Digna Kosse

Dutch Design Week: graduate designer Digna Kosse presents a series of dresses made of the smallest amount of fabric at the Design Academy Eindhoven Graduate Galleries exhibition this week. Digna Kosse designed fifteen dresses that are far from voracious consumers of material. She demonstrates that you can minimize these pieces of clothing to a few threads at the most. Minimal Dresses are wispier than wispy, yet they remain feminine dresses with which to make a fashion statement.

Veasyble by GAIA

 

The project is based on three keywords: isolation, intimacy and ornament. It consists of a set of wearable objects that can be converted into means of isolation, to create a personal intimacy

in any environment. The idea derives from a reflection on the change in our relationship with the domestic environment, due to the effects of our increasing mobility, and how this has affected our concept of intimacy, creating new demands. This led to the design of four accessories, screen for four different parts of the body: eyes, ears, face and upper body, expressing, through their shape and colour, our desire for intimacy at any time, any place, on various levels.

An ornament that can be worn.
A gesture to transform it.
A secret place for personal intimacy.
A reminder of our exterior aspect.

A strong, dominant exterior that conceals a fragile, personal interior.

Every accessory is shaped according to a pattern that is the same for all. The difference arises in the scale of production, which depends on our demand of intimacy

Kathy Ludwig & Florian Kräutli

In Freudian psychoanalytic theory, defense mechanisms are unconscious psychological strategies brought by various entities to cope with anxiety. Dutch designers, Kathy Ludwig & Florian Kräutli, responded to the idea by conceiving a series of accessory/wearable devices that wearers can act upon when faced with certain fears.



Tze Goh

For his graduate collection, Central Saint Martin's graduate Tze Goh conceived a minimally white yet sculptural collection, almost resembling clouds. Made of foam materials fused with jersey, each garment looked as if they were molded than sewn; cape folded at the neck; a coat twisting lapels; simple dress silhouettes with subtle dips and waves.

Shop Window Continued

Shop Window

Blood Scarf by Laura Splan

Blood Scarf succeeds as a work of art in several ways.  First, the piece elicits a feeling of queasiness, garnering strong reactions seeing a woman wearing a scarf filled with her own blood.   Yet by turning the medical tubing into a scarf, Splan draws attention to not only the beautiful red hue of our blood, but also to its biological purpose of circulating nutrients and warmth to our bodies.  She shows the fragility of such a system, thus succeeding in creating a piece of art that brings attention to biological facts through subjective emotions.

Painful

 

Susie Macmurray

piece entitled 'Window' black nappa leather, 43 kg adamantine dressmakers pins, tailors dummy

Louise Richardson

The piece is mesmerising. A dress hangs suspended from a pole and is, for all intents and purposes, made of fur. Step up and study it more closely, and with some difficulty the optical illusion shifts to reveal that the fur is not fur at all, but thousands of nails painstakingly pushed through a length of muslin to settle into a pattern of copper swirls and waves.

Mona Hatoum

Hirochika Kameyama Armour

Previously I've posted about armour in fashion. I like these protective coverings and I've found a new up and coming Japanese fashion & costume designer Hirochika Kameyama, a designer to keep an eye on.Hirochika studied fashion design at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London a few years ago and is now working in Japan.

His textile approach to fashion creates depth with

ruffles and ruched details which make the dresses look like modern armour.

 

 

Soft Smokes by Kate Jenkins

I found these cute 'soft smokes' on Kate Jenkins website Cardigan. I love all her work as I feel its really similar to my crochet work with faux food. I'd really love to make some of these for myself, right now as a side project I've been working on a 'what not to crochet' range where I crochet items that wouldn't usually be crochet more age appropriate items ie. crochet breasts,tampons see pictures bellow.

16th Century Style

Women's neckwear began as something extravagant with the emergence of the neck ruff during the sixteenth century, which was actually a garment piece originally designed into menswear. The earliest ruffs served a protective function as pieces meant to be worn as a covering to men's outerwear. The functional pieces eventually morphed into stylish fashion and became worn by both men and women alike. Ruffs implied status for women and were occasionally worn in such flamboyant sizes that they seemed to drown their wearer. The ruff eventually fell out of major fashion by the late seventeenth century, but nowadays it has re-emerged, flashing its flouncy frilly face in haute couture collections and costuming.

I've been experiementing with layering teabags onto string to recreate these ruffs of the past. Its very time consuming as the process is fairly involved and montonous (boil,drink,desconstruct,stain,dry). I've taken some photos of the samples and my progress so far.

Protective Coverings