Take no prisoners Proving that fashion’s influence on politics can go beyond Michelle Obama’s hemlines, Trine Lindegaard’s fall/winter 2013 collection is socially conscious inside and out. by Anders Christian Madsen / photography Nik Hartley
In a fashion world where social commentary rarely steps outside the borderlines of slogan T-shirts and eccentric punk doyennes, Lindegaard is something of an eyebrow raiser. Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2010, the Danish designer has established an approach to her work placing her somewhere between philanthropist and provocateur. With textiles sourced from a family in Ghana as well as a production scheme that employs British prisoners to work on anything from embroidery to illustration, Lindegaard’s loud but lighthearted menswear is suffused with boldness. Anders Christian Madsen: Some would say you’re romanticizing the idea of prison. Do you ever consider the fact that these inmates you work with have committed terrible crimes? Trine Lindegaard: I’m very aware of not asking them what they have done and especially with the younger guys I’m working with. Many of them might not have had great options in life. I’m not saying it’s not their fault, but it’s really about changing where they’re going afterwards. In terms of numbers, it’s something silly - like three out of four people who get released are going to reoffend, and all the UK prisons are at 90 percent capacity. So they really have to find ways to help people. I’m not saying the projects I’m doing are going to change anyone’s life, but at least you stimulate them in certain ways. They still have really hard lives in prison. ACM: What you’re doing could be considered quite political. TL: Yes, in some ways. It’s quite difficult with the
ZOO MAGAZINE 2013 NO.40
work I’m doing with the prisoners, because I’m not really allowed to tell their stories or talk about what their world is like in prison. So I have to be really careful that I don’t show a side of it that’s too positive, because a lot of people have, you know, a view of prisoners not being supposed to have a good life. But at the same time I can’t show some of the very negative things either, because I’d get in trouble with the prison and they might not let me back in again.
them to the outside world, because I’ll bring in pictures and say, “The clothes you’ve made are being sold in Korea,” or even in a street in London that they know. They get really excited about that, and their families can go and see it and so on.
ACM: How involved are the inmates in your work? TL: I started off doing some of these projects in more of a production kind of way, but it’s more and more important for me to involve them creatively. We come up with some of the ideas and the designs together, which I find very interesting. Of course, I’m still in control of what the end result is going to be, but a lot of the work that these people are doing is translated directly into the designs and are being used. A lot of my work is becoming about these communities and these less fortunate people in difficult situations. It’s about inspiring them in many ways, but they also inspire me with their personal stories.
ACM: It’s funny, because you kind of get this image in your head of these big inmates doing embroidery. TL: Yeah, although a lot of the guys I’m working with now are not that interested in embroidery. They still do it, but some of them used to do tattoos before they went to prison. Some of them are amazing at drawing. One makes these amazing cartoons and they’re quite political, and of course you can’t get anything published that’s political when you’re in prison, but he’s done a lot of illustrations for me now and they’re amazing. So it’s really about encouraging someone like him to pursue it once he’s released. He doesn’t really like embroidery, because I think the younger ones see it as a little bit old-fashioned compared to the older guys in there. I don’t work with the guys that do my production – that’s sort of spread all over the UK – but they’re all men so I guess a lot of them are that type of person you have in mind.
ACM: So they’re not a bunch of hardcore criminals anymore? TL: They’ve actually really changed in prison. They completely transform and they still seem quite young mentally, because they’ve been locked up since they were 18, maybe. In some ways they haven’t grown up in the normal way, as fast, and in other ways they’ve really grown up fast. I think it makes a lot of difference to them and it connects
ACM: Are all those words of optimism that you’ve splashed across the tops in your spring/ summer 2014 collection a message for these people, or is it more general? TL: It’s sort of both. It was all about freedom and freedom within the prison, and I wanted to keep it really broad for them to be able to not have restriction in what they do. I was told not to do the theme of freedom before I went in, because they
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