The first question
An anonymous metch artist. Tokyo, Japan.
The first sketches came while my stepdaughter was in hospital. Say? began with a word I could not leave behind.
The word that stayed
I was on a train in Tokyo with my stepdaughter, travelling to our hotel. She felt unwell and kept saying “say”. It is difficult to explain what happens to an ordinary word when you hear it in a moment like that. The word itself does not change. Everything around it does. You stop hearing it as a sound you can pass over. It becomes the centre of your attention, because the person saying it matters more than anything else happening around you. That journey stayed with me for reasons that had nothing to do with the view outside the train.
Later, while she was in hospital, I began the first sketches for the design that became Say? I was not looking for a collection concept. Drawing gave me somewhere to put an experience I could not organise into a comfortable explanation. The word came first because it was already there. I did not have to invent it, or search for something that would sound meaningful on a shirt. It had arrived in a real moment of fear. Returning to it on paper was a way of staying with what mattered without trying to resolve everything in a sentence.
Giving it a shape
On the finished piece, Say? sits above a drawn world. I see a relationship between those two things. A world can look complete from a distance and feel suddenly uncertain from where you are standing. The question mark allows that uncertainty to remain visible. I did not want the word to become an instruction that pretends to know how someone else should feel. A question makes room for the person wearing it. It can hold fear, attention, a conversation or the beginning of a decision. Its meaning does not have to end where my experience began.
The green and the pale ground are important to that feeling. For me, green carries an association with health and the possibility of continuing. The off-white gives it space. The handwritten character keeps the word close to a person rather than turning it into an official statement. Look at the design as a whole and then look at the little marks around it. The relationship between them is where the piece becomes personal. The large word catches your attention; the smaller world asks you to stay with it. Both belong to the same question.
What we carry forward
I associate Say? with courage, health and the impulse to act. Courage here does not mean having a perfect response. Sometimes it means giving your attention to the person beside you and taking the next necessary step. Health can become the most important thing in the world without announcing itself in advance. That is the understanding I bring to the design. I want the piece to remind someone that being able to move, make something or care for another person is worth noticing. The work begins in a difficult memory, but the direction it points towards is life.
At metch, we keep the artists anonymous because the work should meet you before a name does. I can share the beginning of Say? without making my family's private life the whole identity of the garment. Some parts of that memory will always belong to our family. What I offer is the drawing, the word and the meaning I have given them. Once you wear the piece, your own experiences enter that space. Perhaps the question reminds you to speak. Perhaps it asks you to begin something you have delayed. I would rather leave that possibility open than decide your answer for you.
