Ryo Anno (Japan)
Tokyo Zokei Univeristy School of Art & Design
Function & Behavior, 2016
Textiles are based on a strict system of warp and weft. Anno’s work is inspired by a microscopic examination of products we use daily, zooming in on such household goods such as yogurt lids and cellophane wrap. Over a period of years, the designer found a similarity in the scheme of the patterns revealed by these close-up looks, inspiring him to create new textile structures. With the addition of colour and texture to these multicast and hand weavings, he was able to create stunning three-dimensional and elastic textiles in silk, wool and linen.
Laura Admussen (Canada)
Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University (NSCAD)
Seaweed & Seagrass, 2015-16
These textile explorations use various types of seaweed and seagrass that have been hand collected from Nova Scotia in combination with different linen, cotton and wool fibres. Natural materials that have been hand-spun, woven, sewn and / or sculpted. A sophisticated organic aesthetic is created, coloured in the dark greens and brown from the natural world.
Bettie Boersma (Belgium)
LUCA School of Arts, Ghent
Current Studies: Finding Form For Perspectives, 2016
With her masters project, Boersma created a method which allows her to get the movement and tension of the two dimensional image into form. The idea is
to take an image (the scan), translate it to a screen-print on textile, and then give the textile body and form by using pattern-cutting techniques. In this way the final form makes a slight reference to clothing, where the cut and stitching function more as a suggestion; subtle but definitely there. Each technique or application needs another approach, but within these phases there is still room for surprise, the unexpected or the unintended.
cargocollective.com/bettie
Delphine Cobbaert (Belgium)
KASK School of Arts, Ghent
My Line Is My Poem (2015-16)
In these sophisticated fabrics one can see the idea of working in layers: both in production and in reproduction.
For Cobbaert, « My Poetic Line » is not only the beginning of a construction, but it could actually lead directly to the designer’s own personality.
To her, the line is like a poem, it wants to tell us a story. By approaching and following the line, one will discover textures, structures and other hidden things. By working on the collection, she was able to get in touch with new insights about spontaneity and imperfection, translated through double weaving, woven shibori and other manipulations such as pleating, roving or painting the yarns. Materials include transparent yarn in combination with natural fibres, wood, horsehair, paper, chenille and raffia.
Alexis Victor Gautier (France) in collaboration with Kasper Bosmans
Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp
Stairs, Zebras & Bees, 2015
Born from the will of appreciating the diversity of human’s visual expression, this collection aims to weave a dialogue between symbols, techniques and know-how from different cultures, through collaborations with artists, craftsmen and local factories. The notion of “collaboration » is sometimes delicate, fragile and weakened by a lack of equality between each of the participants. Our current production system recalls too often to a post-colonialism pattern, where cheap labor, resources and codes’ standardisation blend with each other. With the aim of finding a more interesting and respectful balance between each of the collaborators, Gautier attempted to provoke and document encounters between the different actors in the production chain. For this particular collection, the designer invited 34 craftsmen from Italy, England, Nepal and India, and three Belgian artists to participate in this fragmented “documentary ».
alexisgautier.com
Neil Grotzinger (United States)
Parsons New School for Design, New York
Fur Hook, 2015
The art of latch hooking has existed for centuries, and is often mistaken as a domestic craft. Grotzinger was taught latch hooking by his grandmother when he was nine years old. They would make massive tapestries with intricate pastoral landscapes artfully embedded into the fibers and she would hang them on the walls of her bedroom. Traditional latch hooking is used today to create carpets and rugs, yet is rarely explored as a means for making abstract garment textiles. The process involves taking basic mesh canvas and looping fibres into it over and over again to create a texture similar to heavy pile velvet. Yet if we think more deeply about what kinds of fibres we have access to today, and how this process could be advanced by the use of new and alternative yarns, this simple process opens the doors to a world of possibilities. Thinner artificial yarns like fishing wire create a stiff, gunmetal grey hair when wound together that clumps and sticks to itself. When it is mixed with fuller wool yarns, this texture spikes out from the surface of the textile. Iridescent yarns have a fringe like quality when left long, and move freely in the wind. Certain fibres can be pressed and curled like hair to create even more texture, and the potential to create innovative patterns within the fibres is endless. Grotzinger’s goal is to explore how and to what extent these new techniques are capable of creating a modern alternative to unsustainable practices in the production of fake furs.
