Гусі · pronounced GUSSI
It means geese.
When Russia invaded, a strange and wonderful thing started coming out of the villages. The geese went for the soldiers. They came down on tanks and armoured vehicles with their wings wide and their necks low, furious, absurd, unafraid. A phrase followed them across the internet: mess with the honk, you get the bonk.
We had loved geese long before any of that. Our grandmothers embroidered them onto napkins and scarves, the small fierce guardians of the garden, stitched in thread by women who never once called them symbols. Then a whole country understood what our grandmothers had always known. A goose does not weigh up the odds. It simply decides that this ground is its ground.
How it started
One line of clothing, made with flyp.space. Every penny to Ukrainian charities we chose ourselves and checked ourselves.
A pop-up at W1 Curates, who put art where the advertising is supposed to go. A limited bottle with Ocean Bottle. A silk scarf you could wear like a flag, or like a headscarf, or like your grandmother’s napkin blown up to the size of your shoulders.
That is how it started, and none of it changes.
What it became
What began as one line is now a house.
GUSSI is where two artists put the work that does not fit into a record. It is the same instinct that makes a song, pointed at cloth instead. Bloom Twins design their own lines through it. The Aksis brings a second line out of the acid techno rooms, harder edged, made for a darker hour of the night.
Two artists, one house, no committee. Each collection arrives when it is ready and leaves when it is gone.
24 Feb 2022 · UA
Cross The Border
The collection we kept. It began as a song, made with Klangkarussell, and then became something you could hold.
A border is a line somebody else drew, and the collection is about refusing to accept it as the end of the sentence. Geese cross them twice a year without asking. So do songs. So, eventually, do people.
Support Ukraine. Let’s GUSSI.