Survivors of the future

TURTLEHORN

Looking into the future… there was this folk living in a desert or hidden mountain… I called them ‘the survivors of the future’!

They lived from the heritage of past human folks in a subsistential lifestyle. They grow and eat plants instead of animals, because they are always afraid of radiation and weird mutations from fauna and flora. They took their knowledge from the past generation and developed their own principles. They know that their species might last long, but they also believe in an evolution of a stronger species without fear on changes.

Their garments are very particular. Everything is made out of existing found clothing. Their clothing might be or look functional, adaptable and thought out. Some colors are pointing out sometimes, which has a self-defensive function in their sense, as colorful animal skin on the most harmful animals or camouflage to survive. Nevertheless, they look quite adapted to the environment with vegetation and earthy tones.

The collection ‘SOTF’ relates the story of a certain folk living in the future on our planet. Hereby, I question and imagine the evolution of the human species in a dystopic way.

Together with this kind of evolution comes the imagination of possible ideas of the future. - How can our future look like in the next 100 to 500 years with the reality of now?

This imaginary society has overcome years of wars and natural phenomena, adapting by natural human evolution living a subsistencial lifestyle based on ascendantal heritage. The use of natural earth tones in this collection is visible, as well as the inspiration of a neoapocalyptical gorpcore style into modern streetwear. models

The ‘SOTF society’ are collectors and makers able to live on our planet in their nature, that also can integrate an urban environment. Surprisingly, this folk is not only good in understanding the sense of nature, but also interpreting found machinery and technologies. They are collectors of all kind they find. They also are makers and great thinkers.

Towards fashion, they distinguish between protecting and robust materials or soft and warmth-giving. Recycled outdoor jackets, leather garments and knitted materials are of abundance. Sometimes they seem to be functional or rather comfortable.

As this society is living a very circular lifestyle based on subsistence, they embrace human-made resources such as human hair for developing even softer clothes. It is easy to grow and collect in between their society. Because of the rarity of furry animals the SOTF discovered the relevance of using already existing resources and clever ways to collect fur in a harmless way.

This September the ‘SOTF’ were represented at the New York Fashion Week 2023, showcased on the runway and in a temporal expo and pop-up at Doors NYC.

First of all, I was invited by my retailers at Doors to hold a special designer event during NYFW, and by that some other interested contacts followed up.

I went through my requests, retook some contacts from last years fashion week where suddenly Vera Wang contacted me to participate at NYFW under a sponsorship for young designers! Crazy as it sounds and as busy and tight-in-time as we are in the fashion business, it didn’t work out but instead I could recap on other contacts from my last requests.

At the end, I participated on the runway with Flying Solo and some independent designers with a sponsorship from a regional German government. Before, during and after my participation I got a lot of more requests and invites to meet and connect, to participate or watch other fashion shows, connections with the press, editorials, celebrities and influencers.

Besides the runway show, I exhibited part of the collection in the Doors NYC pop-up and also sold some great pieces!

With all, it was a great chance to exhibit one of my statement pieces: the shoe jacket! Questioning the use of natural and synthetic leather by the ‘SOTF’, the special handcrafted Shoe Jacket called the attention and was the favorite piece of many. It is a handmade piece made out of already existing, sorted out shoe leather, and for the first time manufactured in Igualada, (Spain), in a collaboration project with the design school La Escola Gaspar in Igualada.

You also see the abundance of terry clothes embracing our terrestrial nature in beautiful earth tones made from pre-used new resources of selected towels. They are enlightened with an extra glance of natural rust dye, researched and developed in another collaboration project with students of Birmingham City University. The results of the investigation of this dyeing technique will be represented at the Upcycling Festival in Birmingham 2024 as part of the Int. Upcycling Research Network. The students could complete some parts of the new collection under my guidance and showcase them during NYFW. At the end the work will be published on a research paper.

Models

Ray Forrest, Andrés Di Rienzo, Antwon Bryant stylist, Alexis Correa

Photographers

María Voth Velasco, Jenny Reinhold, Stanislav Istratov, Kevin Mistry designer

María Voth Velasco / Turtlehorn x BCU