AELIZA’s Time To Shine: An Interview With Jack Harper

COMPLEX: What is AELIZA?

Jack Harper: AELIZA was born out of disillusion and uncertainty. We’re not an eccentric platform that endeavours in statement-heavy pieces—we’re a platform seeking essentialist communication, looking to use fashion as a facility for open conversations and questions that we have about humanity. Psychology and philosophy are at the core of our brand, and we don’t look to be the loudest in the room. We don’t look to be right, either. We look to be effective and concise. We are a mirror, which is why a mirror was central to the first lookbook.

You’ve presented AELIZA as “a dialogic study of the autonomous individual.” Could you explain what the purpose of doing that is?

This is our subheading to the headline; it’s our mission statement. To simplify it, it reads: “What does it mean to be a free individual?” That’s a really big fucking question! When I was asking myself this question, the first thing you think is, “Where on earth do I start?” It was upon realising that instead of dwelling on the question, it was time to start a project that facilitated this question. I’ve wanted to start a project for as long as I can remember, however I really struggle pursuing creativity without reason. If there’s no reason, then I put it aside.

Talk to us about the process behind setting up the imprint—why did you want to it in the first place?

It’s extremely difficult to summarise in short, as there are many reasons. There was certainly a lot of industry frustration that built up into this—AELIZA being the reaction. I felt like my frustrations needed to be proactive rather than sitting there moping about it. I had the idea for roughly four years. The case study behind the name was based off an early computer program titled ‘ELIZA’ by a computer scientist at the MIT called Joseph Weizenbaum. AELIZA was part of my dissertation at university, for context. Without getting too wordy, you’d write into the computer program in the same way as you’d talk to any individual. 

The computer would simply write back exactly what you said but into the format of a question. From this, you’d get endless dialogue with something that doesn’t actually know what you’re saying. But as you can establish that you’re not talking to another human being but a computer, you somewhat feel secure and safe, free of judgement and scrutiny. I thought that it was fascinating, but also the sad reality of humanity: we only really feel secure with ourselves. I felt that, in fashion, there needed to be a brand that focuses on one’s mental, one’s self. Not in a way that’s provocative, but in a way that’s peaceful and gentle—it’s borderline therapy, to a degree.

Over time, I became increasingly engrossed with being able to facilitate this into the fashion and design format, but instead of a computer program, I tried to translate this vision and feeling into fashion, product design and visual communication. When the pandemic hit, it forced me to slow down but, fortunately, the benefit to that happening was finally being able to accumulate all the individual thoughts I had throughout the years and come up with the case study for what I wanted to do.