Wednesday, 6 June 2018 NDSM Loods, NDSM-Plein 85, 1033 WC Amsterdam
Show
WC Wardrobe
Entrance & Tickets
Ferry towards Central Station (130m)
Follow the prints on the floor to join the after-show drinks at Ferrotopia, NDSM Wharf (80m)
Table of Contents Students
p. 4
Foreword
p. 5
Anna Myntekær Sørensen
p. 6
Antonina Maria Pawłowicz
p. 8
Edward Show
p.10
Galatée Martin
p.12
Jahmuna Mcclean
p.14
Lieselot Elzinga
p.16
Table of Contents
Nikola �emanová
p. 18
Sonia Oet
p. 20
Graduates Anna Myntekær Sørensen Antonina Maria Pawłowicz Edward Show Galatée Martin Jahmuna Mcclean Lieselot Elzinga Nikola �emanová Sonia Oet Sonia Witwitzka Tatiana Quard Yana Monk Yaroslav Glazonov 2nd Year Students
Sonia Witwitzka
p. 22
Bodil Ouedrago Emma Torsteinsrud Erika Jonasson Karis Lindelien Krystian Sokolowski Laetitzia Campbell Mika Perlmutte 1st Year Students
Tatiana Quard
p.24
Yana Monk
p. 26
Yaroslav Glazonov
p. 28
Credits
p. 30
Colophon
p. 31
Alba Boustanji Darwin Winklaa Hyojin Jung Idan Grady Irene Ha Javier Zamora Velasquez Karly Gerharts Laura Fernandez Antolin Lauren Nápoles Gonzáles Louise Andersen Milad Taheri Roxane Mbanga
Foreword
Fashion is not newness for the sake of newness, but it is all about ‘nowness’. How do you give that shape? What is that language with which we express ourselves? At a time when awareness about our consumption behaviour starts to set the political agenda, we see a new generation of students searching for the essence of this language in which they wish to express themselves, the language of fashion. Is fashion caught in a self-referential spiral, endlessly reconfiguring itself, or can we also go back to the ‘big bang’ of that language and start all over again with a totally new set of rules? We can start by reflecting on ourselves, on what that language means, where it comes from. Why not practice fashion abstinence once in a while, just like the digital detoxing more and more people young and old are submitting themselves to? What will happen to our ‘fashion’ sensibility when we stop saying so much all the time and just focus on being? We are looking for our default status, for the ‘restart button’. This is the ‘nowness’ that our students are addressing and expressing in their work. Fashion does introspection because modern man does introspection. We are looking for new ways to do ‘fashion’. On behalf of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie I would like to express our gratitude to NDSM Loods, NDSM Werf and the City of Amsterdam, without whose support the GERRIT RIETVELD FASHION SHOW 2018 would not have been possible. Niels Klavers Head of the Fashion department Gerrit Rietveld Academie
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Anna Myntekær Sørensen DK/DNK 1988 annamynte@gmail.com www.annamyntekaer.com
Anna’s run up to leave Scandinavia to study at the Rietveld Academie has been a thorough one, starting out at a Media Gymnasium in Malmø, Sweden, followed by a year in documentary photography at VERA, a ‘Kunstskole’ in Copenhagen, and another two years at the Copenhagen Academy of Fashion Design. In her final year at Rietveld Anna interned at Danish-South Korean couturier Christine Hyun Mi Nielsen in Paris. Resolute in finding a way to express herself through fashion without mindlessly contributing to its planned obsolescence, she decided to wrap her head around the deeper nature of things. As a starting point for her graduation collection Anna wrote a thesis about the phenomenon of DNA. Inspired by Richard Dawkins’ theory about people merely being ‘gene machines’, Anna decided to face her very own set of genes and whom she got them from. “My grandmother has done a good job as a gene machine, all in my family carry a bit of her with us, with slight changes. It’s a bit the same with fashion. We have changed the way we wear it but we all carry a little bit of our grandparents ‘fashion’ every day. My collection has a mix of memories from my heritage, built up from garments with a strong DNA, and developed with slight variations. It becomes a new garment.” The line up ends with a nude coloured underwear inspired outfit, “who knows if we’re gonna wear clothing in the far future, or if it ultimately becomes one with our skin?” 7
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Antonina Maria Pawłowicz PL/POL 1991 antonina.pawlowicz@gmail.com @poppysitta