neilgrotzinger.com
Corinn Hakanson (United States)
Fashion Institute of Technology, New York
Drastic Plastic, 2015-16
As environmental issues become a priority throughout the world, people are taking action and coming up with new innovative methods for sustainable design. Hakanson wanted to challenge herself and incorporate various types of plastic bags within woven designs. Instead of adding more plastic materials to our landfills and oceans, there are many new ways of recycling plastic, and she wanted to focus on reusing them for textiles. From the drastic aesthetic use of plastic to the drastic benefits recycling and reusing them could have on our planet, Hakanson was motivated to show that plastic bags can be used for aesthetic and design purposes, as well as being recycled at the same time. She chose this material because it’s lightweight and flexible, and works well with traditional yarns and different weave structures. The designer used three different types of bags in the weft for each of the samples that were woven: grocery bags, produce bags, and heavier clear plastic bags. She included yarns that brought forth the colours of the bags to make them more cohesive throughout the design.
Julie Helles Eriksen, Bjoern Karmann & Kristine Boesen (Denmark)
Kolding School of Design, Kolding
Abstract_, 2015
Abstract_ is a customisation concept for textiles and fashion, created by three danish designers: Julie Helles Eriksen (fashion design), Bjoern Karmann (interaction design) and Kristine Boesen (textile design). The team wanted to make a concept and business model by which the customer has influence on the visual expression of a garment. Individuality is the starting point of the concept, a customer gives input, the input is translated into a visual output, made into a textile and later on into a unique garment. The pattern will depend of the consumer’s use of words and the speed and rhythm of their typing. At the same time a webcam can read facial expressions, the consumer is left to write him or herself into the garment. The collaborators chose only to work with digital weaving, digital printing and digital knitting, using quality wool, mercerised cotton and a strong silk, combining the fibres as little as possible for the purpose of easier recycling. Each garment is created and ordered online.
juliehelleseriksen.com
Ai Ishii (Japan)
Tokyo Zokei Univeristy School of Art & Design
At the Grassy Park, 2016
Textiles are generally thought of as two-dimensional objects, but they can also be woven in a way that makes them three-dimensional structures. However, Ishii considers textiles much the same as print media and so, based on this, the designer has concentrated efforts on creating a three-dimensional textural effect on a printed fabric. Made from 100% cotton, using silk-screen printing and original dyeing, this work is a single bolt of printed cloth that shows both flat, as well as three-dimensional finishes.
Maartje Janse (the Netherlands)
ArtEZ, Arnhem
Analog / Digital Reality, 2015Maartje Janse started her textile project with the fragmentation of images and the fact that images exist out of pixels. Together with a professional weaver she created a double weave to add pixels into the weave. Next to that she wove a fragmented image and because of movement, the image changed. Janse had a lot of contact with the weaving community in The Netherlands and started to understand how valuable these craftspeople are, learning weaving from them so that traditional craft won’t disappear. After the fragmented weave, prints were printed on top of coatings and added to the pixel double weave, culminating in a full fashion collection.www.maartjejanse.nl
Judit Eszter Kárpáti & Esteban de la Torre – EJTECH (Hungary / Mexico)
Moholy-Nagy University of Art & Design (MOME), Budapest
Liquid Midi, 2015
Liquid Midi is an experimental textile interface for sonic interactions, exploring aesthetics and morphology in contemporary design.The technology is screen printed directly onto a textile surface, then through an Arduino micro controller communicates with the desired software, using MIDI protocol. This unique interaction with this textile interface allows the medium to become part of the message, where the interface becomes part of the process of creation itself. Sound is a medium that has been increasingly gaining ground in the visual arts during recent decades, despite this seeming contradictory. Technology plays one of the main roles in this multi disciplinary crossover, allowing not only for this amalgamation of the visual and auditory practices, but to further our ventures into how do we form this experience and with what tools do we design this multifaceted, polysensorial undertaking. The designers aim to propose a more balanced, coherent multi sensory perception of reality. Their intent with Liquid MIDI, is to enable the user to experience a balanced interaction and engagement, focusing not only the importance of the aesthetics, but making them functional and utterly important, while integrating, with the same importance, an elaborate haptic experience through an experimental textile interface, concluding with the real time creation of sound.
