Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law & Technology

Modern Platforms for Time-Honoured Traditions: co/rizom Travels to Artisanal Ateliers

Fashion weeks can be veritable tours de force around the world, from one trendy and established capital to emerging fashion destinations. Taking part as a spectator, influencer or critic in such events can be a privilege, but the downside is that, at times and in the long run, it may not be worth the while as what we see on the runways nowadays seems temporary, destined to last only for a few months or, even worse, for a few weeks (the excitement you may feel for a collection seen at the beginning of the fashion month in New York gets often immediately erased from your mind once you hit Paris at the end of the fashion month).

Yet there are people looking for global yet alternative fashion-related events that, in the long-run, may bring more permanent rewards. Fascinated by the possibility of interpreting traditional crafts in a contemporary way, in 2018 Alina Şerban and Nadja Zerunian founded for example co/rizom (other members of the team include social business developer Andrei Georgescu, Gabor Nagy and Lisa Pock).

Co/rizom is not a fashion week-like event, but a Vienna-based organisation with one main aim – creating a tool to empower traditional artisans based in different parts of the world and producing clothes, accessories and interior design pieces.

In the fashion industry there are companies nurturing the skills of time-honoured ateliers: Chanel's "Metiers d'Art" collections are for example ways to celebrate the 26 maisons acquired by the fashion house through its Paraffection subsidiary and producing a variety of pieces including, among the others, gloves, millinery, cashmere, pleating, feather and flower adornments and embroidery. 

Yet at the same time, the modern history of fashion features endless chapters on cultural appropriations (and misappropriations...) with fashion houses often stealing traditional styles and techniques developed by independent artisans, but also of stories of craftspeople based all over the world who end up closing down their shops and ateliers as they struggle to compete with the global markets.

Staying true to one's heritage, pushing forward the legacy of an ancient craft and training younger generations in such disciplines, are the hardest challenges many artisans face, together with the lack of visibility. 

The team of advisors behind co/rizom wants to help artisans forming small social enterprises and becoming suppliers to retailers, ensuring in this way their long-term sustainability.

So far co/rizom has reached out to artisans who own small family companies based in different countries, including Albania, Bosnia, Georgia, Hungary, Romania and Uzbekistan to give them visibility, and highlight how artisans making authentic, sustainable and high quality products should be acknowledged and paid a fair amount for their pieces (another point that should be highlighted is the fact that most companies working with artisans want them to meet their own standardized production and quality demands, while quite often it should be the other way round).

On the co/rizom site there are photographic essays showing several workshops and features about some of the artisans involved in the project.

Readers can meet craftspeople from a small family business making kilim carpets (a style that originated from the nomadic peoples in Northern Africa, Anatolia, Persia, Caucasus, the Balkan Peninsula, Afghanistan and Central Asia) in Zogaj, Albania. Here Nebije Qotaj started her own company in a three-storey building with a view over lake Shkodra. She mainly employs women and also tries to train young girls when they are off school. 

After coats and waistcoats made with sheepskin and covered in Romanian style embroideries reappeared in Dior's Pre-Fall 2017 collection (the coat was sold at €30,000 and the connection with its origins was never mentioned in the fashion coverage about the collection...) locals in the region of Bihor in Romania (even the names Dior/Biohor seem to have a strange phonetic connection...) were first enraged, then they stopped and realised that the styles they had forgotten about were becoming popular again and revived folk designs. 

One feature on the co/rizom site mentions the Dior/Biohor incident, but then reshifts the attention on the artisans in Romania who create these styles, from the lace blouses and floral scarves to embroidered vests and skirts. This journey into the past helped them creating a new awareness and rediscovering traditional techniques, patterns and shapes they had largely forgotten.

But there's more to discover on co/rizom's site also for people who are not into textiles and fashion and who prefer interior design pieces.

