End of page

Back to overview

Franziska Lüthy

Awarded

Franziska Lüthy

Womenswear collection 'Hazelwood', winter 2006/2007

Fashion Design

Jury report

Knitted fabric with an alienation effect
Can one re­vert to well-known things such as knit­ted fab­ric and still pro­duce trendy fash­ion? Zurich fash­ion de­signer Franziska Lüthy proves that it is pos­si­ble. With 'Hazel­wood', the tex­tile de­signer trained at the Hochschule für Gestal­tung und Kunst Zürich, pre­sents a very spe­cial col­lec­tion. She got the in­spi­ra­tion for this pre­cious col­lec­tion from coun­try music and tra­di­tional cos­tumes from Tyrol, as she says. The clothes are par­tic­u­larly colour­ful and they sur­prise us with their un­usual cuts. At a first, su­per­fi­cial glance, the qual­i­ties re­main hid­den: the knit­ted clothes are rem­i­nis­cent of grand­mother's wardrobe, of con­ven­tion­al­ism, and the unini­ti­ated be­holder might even be re­pulsed by them. The fash­ion de­signer, who is also ex­pe­ri­enced in the­atre and film pro­duc­tion, ac­cepts the risk, and se­duces only at sec­ond sight. She works with small alien­ation ef­fects: here a small colour strip on an arm band, there a slight asym­me­try – a pair of sleeves for ex­am­ple can vary in their length – dis­placed cut-outs or min­i­mally dis­placed shoul­der seams. The con­tours are soft and fem­i­nine, puffy sleeves ac­cen­tu­ate the shoul­ders, frills ap­pear girl­ish. The knitwear shows a broad spec­tre of sub­dued au­tumn and win­ter colours. The colours are rem­i­nis­cent of mud, damp for­est soil or grass. All colours have a slight grey touch, a trick which gives the tex­tiles more depth. With puffy sleeves and frills, Franziska Lüthy uses shapes that are usu­ally saved for lighter fab­rics. She achieves an alien­at­ing ef­fect by work­ing in wool. Franziska Lüthy's col­lec­tion skil­fully op­er­ates be­tween re­jec­tion and se­duc­tion, strict­ness and play­ful­ness.
Peter Stohler

Biography

Franziska Lüthy
Born in
1972
Education
Textilgestalterin HFG

also in

2004

2007

Back to overview

Top of page