www.ejtech.cc
Maria Kazakova (United States)
Parsons The New School of Design, New York
The Displaced, 2015-16
« The Displaced » was conceived as a variation on the theme of sportswear. The idea of using sportswear as both an inspiration and a material for the collection stemmed from the designer’s observation that, from the streets of America to the steppes of Siberia, the same standardised sports clothes were worn everywhere. By repurposing sportswear items, the designer shows that the very symbols of fast fashion and globalisation can work towards the reconstruction of broken values and identities. Rising up against standardisation, the designer aims to bring change to the destructive system by reinstating values of organic unity and authenticity in fashion. She further strives to raise awareness among consumers about alternative, more viable processes of production, distribution and consumption. Seeing the collection as a starting point, Kazakova aims to develop a fashion brand that will make a durable change towards sustainability. This is the second year that she has been a prize finalist.
jahnkoy.com
Jennifer Kobler (Canada)
Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University (NSCAD)
Lace Weaves, 2016
Kobler’s woven samples were conceived using a lace weave structure. The warp is a mercerised cotton and the weft varies from piece to piece in order to obtain different effects: clear plastic monofilament to allow light through; glowing warp thread to illuminate the delicate weave; crêpe yarn to achieve a crinkly effect; wire and gimp to create a pliable yet stiff material; paper to make a dense textile that still feels soft.
Alexandros Kotoulas (Greece)
Design Academy Eindhoven
Allotropon, 2015
During an internship at a luxury fashion house specialised in leather, Katoulas realised that a large percentage of skins are discarded because of extremely high quality standards. During his studies, Katoulas has been researching multiple ways to give a second life to these leftovers. To create an intermediate step where the qualities of the material are still important and highlighted. The designer’s main goal was to keep the skins as pure as possible, excluding any chemical process that would increase its already high footprint. Together with an extended collection of material samples, applicable to fashion, interior or the automotive industry, Katoulas created Allotropon (meaning “other manner or form” in Greek), a collection of textile samples, where leather left-overs are first cut in very thin stripes (2-3 mm) and later woven into various bindings and in combination with other yarns.alexquisite.com
Ayano Kumagai (Japan)
Tokyo Zokei Univeristy School of Art & Design
My Plants, 2016
Kumagai’s newly developed textile works incorporate different types of techniques-dyeing, silkscreen printing, knitting and embroidery. The designs were inspired by the nature the designer comes in contact with during daily life. Plants, in particular, impress us with their shapes, colours, textures and smells. Some may be poisonous, others not. By mixing techniques and media, Kumagai strives to create a visual and tactile experience that will express a deep curiosity to the viewer who, in this way, will feel like they do when viewing actual nature. The designer’s textile techniques are very complex: a traditional Japanese rice paste-printing technique called nassen, silkscreen printing, the Western technique of hand knitting and sahara plus a traditional Japanese embroidery technique.
Katherine Matos (United States)
Fashion Institute of Technology, New York
Woven Collage #5, 2015-16
This piece of textile could become an alternative art fabric for an outerwear garment. It has a rough and rugged appearance while still maintaining the purity of the fiber and it’s inherent softness. The non- traditional material, found in mop heads, is great when used for this purpose! It’s a thick loosely spun 100% cotton cord and was woven by Matos into nine separate tapestries on a peg loom, carefully pieced these together using more cord. The designer used basic woven techniques, such as sumac and basket, and then added twisting and braiding to create a very textured fabric, including twill in certain areas. The addition of slits and negative space lightens the fabric and adds interest. The texture enhances the fabric by creating depth that the simple off-white colour in plain weave may have not given.Instagram.com/Katherine_Creates
Federica Melpignano (Italy)
Accademia Costume & Moda, Rome
Knit Wrap, 2015
Knitwear stitches are digitally-printed and embossed onto raw hide leather in different thickness for clothes and bags, and on padded neoprene, expressing three dimensions in various ways. By transforming sleeves and rethinking the male silhouette, this collection investigates also echoes a medieval spirit that is so current in fashion today.
