up with the designer amidst the blur of preparation for his only pre-show interview. With finishing touches being added to looks and talks of the sheer logistics of transportation (without giving anything away), unbridled viscerality envelopes every aspect of Vampire of the Vanities, revealing a glimpse of the undeniable evolution of the young couturier.
The concept for Vampire of the Vanities was conceived the same way as many inspired ideas: through film. For Jotéo that film was Robert Eggers’s recent interpretation of Nosferatu. “I’ve always personally gravitated toward more Gothic references, but I typically tempered it with something else” he explains. “Gothic, but never gory or horror. But there was something about the way that film was made—it was visceral, Gothic, and you got the horror. Even when you saw blood, it wasn’t done in a gratuitous or vulgar way.”
“The blood perfectly draping down the neck, looking like an earring, or the way a coat was disheveled, looking like some sort of architectural form around the body—that resonated with me, especially with my given style: black and sculptural.”
For Joash, the pieces about to be unveiled in Vampire of the Vanities are an instinctive magnification of his ability to convey story through design. “The original line that everyone knows me for is Umbrakinesis” he explains, referring to his previous 2022 collection. “That was just pure shaping of black velvet into more hard-shadowed forms—going from 2D to 3D. But this time I thought, okay, that’s the technique, but what about the concept and narrative?”
“It’s about how everybody gives in to their darker selves, or even the repression of your darker self, and seeing how that can manifest in some very detestable or toxic ways… The narrative we’ve built is around a vampire princess who has forgotten she’s a vampire. She’s been forced to hide out and live with humans. But as the line progresses, there’s a bit of a crescendo—we get darker, more visceral, more striking. It culminates in her returning to a pure vampiric form.”
Joash acknowledges that there have also been some conversations about the new collection’s overlap with the book Bonfire of the Vanities, a 1987 novel by Tom Wolfe. “It talks about ideas of luxury and the class of wealth thinking they’re untouchable by law or the hardships of life. Something about that painted the world of luxury and haute couture in an evil way.”
He pauses thoughtfully. “Throughout my career, and I’ve said this as an individual creator, I can’t sit here and try to convince somebody who isn’t in the world [of haute couture] that this is not a waste of money or a malicious show of power or wealth. Sometimes it could just be that somebody happens to have the money and they indulge in that.”
His eyes light up. “But doesn’t that marry quite well with this concept? A vampire is always going to be thought of as a slightly dark or even evil creature. So I thought, okay, it’s like Anastasia’s ‘Once Upon a December,’ but instead of remembering she was this loved princess, she remembers she was once an evil empress who ruled the world. Let’s just lean into it.”
It’s a zealous concept deserving of a bold platform- something that Jotéo has found with Wings, a new independent fashion festival debuting this week in Sydney. When I ask what drew him to become involved in the event he explains, “When I came to Fashion Week for the first time as an attendee, I remember seeing all these brands, thinking, okay, there’s a stable peg of Australian brands,” Teo recalls. “But then I met Alvi [co-founder of Wings] through our mutual friend Hannah and I discovered another side of the Sydney industry.”
He explains further. “Often I see independent runways and they’re for not the most artistically integral means—just a quick cash grab, or the organizer is trying to build prestige to capitalize on later. But when Alvi said, ‘We are doing this for you guys to give you a space, we think you’re great and it’s time,’ I believed her 100%. And the same with Dan [co-founder of Wings] as well.”
“Barring my better skepticism, I thought, I trust you wholeheartedly. I’m grateful that they’ve taken me on. Not only are they giving me a platform, they’re also connecting me with the community of other young designers. It gets very lonely here. Sometimes I’ll be able to find another young designer and I feel a bit like an alien. But then I’ll talk to the other designers and they’ll go, ‘Yeah, three hours sleep. You? Two hours sleep? Okay, cool. We’re normal.'”
“Coming from Brisbane, you always see Sydney as this clean, shiny metropolitan where everything’s minimal. But through Alvi and her label Speed, I experienced something raw, something electric, something real. Coming from a world of couture, you would think I’d want to resonate with the clean, but no—the raw and electric excite me. That’s what powers all this. That’s what gives us the shape and drama.”
I ask Joash if, in the current climate of the industry, he thinks Australian fashion is ready to embrace more avant-garde, conceptual projects. “We’re at a very fine tipping point,” he considers. “Throughout the other fashion weeks I’ve attended, I can see the way it’s changed, even in an impossibly short span of time [a few years]. Hearing from my contemporaries, stylists, models, designers, even buyers—people are wanting something different. Whether that’s something as avant-garde as me is neither here nor there, but they want something real, something visceral, something they can connect with.”
He emphasizes the word: “Connection. They don’t want the convenience of global brands that can get you a style all the way from India because it’s in your size. They want to connect with the community, with the makers and crafters.”
He acknowledges the challenges, however. “Our handicap is that, given the way education is being funded, and the pressure on established creatives, we’re not in an environment to pass on skills. There are amazing young students and designers who want to present new creative voices, but what lets them down is their execution. The idea is there—if you read their manifesto or thesis, it’s incredible. But they don’t yet have the refinery to take these great ideas and put them into a wearable product.”
Referencing his own designs, Joash continues. “My pieces are avant-garde—no one’s going to walk out in a full velvet ball gown just to get coffee. I mean, please do if you’d like to, but I can’t imagine that’d be practical. But there’s still a wearability to it. You understand it. There’s this velvet dress, but there’s a zip in the back and there’s a corset. There’s an element of familiarity. You get the sense of, ‘These are wearable clothes. These will support me through the day.'”
Jotéo’s Vampire of the Vanities will show at Wings Independent Fashion Festival this Friday. Visit the Wings website for more details.
