The 12th edition of the international and interdisciplinary FASHIONCLASH Festival took place digitally from 26 – 28 February 2021. One of the programme components was the New Fashion Narratives exhibition that was set up as a physical edition and recorded with interviews and portraits of the participants. www.fashionclash.nl
Designers are GARCIABELLO, Gjorgji Despodov and Anelia Antova, JOSIPA STEFANEC, STM16:9ftt, LEWV, Laura Snijders & Inge Vaandering, CLARA CHU, Wille-Meike Brand, Anouk van Kampen Wieling and Nina Dekker, SCHEPERS BOSMAN, Antoine Peters, Femke de Vries.
This video has been broadcasted as part of the digital edition of FASHIONCLASH Festival (26-28 February 2021)
The fashion designers at the heart of the New Fashion Narratives exhibition take fashion as a mission. They belong to a generation of designers who are exploring the boundaries of their discipline and questioning the system and the fashion industry. The works move between the trans-disciplinary domains of fashion, social design, visual art and always work with the ultimate user or consumer. Introducing contemporary themes such as inclusivity, gender, consumption creates new narratives for fashion.
Anouk van Kampen Wieling and Nina Dekker
Utrecht, The Netherlands
Anouk van Kampen Wieling and Nina Dekker met during Dutch Design Week in 2019, a couple of months after they both graduated. They immediately connected over their shared love of workwear, unconventional materials and oversized silhouettes. Both being fashion designers with a strong focus on material development and visual storytelling, they were curious to see where collaboration could lead them. ‘Unconventional overload’ is a result of that deep dive that brought them from Dutch fisherman garments to Chinese tea carriers and everything in between.
Anouk and Nina both have the habit to collect unconventional textiles, such as rubber boats, car covers and old tents. The existing details in these materials became the starting point to explore new esthetics, using the silhouettes that the research in workwear and vintage military garments brought. The garments that originated from this research challenged Anouk and Nina to explore new ways to exhibit them in a way that suggests a body or a posture, without the use of a mannequin, as a way to bring them alive.
Antoine Peters
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Started on the catwalk, Antoine Peters’ expressions developed in the broadest sense of their meaning. Naturally evolved into a creative studio, nowadays his work shifts within fashion, art and architecture, in which the relationship towards fashion, clothing and the human body are a binding factor. Ranging from wearable to totally unwearable and from industrial to handmade, his ideas result in a world where product design, textile design, print design, and art installations go hand in hand. With everything Antoine creates, it’s his goal to slow down people – and their too rapid opinions – and to spread optimism and a little smile.
“Clothing is so fascinating because it’s close to the body, and has the power to influence your movement, feeling or surrounding, but at the same time, it doesn’t have to be functional at all. The relation of my work towards the body has always been ambiguous. A garment does not need to obey the body or even needs a physical host to be more powerful! I’m investigating this by the means of textile sculptures, optical illusions and site-responsive clothing which extends outside the body, literally blending with space.
Antoine Peters his contribution will be newly created work and is a “work-in-progress”
CLARA CHU
London, United Kingdom
Clara Chu is a London based multidisciplinary artist and designer who graduated from the Royal College of Art in London in 2019. She creates work that re-imagines everyday, mundane objects in our domestic world, mixing mass production with the handcrafted. Visionary and colourful pop accessories challenge the concept of body association with anonymous designs such as a vegetable peeler, or a spoon. Much of it questions the prominence of fast-moving consumer goods, blurring boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms of culture through humorous transformations.
In ‘It’s Cloudy at Home’ Clara explores consumer symbols in an absurd and humorous manner, displaying various ‘accessories’ including handbags, shoes and hats transformed from everyday household items. This work stems from her interests in the relationship between domesticity and our cultural and social codes, with the aim to re-imagine the advertised contexts of these objects from indoor to their resulting presence outdoor.
CLARA CHU
Femke de Vries
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Femke de Vries works as an artist/researcher in a fashion where she explores the interaction between clothing as material objects of use and fashion as a process of value production. Through re-readings from various perspectives, she aims to expose the workings of fashion/modes of fashion. Seeking alternative scenarios for makers and users, she takes into consideration the role of fashion communication formats, cultural references and material culture questioning hierarchies, mystification, alienation and emphasizing the physical reality of use. Her research led to practise is driven by collaboration and results in works that connect theory and practice.