Christian Frank Müller (Germany)
Kunstuniversitat Linz, Austria
TexLab, 2015
As a multi skilled designer and PhD student with a specialisation in textile design, Müller realises a wide range of different projects along the themes of diversity, details and simplicity with a twist. He perceives that design has a crucial influence on our lives. Good design improves our everyday lives and should be sustainable in terms of long lasting, timelessness, the use of the right materials and flexibility in use. And of course it should look good in every situation. Design is not pure decoration, it is the right ingredients mixed together in order to create a new, unexpected experience. Müller says of his work: « I like simple things. Some people would say boring, but boring is in my opinion not bad. It’s just the absence of excitement in a world that is full of exciting things and where every new object is just trying to raise the level of excitement.” In this experimental collection, fabrics are made with different unconventional dyeing, weaving and knitting techniques. Injection dyeing is used on folded, woven fabrics before they unfold to reveal a placed pattern of bleeding spots. Dye is also injected into bobbins and knitting spools before moiré and marle fabrics are machine woven or knit.
www.diversityanddetails.com
Tamara Oake (Canada)
Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University (NSCAD)
Rust Weaving, 2016
Brazil wood natural dyes, used steel wool, old nails, a bottle and string are just some of the ingredients incorporated by Oake to create her Rust Weaving series. By balancing motifs, imagining compositions and measuring repeats, the designer has handwoven cotton and hemp yarns into organic cloths that are suitable for fashion, accessories and even interiors.
Léna Perraguin (France)
ENSCI les Ateliers, Paris
Ni Vu Ni Connu, 2015
Ni Vu Ni Connu (« neither seen nor known” in French) is a product range of textiles for gardens, patios and balconies that includes different elements that enable oneself to re-create a personal space: visual barriers, carpets and pavings. The textiles are made by weaving PVC yarns with wood and metal or by heating PCV yarn leftovers. For this last process, the plastic yarns are cit into tiny pieces, brought together and dated with a hot press. This produces a homogenous and flat material, levying it up to the user to simply cut it to size. Depending on the thickness, opacity, colors and cut, this product can become a slab for the floor, mat or wall… The technique used by the designer provides great freedom, especially regarding the technical properties and graphics which can be infinitely adapted.
cargocollective.com/lenaperraguin
Viviana Saponari & Vitantonio Vitale (Italy)
Politecnico di Bari
Wool Gradients, 2016
This Italian design duo’s concept consists in making different tactile gradients, using manual and automatic knitting machines. The project is not focused on the form of things: the focus is on tactile sensation. Our hands, when sliding on the surfaces, feel a gradual change from light to heavy, from soft to hard… As part of their studies, the designers used wool from Southern Italian sheep, Gentile di Puglia and Sopravissana, because of their tactility which is very different from the wools one normally finds on the market. To create sturdier gradients and variations, both creasing and felting were incorporated.
Meghan Sickler (United States)
Fashion Institute of Technology, New York
Wash, 2016
Sickler has created an 8-harness undulating twill weave that is fringed out of 2-ply raw silk (also known as noil). The designer hand-dyed using natural colours from black walnuts and goldenrod that she foraged; mordanted with aluminium potassium sulphate. An approach blending the organic and the chemical into a beautiful piece of cloth.
Caroline Stephen (New Zealand)
Auckland University of Technology
Between Materiality, 2015
Stephen’s body of work is a speculative investigation into future materiality and new modes of craft; informed by a questioning of society’s perception of materiality. With an awareness of precious natural resources, she investigates the blurring boundaries between the natural and the man-made.These garments are artefacts of a possible future; they map trajectories between experiential dimensions of traditional textile production and approaches to making via digital technologies; intersecting craft and material knowledge with innovation through sculptural and technological processes. Wool and silk, being renewable resources, create the basis of the garments while binding materials such as silicone and Pemotex (a yarn that hardens with heat), becoming protective barriers to the wool or silk and essentially the body. Shima Seiki programming was used to transform photographs of original material casts in plaster and silicone into structures that are knit in one piece. By knitting an entire garment with only the required amount of yarn, the garment eliminates yarn waste.