Before joining the Rietveld Fashion department Antonina studied fashion at Academy of Fine Arts back home in Warsaw, Poland. After two full internships, at the Iris van Herpen studio and at Alexander Wang’s textile department, she set her mind to studying abroad. Little did she realise at the time that leaving behind her homeland with its unique history and culture would become such a dominant theme for her to explore and express through her graduation project and quite possibly her future work. “My collection is inspired by Polish national identity and my cultural roots in the ‘Eastern Bloc’. My research eventually narrowed down to one specific item, the traditional Polish folk shirt, and its cultural and social context.” By experimenting with glorified geometric prints, different structures, visible wrinkles or even washed textures, ‘Poppy’, as her nickname goes, gave her collection the ‘dated look’, looking to fill a gap between folk costume and streetwear. Wearable by both men and women these garments, with their main focus on form, are “so clean that they are almost mystical.” 9
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Edward Show CN/CHN 1995 edwardshow520@gmail.com
Edward Show (or Liao Yunjian to Chinese) briefly studied preventive medicine and English literature at Hunan Normal University but then decided to prepare his portfolio at Hong Kong Design Institute in order to study fashion in he Netherlands. After one year at the Royal Academy in The Hague, Edward switched to the Rietveld Fashion department where he learned to allow more playfulness and naïvité in his design approach. After writing his thesis ‘exploring the possibility and the pursuit of the idea of morbid beauty’ in 2017 — which was based on personal experience having fallen ill earlier that school year — Edward decided to postpone his graduation collection for another year. He chose a quote by Virginia Woolf — “Love, the poet said, is woman’s whole existence.” — to be the starting point for his 2018 graduation project. “The quote immediately creates this image of the birth of Venus, which inspires me to do a collection based on lingerie. Instead of strictly sticking to bra and panties, I embedded the shape of a bra into different types of jackets, especially those worn by social workers in the Western Chinese desert.” Edward elaborates. “This collection shows my personal perspective and understanding of our daily objects and thoughts.” Edward expresses hopes that the fashion industry will evolve to be more eco-friendly and more respectful. 11
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Galatée Martin FR/FRA 1993 galateemartin@yahoo.fr
When Galatée was just an infant, her parents, both architects specialised in old monuments, bought an old abbey in Normandy and set out to restore it. Growing up surrounded with such passion for the arts surely had its formative effects on her and her four siblings. Via École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, where she got a degree in textile design, Galatée found her way to the Rietveld Fashion department where: “I found a way of translating my drawings into garments to give them another dimension, a physical body.” Through her upbringing Galatée developed a fascination for the classics. “Writing my thesis about our relation to ancient Greek statues I learned how these sculptors sought perfection. The representation of the ideal was in fact an assemblage, a combination of many different parts of human bodies, male and female. Every detail of these statues fascinates me, from their perfectly curled hair to their nonchalant posture. I want to communicate my feeling about them through my collection.” With blue being the radical colour of choice for her signature drawings, the search for her ‘dream blue’ continues in the materialisation. “The Venus de Milo is an accidental surrealist masterpiece. Her lack of arms makes her strange and dreamlike. She is perfect but imperfect, beautiful but broken — the body as a ruin. That sense of enigmatic incompleteness has transformed an ancient work of art into a modern one.”— Jonathan Jones 13
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Jahmuna Mcclean DK/DNK 1991 shiva.jahmuna.mcclean@gmail.com
Growing up just outside of Copenhagen, Jahmuna enjoyed a Rudolf Steiner schooling and with her family, an Irish father who grew up in South Africa, a Danish mother and her four siblings, she travelled to India every year for 12 years, until teenage life took reign. Via the Folk High School ‘Ærø Art School’ and the BGK Arken Museum Of Modern Art Jahmuna found her way to the Rietveld to study Fashion with a fine arts perspective. “My graduation collection is built around my parents. Their compounding language and culture. Their visual identity, spiritual convictions and beliefs. Their nomadic life, their love for reusing and preserving materials and their ability to create with their own hands.” Looks, silhouettes, colours, fabrics, shapes are all created from a mix of her parents’ wardrobe, family photos and memories of India; most of it handcrafted — crocheted, woven, knitted, tufted, sublimated, burned out, laser cut, embroidered and beaded — literally reusing the source of her inspiration. All the senses and sensibilities of the warm Southern curry to the ice cold Himalayas are recreated and relived. Jahmuna has come to terms with the out of the ordinary flavours of her exotic upbringing but she feels blessed with the inspiration, “my parents, their life recipe, their way of giving new value to old things and their ability to create their own sense of newness.” 15
