IKOU TSCHÜSS: Carmen D’Apollonio, Guya Marini

Awarded

IKOU TSCHÜSS: Carmen D’Apollonio / Guya Marini

A fashion collection, handmade and handprinted (for women, men, children and interior)

Fashion Design

Hand-Knitted Haute-Couture
IKOU TSCHÜSS have won a Swiss Fed­eral De­sign Award for their Sum­mer and Win­ter 2008/2009 fash­ion col­lec­tion. The pieces range from play­ful, 70s in­spired knits and hand-printed T-shirts in del­i­cate colours for men, women and chil­dren, to scarves, belts and neck­laces, and even hand-em­broi­dered sofa cush­ions. IKOU TSCHÜSS is the brain­child of young Zurich-based de­sign­ers Guya Marini and Car­men D'Apol­lo­nio. They met in Zurich in the early 1990s and began work­ing to­gether in 2006, cre­at­ing their first col­lec­tion of knits and hand-printed T-shirts in Win­ter 2006 and going on to pro­duce five more fash­ion col­lec­tions to date. Be­fore then, the two de­sign­ers, both of whom are daugh­ters of Ital­ian im­mi­grants, di­vided their time be­tween Zurich and their work­places abroad (Guya Marini was a styl­ist for Paco Ra­banne in Paris and Car­men D'Apol­lo­nio was an as­sis­tant to Urs Fis­cher in New York).

Ikou means 'let's go!' in Japan­ese, while tschüss means 'bye!' in Ger­man. The play­ful cre­ations of IKOU TSCHÜSS are now in de­mand from Zurich to Tokyo, and are avail­able in more than 20 out­lets world­wide. Their printed silk scarves with cro­chet bor­ders made of re­cy­cled ma­te­r­ial have be­come cov­eted items and have been fea­tured in such high-pro­file in­ter­na­tional fash­ion mag­a­zines as Vogue, Elle and Jalouse.

The core phi­los­o­phy of the young fash­ion label is to use lo­cally sourced, hand­made goods (knits, cro­chet work, hand-print­ing, colour de­sign). The com­bi­na­tion of or­di­nary, tra­di­tional crafts­man­ship and un­usual ma­te­ri­als adds new fresh­ness to the some­what frumpy image con­jured by cro­chet. A large cir­cle of friends, young and old, has built up around Zurich, all of whom knit and cro­chet en­thu­si­as­ti­cally. This means that each piece is en­tirely hand-crafted in Switzer­land. Both of the de­sign­ers are adamant that they do not wish to adopt more eco­nom­i­cal, mech­a­nized pro­duc­tion meth­ods.

The IKOU TSCHÜSS col­lec­tion is in­no­v­a­tive, up­beat, free-spir­ited and play­ful. It re­flects a love of ex­per­i­ment­ing with tech­niques, ma­te­ri­als and colours, and is grounded at the same time in a strong phi­los­o­phy.
Anna Wacker

Carmen D'Apollonio
Born in
1973
Education
Fashion designer
Group name
Ikou Tschüss GmbH

Guya Marini
Born in
1974
Education
Fashion designer
Group name
Ikou Tschüss GmbH