Awarded

Cornelia Peter

Womenswear collection 'The man who flew into space from his apartment' (diploma work)

Fashion Design

Jury report

The dream of flying
The fash­ion de­signer Cor­nelia Peter calls her 2005/2006 col­lec­tion 'The man who flew into space from his apart­ment'. This enig­matic-sound­ing title refers to a col­lec­tion in­tended as a homage to dy­namism and the dream of fly­ing. The de­signer bor­rowed the idea from an in­stal­la­tion by the Russ­ian artist Ilya Kabakov. But how can we use clothes to es­cape from the earth's grav­ity? At a first glance, Cor­nelia Peter's de­signs look quite earth-bound, given the amount of fur that the de­signer uses for her coats, stoles or cuffs. You could wrongly as­sume that these clothes were in­tended for trap­pers, not for peo­ple dream­ing about fly­ing. But that would be a long way from the truth: Peter's de­signs may seem earth­ily heavy, but they are light and airy. These clothes are cut with such vir­tu­os­ity and trimmed with coloured threads using a highly in­di­vid­ual tech­nique ('Wiefel­tech­nik'), which makes them look as light as feath­ers. The de­signer em­broi­ders her cre­ations in ir­reg­u­lar areas and to pro­duce dif­fer­ent thick­nesses, which cre­ates an amaz­ing vi­sual ef­fect. It gives the clothes ad­di­tional vol­ume, dec­o­rat­ing them and giv­ing them more tex­ture and ac­cents. The al­ter­na­tion of em­broi­dered and un-em­broi­dered sur­faces cre­ates a ten­sion that makes the gar­ments vi­brate in the in­ter­play be­tween the dif­fer­ent colours used. The fash­ion de­signer has a bravura com­mand of this vir­tu­oso game with for­mal con­trasts. She also com­bines ma­te­ri­als hav­ing quite dif­fer­ent con­no­ta­tions with equally ef­fort­less ease. This col­lec­tion is in­tended, says the de­signer, with a twin­kle in her eye, for the woman who loves the dream of fly­ing. But peo­ple who wear Cor­nelia Peter's clothes should not just be in­ter­ested in dream­ing of fly­ing. They should be ready to stand up to the cu­ri­ous and amazed looks that this coura­geously off-beat col­lec­tion is bound to at­tract.
Peter Stohler

Biography

Cornelia Peter
Born in
1975
Education
Designerin FH in Modedesign