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Lieselot Elzinga NL/NLD 1993 lieselotelzinga@gmail.com @lieselot.elzinga www.lieselotelzinga.com
An Amsterdam native from a musical family, Lieselot Elzinga was born for the stage. Since the age of 12 she’s been playing bass guitar in the all female Rock ‘n Roll band ‘Fuz’, and as such she’s been rockin’ her bass guitar in Holland’s finest pop temples and in 2014 the band released an EP called Sugar Coated. Making her way in a man’s world, and coming to terms with a life on stage, Lieselot’s interest in the transformative power of ‘fashion’ ultimately led her to the Rietveld Fashion department. “My work is mainly inspired by everything ‘staged’, and not only by the literal staged performances, but also by how we relate to television and other media.” Having explored the complex back and forth dynamics between audience and staged realities on an intellectual level for her thesis, Lieselot set out to realise a purposely grotesque graduation collection, playing with simplifications, exaggerations, clichés, blow-ups and abstractions to dress her ‘band’ for the catwalk. “I want to convey the same sensation as making and performing music; it is a direct expression, and an abstract way to convey a mood or emotion to the public.” Lieselot adds. Preceding her graduation, Lieselot interned at Sadie Williams and at Charles Jeffrey Loverboy in the UK. 17
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Nikola �emanová SK/SVK 1994 nikola.cemanova@gmail.com
Raised by her parents, both graphic designers, alchemists and recreational tailors, in a small town in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains of Slovakia, Nikola steadfastly fed her ‘unapologetic’ nature. She was a professional gymnast with an obsession for horses, took up acting, poetry, and developed an interest in photography and fashion. With a revolutionary head on her shoulders she started travelling, and at age 19 decided on the Rietveld. Although committed to the Fashion department, Nikola says she might as well become a potter. The search for freedom being one of the main themes for this generation of emerging artists and designers, Nikola took it to the extreme for her graduation project. “It is a collection of garments behind which there is no pre-conceptualised idea other than the materials being used, damaged or acquired from free sources. It is the direct contact with the fabric, without pattern making and without the use of a ruler. It is the sensual experience of colours and materials and shapes in space and time, a celebration of the creation and the existence of it. It is a physical metaphor for what I perceive, believe in and am… It is what it wants to be.” It is the quiet whisper that is the precious thing she suggests we should be paying more attention to, in a world where our senses are constantly numbed. “We are used to being shouted at and shocked. People don’t feel moved or impressed by what is quiet, by simply living.” 19
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Sonia Oet FR/FRA 1991 sonia.oet@gmail.com whitetshirtbluejeans@gmail.com @a.march.issue
Daughter to a French-Dutch ceramist father (who is also the artistic director of E.S.A.T. Menilmontant, an artistic centre for mentally disabled people) and an Indian born, London raised mother (an English teacher in University), Sonia is exemplary for her globe spanning family tree. Born and raised on a houseboat in the centre of Paris, well travelled and packed with preparatory schooling and work experiences in the arts, Sonia’s biography reads like that of an international fashion star. But then again, she’s not one to follow the pack. “I love ‘people watching’ and I have always been intrigued by this fashion world.” Sonia elucidates her choice for the Rietveld Fashion department. Rather than committing to designing fashion, she developed an eye for seeing right through it: questioning it and studying people’s deeply enslaved relation to it. For her graduation project she set out on a radical fashion detox research. As the grand finale of her detox programme she decided to reshoot an entire issue of British Vogue, using the fellow students and teachers who contributed to her research as models, mimicking all the original poses wearing nothing but a ‘cold turkey’ uniform consisting of nondescript blue jeans and a plain white T-shirt. The resulting glossy magazine ‘A March Issue’ — made in collaboration with Graphic Design student Line Arngaard — will be released during the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Graduation Show (4-8 July) and can already be pre-ordered on: www.wemakeit.com/ projects/a-march-issue-2018. 21
