Franziska Lüthy

Awarded

Franziska Lüthy

Womenswear collection 'Hickory', winter 2007/2008

Fashion Design

Jury report

Knitted quotations and memories
Franziska Lüthy's girl­ish tops are se­duc­tive – and it is dif­fi­cult to say why at first. Her 'hick­ory' col­lec­tion con­sists of ten knit­ted pullovers rem­i­nis­cent of clothes as they used to be. We feel we are fa­mil­iar with the gar­ments, and yet there is some­thing off-putting about them. This quo­ta­tion game cap­ti­vates view­ers, it takes them over – and that in­cluded the jury. The col­lars are rem­i­nis­cent of school uni­forms, the puff sleeves of na­tional dress blouses and peas­ants' clothes, and the but­tons wrapped in wool and knit­ted pat­terns of holes of grand­mother's wardrobe. The tex­tile and fash­ion de­signer ex­plains that the state­ment made by knit­ting is a cen­tral theme of her work. She tries to trans­form the im­ages as­so­ci­ated with knit­ting, the game with fash­ion­able and con­ser­v­a­tive el­e­ments into a time­less and mod­ern form, into gar­ments for young or young-at-heart urban women. She was in­spired by the chil­dren's clothes of the 1940s, im­ages from New York at the time of in­dus­tri­al­iza­tion, and by rural en­vi­ron­ments and farm­houses in the au­tumn. Franziska Lüthy's tops are plain, and in­cor­po­rate sub­tle de­tails. Thus for ex­am­ples she picks out the edge of the col­lar, a clash of two colours, sleeve cuffs and the in­side of the neck­line with dark strips of wool. This ac­cen­tu­ates the var­i­ous el­e­ments. Some of the tops fit on the hip, oth­ers have high waists or are loose. The sil­hou­ettes and cuts are soft and fem­i­nine. They are all made of the finest Merino wool in au­tum­nal shades rem­i­nis­cent of woods, earth and berries.
The jury are com­mend­ing Franziska Lüthy's col­lec­tion twice in suc­ces­sion. They praise the items' high crafts­man­ship and point out that the fash­ion de­signer has de­vel­oped the same theme fur­ther, and that the de­tails have be­come more ex­pres­sive. They ad­mire the many play­ful lit­tle de­tails and mildly dis­turb­ing fea­tures, like for ex­am­ple the slightly asym­met­ri­cal sleeves.
Ar­i­ana Pradal

Biography

Franziska Lüthy
Born in
1972
Education
Textilgestalterin HFG

also in