There's a wood carving workshop for example in Tserovani, Georgia, where a woodcarver named Zaza creates objects covered in archaic symbols that connect him to his roots and who teaches young men (and sometimes young women willing to learn this art as well) the craft's history plus construction, composition and the meaning of different ornaments and symbols. 

In Bukhara, Uzbekistan a traditional ceramicist produces instead a coarser and earthier type of pottery strongly influenced by the colours of the desert and with a special glaze enriched with saltwort (Salsola soda, a woody shrub that grows in the desert and contains both salt and potassium) resin. 

One platform such as co/rizom may not change the ways of the entire world, but can inspire others to introduce changes: one of the team members behind co/rizom, Andrei Georgescu, managed for example to help groups of traditional artisans to become suppliers for Ikea.

So the model behind co/rizom could be studied to foster new connections between artisans and fashion houses that could re-value local knowledge, invite consumers to opt for sustainability through products made using natural resources and promote slower rhythms of life. And while this may not sound that trendy, it is definitely more human. 

Sensors to Reconnect, Textiles to Heal: Jessica Smarsch's "Connextyle"

If you follow fashion from the point of view of an enthusiastic fashionista or influencer, you will probably think the industry mainly revolves around trends and endless runway shows, collections, presentations and assorted launches and events. Yet, while fashion is a very serious business, there is the possibility of turning the industry into something more positive, long-lasting and definitely less superficial, also thanks to creative minds with backgrounds in design.

Take, for example, Jessica Smarsch: her fascination for traditional textile-making processes and her interest in new technologies helped her developing in the last few years a software program connecting controlled body movements to graphic pattern generation.

Smarsch came up with a textile technique that turns these patterns into a dimensional fabrics, so, basically the raised patterns on the clothes in one of her earlier fashion collections were informed by body movements, data that were detected via a wireless armband and relayed through an Arduino circuit board. A software programme then visualised the movements as graphic patterns that could be downloaded as instructions for a loom.

Smarsch's research into mind-body connectivity has so far produced projects analysing how sensors can be employed to translate muscle use into costumes shapes and textile effects (and it's interesting to note that some of her investigations were inspired by studies on early societies and ritual performances that involved the use of literal symbols applied on ritual objects...so anthropology is another of those disciplines that can be inspiring for textile designers).

Smarsch's use of body movement as a design tool was initially a way to find a higher level of self-awareness, but, as the years passed, she applied her researchers to the medical field. So, three years ago, Smarsch started studying the effects on the mind and body of strokes and set to design textiles for stroke rehabilitation.

Her early studies produced a sensor shirt inspired by kintsugi, the Japanese principle that encourages to find beauty even in broken objects. Smarsch's first design consisted in a shirt that could track and communicate body movements, linked with an app that could also help taking note of a patient's progress.

But, more recently Smarsch's developed the "Connextyle" sensor shirt, a top with embedded sensors that register three kinds of movements and allow patients to mark their progress via a dedicated app. As patients recover, the exercises increase in complexity helping them to follow an intense rehabilitation process. Once the latter is over, the sensor embedded sleeves can be removed and replaced with kintsugi sleeves, so that the jacket can be transformed and help patients embracing their new body and celebrating their achievements.

Projects such as Smarsch's take years to be developed properly as designers must have access to grants and financial support to be able to concentrate on experiments that may involve a wide range of consultants and professionals.

In her case, for example, Smarsch enlisted collaborators going from professors in Life Sciences to care and nursing providers, medical device design companies, dancers and choreographers. 

Smarsch's "Connextyle" will be featured in the event "Hello Humanity: Dutch Design for a holistic world" at Ventura Milano (21st - 26th April 2020), a showcase of creators who display an innovative, holistic and inclusive designs characterised by a trans-disciplinary and humanistic approach.

