Arts Thread

Because supplies were running low on the East side of the Berlin wall, East German women used to make their own garments at home. In order to present well to the rest of the world, the Soviet Union required that they made elegant and long-lasting clothes. Like these women, I took inspiration from DDR fashion magazines such as ‘Sibylle’, providing women’s suits patterns and hand-knitting techniques. Inspired by DDR women’s clothing reality, and Covid social restrictions, the collection explores the idea of making beautiful clothes anywhere and at any time, relying only on the designer’s hands with domestic tools such as a pair of needles. “Dysfunctional Beauty” is a playful collage mixing knitted drapes with distressed tailoring. Men’s style trousers and oversized jackets have been distorted and rearranged to fit the feminine silhouette, as if the DDR woman had been trying to repurpose old garments to wear at work. These mismatched severe tailoring pieces contrast with the softness of the knits that have been carefully calculated stitch by stitch and hand-knitted with sustainable yarns. The stitch work is an intricate combination of cable works, laces and delicate crochet works slashed into strips. Within this collection, I strived to turn an ancestral technique such as hand-knitting into a contemporary means of expression. I want to offer a new vision of craft by trying to bring it somewhere new whilst creating a singular sense of beauty and desire.