carostephen.com
Jing Tan
Royal College of Art, London
This Anagenesis specie is __________?, 2015
Since the 15th century, naturalists started to explore the world and tried to record the species they found through illustrations. Some of the illustrations were completed with a combination of observation and imagination. The curiosity of the unknown could stimulate the temptation to investigate and explore. People at that time were full of passion and interest in creatures and a huge amount of bizarre and delicate objects were collected at that time. In this collection, Tan created a series of creatures that I called the Anagenesis species. Anagenesis is when the new morphospecies is a result of microevolution, such that there are no remaining other populations of ancestor species. Objects made for this project are based on research that included observational drawings, photography and collage. Jan Svankmajer’s animations and Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington have influenced this project thus, the little ‘creatures’ that were made are undiscovered, within ‘scientific terms’: people will have their own idea of what they are. That is the reason why a blank is left in the title, allowing people to fill in the blank with their own answer. Most of the creatures are made of silicone, developed through various techniques combining silicone, lycra, wood, acrylic, plastic tube and thread to create tactile surfaces in 3D form.
tjjingtan.tumblr.com
Tal Trilnik (Israel)
Shenkar College of Engineering & Design, Tel Aviv
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 2015
Inspired by the Hunchback of Notre Dame; a symbol of deformed body. Trilnik focused on beauty that draws from the deformed and the chaotic, creating a knitted garment which references skin and skeleton distortion. A free form, two needles technique allowed the designer to model the garment freely, but precisely, transforming the wearer’s silhouette whenever it is used.
www.instagram.com/taltrilnik
Ayane Uchida (Japan)
Tokyo Zokei Univeristy School of Art & Design
Images of Tokyo, 2016
Highways, parks, skyscrapers, lights and lots of people are just some of the many elements that make up the huge city of Tokyo. Uchida started by taking many photographs of these elements and piecing them together into collages that represent the metropolis. From these collages, the designer created works from different types of materials: a ramie warp with different natural fibres, using tapestry and leno weaving.
Julia Wright (United States)
Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)
I am My Mother’s Only One, 2015
« I am my mother’s only child, only daughter, only friend. » The structure of Wright’s family has shifted significantly since her parent’s recent divorce, and as such, each member of what was a three-person unit has learned to live on their own. This piece was created through Wright’s reflection on childhood and her relationship with her mother, serving as a sort of necessary step for the designer to accept this new situation. Wright says her memory is driven by colour and shape, and through using the jacquard loom she was able to translate a personal photographic collage into a thick woven fabric, tangible and soft. Each cut square serves as a physical and material reminder of sweet childhood memories; the organization of which is unfixed and ever-changing. This work was created by collage and painting, and translated through Point Carre software to become woven pieces created on a Staubli jacquard loom. It is a 7-wefted weave, and has been cut apart and reconfigured. Many pieces were painted after weaving with bleach or dye.
Sophie Yan (United States)
Cranbrook Academy of Art, Cranbrook
Substance, 2016
Substance is a textiles developed for different applications; it can be used in apparel or fashion accessories as well as in the interior for furniture of flooring. The two elements in the textile – recycled rubber and cotton cord – depend upon one another for structure and support; the cotton ten grid keeps the rubber from over-stretching and the rubber knots secure the conn ton twine grid at the interstices. Yan collected punctured inner tubes from bike shops and shredded them into uniform strips, before using the twine to weave an inner grid structure and using a repeating box knot to interlace the rubber. She finished the edge by tucking the loose ends of rubber strips back into the box knots.
sophieyan.com
Gu Zhenyuan (China)
Tokyo Zokei University, School of Art & Design
Animal Patterns (2016)
The stencil dyeing process is a disappearing art and Zhenyuan wants to revive the technique when making contemporary textiles. Animals have been a major influence on man since ancient times, and this designer would like to shine a spotlight on some of the more unfamiliar and overlooked animals in nature. Many of these animals can be described with the Japanese expression “kimo kawaii,” which means both grotesque and cute at the same time. By combining these “grotesquely cute” animals with a fading dyeing technique, Zhenyuan is creating a “chemical reaction” with two neglected elements to make something completely new. 100% cotton uses stencil dyeing (Katazome), able to be applied to a variety of products, including umbrellas.
www.meme16.com