But it is clear that such showcases should start being featured also during fashion weeks: endless shows, exclusive parties and thousands of streetwear photographs can provide countless visually striking instant moments of fun on social media, but projects such as Smarsch's help stimulating thoughts and attempt to provide a clever solution for people recovering from an illness, confirming that design shouldn't just be about producing more objects, but about making us reconnect with what surrounds us, with the environment, with other people and with ourselves.

Would such projects generate any money in a fashion environment? They could certainly turn into collaborations between an established fashion brand and independent designers like Smarsch, and they would even offer a morale and confidence boost via  style and elegance to those ones among us who may be going through hard times because of a health condition or a disease. 

Return of the Voluminously Dramatic Slevees

Fans of voluminously exaggerated sleeves are probably rejoicing as, though highly impractical, impossibly voluminous sleeves have been reappearing on the fashion runways. Yet, they may not be something desperately new.

Schiaparelli tried her hand at this trend as early as 1951 and Alexandre Vauthier last year included a shirt with exaggerated sleeves in his S/S 19 Haute Couture collection.

Similar sleeves also appeared on a white top in Victoria Beckham's A/W 20 collection (that had some echoes of Tom Ford) and on Roksanda Ilinčić's runway (both collections were showcased during London Fashion Week).You wonder if we will see more billowing sleeves on the fashion runways in Milan or Paris in the next few days.

We will discover it soon, but, in the meantime, we should point out that the undiscussed master of the voluminously dramatic slevees remains Madame Grès who designed around the '70s stunning silk paper taffeta long gowns with an empire waistline in black, navy blue and muted earth tones (a Madame Grès design in this shade was part of the "Heavenly Bodies" exhibition at Met's Costume Institute). The gowns were characterised by huge sculpted sleeves that billowed out from the shoulder, creating a cape-like effect and contrasting with the linear choir robe-like body of the dress. 

From Marine Biology to Haute Maille

In yesterday's post we mentioned how some designs by Xavier Brisoux on display in the Maison d'Exceptions section at Première Vision in Paris seemed to have structures borrowed from nature and reminiscent for example of the shell valves on chitons.

Let's continue the thread today with a close-up of a pair of Brisoux' fingerless gloves photographed next to dried chitons (first image in this post) and to a fossil gryphaea (second image in this post).

Chitons, marine molluscs of varying size in the class Polyplacophora, are also known as sea cradles or "coat-of-mail shells" for their distinctive shell composed of eight separate shell plates or valves. These plates overlap at the front and back edge, but they are also articulated one with the another. So the chiton has a solid armour, but can easily flex and move on uneven surfaces. The shell plates are encircled by a skirt known as a girdle (not visible in these dried samples).

In a way the structure of this Haute Maille design by Brisoux is the same - you have knitted layers that almost overlap one with the other and that guarantee freedom of movement and flexibility to the wearer.

The gloves also call to mind the gryphea: known as "devil's toenails" these extinct oysters lived on the sea bed in shallow waters. These fossils range from the Triassic to the middle Paleogene period and were characterised by closely interconnected narrow ridges of crowded steps that seem to be evoked by the knitted layers on Brisoux's gloves.

Xavier Brisoux & The Dream of Haute Maille

Trade fairs serving the fashion industry can be exciting events, as you always find intriguing products on display. Some attract you for their colours, others for their materials or for the techniques employed to make them. Xavier Brisoux's designs, recently on display in the Maison d'Exceptions section at Première Vision in Paris (the fair closed yesterday), make you stop and wonder.

Maison d’Exceptions offers the chance to outstanding craftsmen and ateliers to show their skills through their handmade creations and Xavier Brisoux started his career as a knitwear designer, but, as the years passed, he progressed onto textile art, and he is now focused on elevating knitwear to a new form of Haute Couture - Haute Maille. Moving from traditional fashion techniques including draping and pleating à la Madame Grès, and applying to knitwear an architectural vision, Brisoux developed an innovative technique that allows him to mould yarns into veritable sculptures. Some of his best examples were showcased at Maison d'Exceptions.