She has a background in Fashion Design and Fashion Strategy (ArtEZ Fashion Masters). In collaboration with Onomatopee, she published two books: Fashioning Value – Undressing Ornament (2015, reprint 2018) and Dictionary Dressings (2016). She lectures at various universities (amongst which ArtEZ Fashion Masters, Fashion Strategy) and has developed specialized educational programs in the field of fashion research. Together with Hanka van der Voet and Elisa van Joolen, she founded Warehouse, a place for clothes in the context in Amsterdam.
‘When the fashion flocks want to let loose, not just any playlist will do’ is a reading of texts from fashion magazines. The tracks are textual assemblages from a text- archive put together by Femke de Vries in which she collected all paratexts (titles, captions etc.) from 12 high-end luxury fashion magazines during the course of a year. The language used in these fashion magazines is a language that we might read, but we don’t speak out loud or hear being spoken. By reading these text-assemblages out loud, that bring certain fashion-dynamics to the surface, we can explore the textual realm of fashion.
GARCIABELLO
Arnhem, The Netherlands
GARCIABELLO is a sustainable brand inspired by everyday life and the paths we have come along. “The concepts in each collection speak of what’s ours – of the home as land and shelter.”
The items in the latest collection ‘ESENCIAL’ by GARCIABELLO are made out of donated hand-me-downs: old or discarded clothes combined with raw biodegradable cotton and are locally produced. “Comfortable garments to wear at home, to work, for free time. We learned the importance of working with those next to us. Being at home.”
The GARCIABELLO concept originated in Tierra del Fuego, a province in the south of Argentina, by Juliana Garcia Bello. The brand was later founded in 2017 in La Plata, Buenos Aires, in the dining room of Juliana’s grandmother, Dora Duba. In October 2019, GARCIABELLO moved to Arnhem, The Netherlands.
Gjorgji Despodov and Anelia Antova
Sofia, Bulgaria
‘The Martian Chronicles’ is a collaboration between multidisciplinary designer Gjorgji Despodov and Anelia Antova, a Fashion MA student of the National Academy of Art in Sofia, Bulgaria. Gjorgji mainly works in the visual arts field, focusing on graphic design, art direction, 3d visuals and illustration. Anelia works with conventional and unconventional materials to create clothes, objects, illustrations, stories – inspired by reality and beyond.
“We are closer and closer to inhabiting Mars every single day. But what will happen once we settle on another planet, or once we meet extraterrestrial civilization? Destroying and conquering, afraid from the different and the unknown, feeling superior, the same loop continues through the history of mankind. Facing our space neighbours without the violence?
‘The Martian Chronicles’ is a video that shows how the exploration and preservation of the new and different are displaced by fear and destruction.
Instagram Gjorgji
Instagram Anelia
JOSIPA STEFANEC
Zaprešić, Croatia
JOSIPA STEFANEC is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the field of fashion through art. The work ‘HUMAN SHELLS’, made from recycled denim, is inspired by cocoons in nature. “In this chaotic period, one has a need for intimate space, the need for contemplation in a public space. The objects form is evolving from oversized clothing and has an important relation to the human body, as a kind of protection and third skin. The installation of ‘HUMAN SHELLS’ is reminiscent of ephemeral architecture, like mobile shelters. A modern nomad that is surrounded by the familiar picture of his own private shelter, wherever he goes.”
Josipa currently works as Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Textile Technology, Textile and Fashion Department in Zagreb, Croatia.
Website
Laura Snijders & Inge Vaandering
The Hague, The Netherlands
‘Murmur’ is a collaboration between designers Laura Snijders and Inge Vaandering. While Laura works by using the objects and clothes around her, Inge creates textiles and shapes based on the characteristics of materials. Both designers question current leading structures in society, whether it is the temporary, changing norms and systems that Laura is interested in, or the timeless role of our senses which is explored by Inge. For ‘Murmur’ they have investigated their love for material sensitivity and found a way of combining the opposing elements in each other’s practices.
