Awarded

Dominic Knecht

Menswear collection 'Do not construct the fashion, let the fashion construct itself' (bachelor work)

Fashion Design

Jury report

Entwined Manliness
How can a young de­signer carve him­self a niche in the world of men's fash­ion? The field is con­sid­ered de­mand­ing; men have no­to­ri­ously con­ser­v­a­tive, prim and proper taste. Do­minic Knecht came up with a star­tlingly spec­tac­u­lar 20-piece col­lec­tion for his bach­e­lor pro­ject at the Hochschule für Gestal­tung und Kunst in Basel (FHNW). It is a bold state­ment and tes­ti­fies to his de­light in ex­per­i­men­ta­tion. The title of the col­lec­tion be­gins 'Do not con­struct the fash­ion, ...' and pro­ceeds even more au­da­ciously: '...​let the fash­ion con­struct it­self'. Fash­ion, ac­cord­ing to Knecht, must bow to the body. Clothes emerge on the body it­self, which means that Knecht starts by wrap­ping up the male body in order to find forms and ma­te­ri­als. He swathes man­nequins in yarn or ban­dages, live mod­els in jer­sey knit, ex­per­i­ment­ing with the qual­ity of ma­te­ri­als, like silk, until they ac­quire the vol­ume he is look­ing for. Knecht is in­ter­ested in dis­place­ment, ex­ag­ger­a­tion and alien­ation. The yel­low, red and blue sausages that he winds around the torso look clow­nesque. He in­verts the con­ven­tional mas­cu­line ideal of broad shoul­ders and slen­der hips by dress­ing shoul­ders to make them look nar­rower while en­larg­ing the ap­pear­ance of male hips with bal­loon trousers. Knecht has a pen­chant for grotesque ex­ag­ger­a­tion: he wraps sausage-shaped el­e­ments around shoul­ders until they re­sem­ble the over­sized sil­hou­ette of an ice hockey player. In other de­signs, he show­cases trans­parency: shirts made of yarn re­vealed naked skin un­der­neath, a de­vice or­di­nar­ily re­served for women's fash­ion. Knecht's diploma col­lec­tion makes a pow­er­ful state­ment and is di­rected to men coura­geous enough to flaunt con­cep­tual fash­ion of this kind. They are men, says Knecht, who demon­strate both 'strength and sen­si­tiv­ity, naïveté and cool­ness'. His col­lec­tion, un­usu­ally au­da­cious in form and colour, rad­i­cally sub­verts the tra­di­tional image of man­li­ness.
Peter Stohler

Biography

Dominic Knecht
Born in
1983
Education
Fashion Designer

Web

also in

2012

2013

2015