There were helmets, gauntlets, cuirasses and shoulder pieces on display, all made with his trademark knitted technique. All the designs look solid, yet they are soft, they are densely knitted, but they are also sensually revealing.

And that's when you want to stop and wonder not just how he made them, but if these are the sort of pieces Amazons on Themyscira wear. Or did Boudicca, ruler of the Iceni tribe, have a similar breastplate that perfectly highlighted her fierce blue warpaint? Or is that knitted alien cocoon-like bag what we will be carrying one day as we board a rocket to space?

The questions remain unanswered, but there's something that you can clearly see in these pieces: there's art and science and quite a bit of mathematics behind them. Besides, there's anatomy in the muscle-like configuration of some of Brisoux's armours and biology in those gauntlets with a structure reminiscent of the shell valves on chitons and, most certainly, there are impossibly fierce heroines from comic books behind all this. Last but not least, there is attention for the planet as Brisoux does not forget about sustainability, as proved by a piece made with recover jeans yarn from Hilaturas Ferre. 

You can bet that, at some point, you will see some of these pieces featured in a sci-fi series, but also on the red carpet (you can definitely see that asymmetrical shoulder piece with a high collar donned on an impalpable tulle or organza evening gown, to create a juxtaposition of materials). 

Often compared to Azzedine Alaïa for his technical prowess and his mastering of the knitting technique, Brisoux remains, for the time being, France's best kept secret. But that's not for long: Brisoux's innovative knitwear pieces have just won him a spot among the finalists of the prestigious Hyères Festival, so we will definitely hear more about him in the months to come.

Can you tell us more about Maison d'Exceptions at Première Vision?
Xavier Brisoux: Maison d'Exceptions is a dedicated area within the fabric fair Première Vision Paris showcasing the craftsmanship of the "métiers d'art". Very specific ateliers are presenting their unique techniques to a privileged and selected public coming from the highest fashion houses around the world. The variety of know-hows that are exhibited goes from feather work to mother-of-pearl to…knitwear of course!

Were you showcasing there a collection or a selection of your latest pieces?
Xavier Brisoux: More than a collection: I am promoting the technique I have developed over the last three years. This is shown through pieces of course, but the idea of a collection is not exactly relevant in the case of Maison d'Exceptions, because the public visiting are designers or creative decision makers, and the visit the show to try and find a technique to express their own creativity.

What inspired them?
Xavier Brisoux: The designs shown have a variety of inspirations all becoming one. In these pieces you will be able to read references that go from comic book aesthetics and underwater creatures to Japanese ancient armours, Greek mythology, geological stratas, African masks and H.R. Giger.

What kind of materials and techniques did you use to make them?
Xavier Brisoux: I have developed a very specific knitting technique that requires the human hand although it is made on a machine. It consists in creating a sort of pleating effect. Mixed with what we call partial knitting, which allows to knit certain stitches while the others are on hold, I create volumes. I really challenge myself into making these pieces in one panel only or to have the least possible number of panels. This technique has taken a long time to develop. The whole process is very time consuming. It is a matter of perfection, and perfection - although it will never be reached - requires patience. The number of hours spent on a piece is always important. This is Haute Couture. In actual fact, my concept is called "Maille Haute Sculpture" or "High Sculpture Knitwear". I have spent two whole years developing it before managing to obtain a result that I'm finally satisfied with.

So far you have taken your knitted techniques towards different directions, creating fashion pieces, but also art objects - in which other fields you would like to see your technique applied? 
Xavier Brisoux: The idea when I started this project was to break down the walls in-between creative disciplines. I would not want my technique to be restricted to one field only. I consider myself a multi-disciplinary creator. An example of this is the work that I develop with artist Isabelle Soum. We create sculptures - I knit and she dips them into resin. So I'm already expanding into art. Given the right yarn, sky's the limit as this technique could become pieces of furniture, architecture, or god knows what else. I want to feel completely free and boundless.

