Awarded

Andrea Vogel

Textile objects with braces to fasten 'Anschnallen'

Fashion Design

Jury report

Please fasten it
Who doesn't play with the idea of chang­ing the shape of his or her body from time to time? Mak­ing it look com­pletely dif­fer­ent, just tem­porar­ily? The tex­tile de­signer An­drea Vogel has de­vel­oped a se­ries of el­e­ments for her 'An­schnallen' (Fas­ten it) col­lec­tion and in­tends to see them tried out as a kind of ex­per­i­men­tal de­vice for the body. They are fab­ric units in­tended to be fas­tened on to the body in an un­usual way, using braces. The de­signer plans to try these add-on el­e­ments out on the pub­lic. She won­ders what would hap­pen if an Ap­pen­zell moun­tain farmer, for ex­am­ple, were to try some of these items on. We don't know ei­ther, but one thing is cer­tain: any­one who takes part in this 'work in progress' will cer­tainly find their body is not de­cently cov­ered.
Any­one tak­ing on the risk of mak­ing their shoul­ders look big­ger, for ex­am­ple, or re­ally em­pha­siz­ing their stom­ach will have to be quite fear­less about strange colours, shapes and ma­te­ri­als (knit­ted fab­ric, for ex­am­ple, silk or­ganza, leather, but pos­si­bly terry tow­elling as well). These de­signs make it pos­si­ble to change your own body ec­cen­tri­cally, to alien­ate it and re­shape it. You might sud­denly see your­self as ap­pear­ing in an avant-garde opera pro­duc­tion, or work­ing as a stri­dent per­for­mance artist.
The 'An­schnallen' col­lec­tion is a hu­mor­ous chal­lenge to the plea­sure we take in dis­guis­ing our­selves, stage di­rec­tions for a play whose text we hap­pen not to know. Only some­one who looks more closely will no­tice the con­cep­tual na­ture of the items to be fas­tened on. They are al­ways based on sym­met­ri­cal forms, du­pli­cated and sewn to­gether. As well as hav­ing the char­ac­ter of ex­per­i­men­tal ob­jects, the 'Fas­ten it' col­lec­tion also con­vinces as a set of unique sculp­tural items. And for the time being, this coura­geous de­signer who loves to play is leav­ing open the ques­tion of whether this ex­per­i­ment will lead to more con­ven­tional de­signs for every­day wear.
Peter Stohler

Biography

Andrea Vogel
Born in
1974
Education
Textilgestalterin