The installation will be exploring our sensory experience and shifts the focus from looking at a flat screen to our relationship with materials. “Only sparkles and blurry shine? What about a ripple, a tingle or anything sour or pungent?”
Instagram Laura / Instagram Inge
LEWV
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Designer duo LEWV focusses their practice on the use of different materials and techniques. With a strong background in the development of current topics, often related to well-being, Lena Winterink and Elin Visser develop their concepts into a physical representation of a feeling or emotion. With a fascination for colour, they research the different aspects and qualities of textiles. A result is a contemporary approach to the way they interact with what happens around them and how they relate to themselves and others. It is LEWV’s goal to create awareness and reflection on topics that influence mental and physical being.
The work ‘OZONE’ consists of three garments that represent the atmospheres that can be felt during physical distance while reflecting on yourself and the space around you. Considering our breath is one of the main reasons why we need to keep our distance from others, the element of air is an overall theme that gives the atmosphere of lightness in the collection.
SCHEPERS BOSMAN
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Designers Sanne Schepers and Anne Bosman work together as SCHEPERS BOSMAN. The heart of their work is the small-scale production facility called ‘SCHEPERS BOSMAN Factory‘ in Amsterdam, where they design, develop and produce for themselves and for others. “We focus on Dutch manufactured workwear merged with music and art.” They cooperate closely with music bands and brands such as Mephisto, Hacked By__, Pinqponq, Enschede Textielstad and a lot of creative individuals. SCHEPERS BOSMAN is their personal act of resistance, to the fashion system, to the system of production and retail: Made in The Netherlands.
With an installation SCHEPERS BOSMAN visualizes the heart of their work: a rebuilt of the ‘SCHEPERS BOSMAN Factory’ in an exhibition format.
“SCHEPERS BOSMAN is a celebration of cooperative individuals. For us, there has only ever been one manner: together. It is by far the best way to create.”
STM16:9ftt
Gothenburg, Sweden
The collective STM16:9ftt consists of choreographer Nicole Neidert, Director of photography Joakim Envik Karlsson, and Fashion designer Linnea Bågander. Their shared work is based on issues around materiality; intersecting body, material, space, and movement to create abstracted experiences beyond understanding. Their ongoing research began in 2017 and has so far resulted in various artwork in mixed media and performative events exploring the bodies that emerge in the symbiosis of material and dance.
SKINNING / TRUE MESH / 16:9 FULL-TIME TEXTURE (STM16:9ftt) consists of 6 short films inspired by 3D animation and virtual representations where progressive ideas challenge the boundaries of the body and its movements. The films are a material response, a comment about performing bodies and their symbiosis with materiality taken as far as in animation. This material response is also a way to appropriate and reach the subculture of online short 3D animations flooding several hubs such as Vimeo and Instagram, functioning as stages for virtual as well as actual performing arts.
Wille-Meike Brand
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Wille-Meike Brand is a visual artist who explores the boundaries of common materials, by reinventing the ways they can be used. These reinventions create new methods to repurpose waste materials. In recent years she has been focusing on the abundance of textile waste, which has been the main subject for her practice. In her experiment-based research, she explores new ways to transform a copy into an original, waste into value and bringing new meaning to the under-appreciated.
Constantly changing trends and the low prices within the fast-fashion industry result in enormous amounts of waste textiles. While experimenting with these materials, Wille-Meike discovered a textile printing technique that creates the possibility to transfer colour directly from discarded garments: the printing process can be repeated over and over again, without any decrease in colour from the original garment or use of water. These discarded garments function as a tool to reintroduce individuality within the process of reproduction, re-using the imprint of a textile piece; like a fossil.
Designers: GARCIABELLO, Gjorgji Despodov and Anelia Antova, JOSIPA STEFANEC, STM16:9ftt, LEWV, Laura Snijders & Inge Vaandering, CLARA CHU, Wille-Meike Brand, Anouk van Kampen Wieling and Nina Dekker, SCHEPERS BOSMAN, Antoine Peters, Femke de Vries
Moderator: Philippe Pourhashemi
Video: Daniel van Hauten – WEDOVOODOO
Production: FASHIONCLASH
Photography: Laura Knipsael
Location: Eiffelgebouw, Maastricht