How do you feel at being a finalist in the Fashion Category at the 35th International Festival of Fashion, Photography and Fashion accessories in Hyères?
Xavier Brisoux: I feel very privileged. It is an honour, and I feel also humbled by all the talent of other competitors. We had the opportunity to all spend three days together to launch our collection, visiting the best places in Paris, ateliers, sponsors like Première Vision, maisons des métiers d’Arts, Chloé and Atelier Aymeric Le Deun. So many doors are opening, it is unbelievable. I have access to fabrics and crafts that I would never had dreamt of. It is truly a thrilling experience so far, and I know that it will get even more intense in the months to come. I must thank all the team at Villa Noailles, Hyères - and in particular Jean Pierre, Laure and Thomas - for this intense experience. I'm also looking forward to visiting Robert Mallet-Stevens' villa in April. I am very fond of his work and had the opportunity in the past to shoot one of my collections at Villa Cavrois in the north of France, that was one of my dreams coming true! So it all bodes for a bright future.

Vintage Fashion Correspondences, From 1920 to 1966, From Porcelain to Plastic

It is always exciting finding unlikely or bizarre fashion correspondences between images from different historical periods. Check out, for example, this fashion illustration by Charles Martin published on the Gazette du Bon Ton in 1920 (No. 7, Pl. 49) featuring an extravagant hat in soft-paste porcelain and the plastic visor accessorising the 1966 Optical skirt suit by Yves Saint Laurent in the second image in this post. Their shapes look similar and their materials were rather unusual and futuristic (for their times). 

The first image is taken from the Rijksmuseum archive and, if you like creating correspondences between vintage fashion illustrations and contemporary looks, you can check the digital archive at the museum and play with its Rijksstudio application. 

If you feel really inspired, don't forget to take part in the Rijksstudio Award, the exciting competition that consists in creating something unique moving from the rich archives of the Rijksmuseum. There are all sorts of materials in the archive, so inspirations are practically endless and there's time till 27th February to submit your idea.

Say it With Fabrics: Love Poems + Textiles = Vlisco

Chocolates and flowers may be conventional presents for St Valentine's Day (which is literally around the corner...), but Vlisco is suggesting a different type of present for all lovers - fabrics and poems.  

The Dutch wax company dating back to 1846 (when Dutch entrepreneur Pieter Fentener van Vlissingen established a textile company named P.F. van Vlissingen & Co in the city of Helmond, The Netherlands), commissioned indeed to Togolese poet Sélom Mensah poems inspired by fabrics.

Mensah created a short anthology inspired by Vlisco's romantic Love Letter and Hibiscus print, but also by its iconic trademark motif, Swallows.

While this is the first time the company turns to a poet, Vlisco has usually displayed a literary interest and often published on its site stories about the symbolisms behind specific fabrics, highlighting the narrative power of textiles hidden in patterns and motifs, such as the iconic swallows print (these birds are intended as symbols of good luck).

The company has been posting a love poem a day on Instagram stories to celebrate St. Valentine's Day, bu this link between literature and fabrics could be taken further. Anybody up for an anthology of poems or short stories inspired by clothes and accessories?

Weaving Anxiety: Spotlight on Gustaf Helsing

Last October at the Affordable Art Fair in Stockholm there was a section dedicated to the work of recent graduates. Among the artists featured there was also Gustaf Helsing.

Graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Textiles from Konstfack, the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, the largest art and design school in Sweden, Helsing developed a series of conceptual interior design pieces that he calls "Anxious Rugs".

Each rug is inspired by a simple yet complex theme - how to be a young man in today's society and the male role in the modern world (his graduate collection was entitled: "All Men Should Feel Self-Hatred").

Helsing defines his rugs "anxious" as they are characterised by a sense of anxiety: they were woven fast and they seem to be influenced by a wide range of inspirations, objects and people surrounding the designer while he creates. 

Rather than using one pattern or material to create geometrically precise motifs or landscapes or any other type of decorative motif, Helsing combined a wide range of materials (polypropylene, cotton rags, sisal and wool) and colours to create chaotic designs that conjure up feelings of angst, apprehension, disquiet, doubt, nervousness, restlessness and uncertainty. 

The rugs become therefore a combination of ideas and inspirations and, being often rather large, they take up a lot of space, even though, as they look imperfect and are made with relatively cheap materials, the rugs also seem to be ashamed of occupying vast spaces.

Helsing's Instagram page is particularly colourful and shows the concept and process behind the making of his rugs and some of his installations as well.  

Gustaf Helsing's rugs are part of the exhibition "Young Swedish Design 2020" (until 22nd March 2020) at ArkDes, Sweden's national centre for architecture and design, located in Stockholm. The event features 29 designers from a number of disciplines, including product design, fashion and furniture.

Surface Manipulations for Three-Dimensional Expressions: Spotlight on Camilla Arnbert

In yesterday's post we looked at a textile artist reinventing embroidery. Let's continue the thread (pun intended) in this post by focusing on a fashion designer experimenting with fabrics and techniques. 

After attending the Swedish School of Textiles, Camilla Arnbert started working with fabrics, trying to find new ways to create intriguing patterns and developed a project on transferable prints. 

Fascinated by surfaces, textures, patterns and prints, rather than designing a collection moving from one of these inspirations, Arnbert decided to combine all of them together. So she deconstructed fabrics, reduced them to fringes and added embroideries, a series of effects that gave depth and the illusion of movement to the textiles.

Intrigued by the possibilities of developing the potential of textiles, Arnbert then turned to the heat-press usually employed to transfer print from paper to surface, and proceeded to apply prints of generic patterns of tartans, plaids and checks on designs made with heat sensitive yarns after the surface manipulation process, coming up with new visual expressions.

In some cases the heat-sensitive materials, exposed to a printing technique involving high temperatures, assumed indeed a cracked consistency; in others, their volumes and consistency radically changed, creating three-dimensional effects, twists and distortions.

After completing her MA in Fine Arts - Fashion Design in Sweden, Arnbert started working as a fashion and print designer and, hopefully, she will take further her experiments and surface manipulation techniques.

Arnbert's "Surfaced Print" collection is currently part of the exhibition "Young Swedish Design 2020", (until 22nd March 2020) at ArkDes, Sweden's national centre for architecture and design, located in Stockholm. The event features 29 designers from a number of disciplines, including product design, fashion and furniture.

Embroidery & The Law of Gravity: Spotlight on Emilia Elfvik

How do you introduce innovation into a traditional technique? The answer is maybe simpler than you may think - just push the boundaries of the technique you have chosen and take it to the next level.

After focusing on fashion studies, Swedish designer Emilia Elfvik moved to embroidery, but she felt she was more interested in the complex properties of textile materials than in creating traditional embroideries. Besides, she wanted to challenge the preconceptions surrounding this craft.

So she started experimenting with flax and thread and eventually created a series of objects called "Pushing Embroideries". The process behind the series is fascinating: Elfvik creates flat pieces, she then removes them from their frames and lets the materials interact with gravity. So you could almost say that the material and the law of gravity are the real designers of her pieces.

The inspiration for these pieces came from her interest in investigating decorative techniques and sculptural features and, while researching these themes, Elfvik decided to experiment with the flat stitch and with linen thread.

The purpose of the work is not to convey a specific message, but to offer a new perspective about embroidery, challenge our notions of what thread, textile and embroidery are and show how an exploratory investigation into materials can create innovative and unusual shapes.

Elfvik is part of the exhibition "Young Swedish Design 2020", (until 22^nd March 2020) at ArkDes, Sweden's national centre for architecture and design, located in Stockholm. The event features 29 designers from a number of disciplines, including product design, fashion and furniture.