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Sonia Witwitzka SE/SWE 1986 hello@witwitzka.com www.witwitzka.com
Born in Stockholm and coming of age in Gothenburg on the Western shores of Sweden, Sonia Witwitzka always abided to her creative nature: taking graphic design in high school, moving to Istanbul to study the Turkish language, back in Sweden she did an artistic foundation study and another year in graphic arts. While working at Weekday for some years Sonia stayed in her artistic flow initiating a small gallery, assisting a photographer and taking on graphic design jobs. “I badly wanted to study graphic design abroad so I headed for the Rietveld and their renowned approach. During the Basicyear my interest for fashion as an expression was growing and I welcomed the challenge to work in 3D. But it was only after doing Graphic Design for 1,5 years and then taking a break for a year that I came back and fullheartedly switched to the Fashion department,” Sonia explains. In her final year, Sonia interned at Eckhaus Latta in New York. Having made her miles, Sonia was not the youngest student in the Fashion department, which informed her thesis and final collection about ageing. “My graduation project is about the presence of both an older stage and the young age. Contrasting being young with its lightness and awareness of the body’s shapes, in relation to the deformation and collaboration with gravity when growing old.” 23
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Tatiana Quard FR/FRA 1995 tatianaquard@hotmail.fr @tatianaquard www.tatianaquard.com
Born and raised in the French capital, Tatiana studied art history for her A-level, followed a year at Haute École des Arts du Rhin in Mulhouse before applying to the Rietveld, where she chose to study Fashion after the Basicyear. Fifteen years in ballet also taught her a life long appreciation for the art of movement. After assisting Melitta Baumeister for two seasons during Paris Fashion Week, Tatiana interned at Patrick Ervell in New York and then flew over to Japan for a second internship at Julien David. Tokyo turned out to be the perfect source of inspiration for Tatiana’s graduation project. “What I found most interesting in the Japanese way of dressing is the fact that they keep using old traditional concepts like ‘Ma’, ‘Mu’ and ‘Wabi-sabi’. This made me reconsider the role of clothes in our society and what it can be.” A very particular inspiration was the construction workers’ clothing called Sagy�fuku, and by interviewing these handsomely dressed workers, she learned about the unusual pride they take in their uniforms. The sheer fact that this traditional workwear is currently in danger of being replaced for Western style garb — in name of the upcoming Olympics for example — triggered Tatiana to dedicate her collection to this matter of identity. “I related the identity the Tobi - Shokunin put into their uniform to the identity of the outfit itself. I want to question the idea of clothes and their representation in the fashion industry as well as in daily life.” 25
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Yana Monk RU/RUS 1995 monkdirect@gmail.com
Russian native Yana started her studies at the Moscow State University of Design and Technology and then moved to London to do a foundation year in fashion and jewellery at Central Saint Martins. She then decided to continue her education at the Rietveld, embracing the space to realise herself, before diving in the deep end to perform under pressure in a professional environment. Deep sea diving being one of her favourite getaways, she knows how to keep calm and carry on so to speak. “For my graduation project I explored capsularisation as a psychological and physical phenomenon, not only concerning people’s cocooning tendencies, but as the permanent state of the modern society.” We have evolved into nomads in an information society looking for alternative modes to isolate ourselves, Yana states, and although we need the capsule, physical or imaginative, like the baby needs the womb, we also need to escape from it. Yana’s collection offers consolation to modern souls. Her nine silhouettes, all with exaggerated proportions and morphing the visual language of jackets with more abstract organic features, are visual interpretations of a — supposedly — safe capsule. “They acquire the features of a carnivorous plant locking up a man in a prison of other’s desires, false memories and unnecessary things. Eventually the personality blurs, leaving the room for universal homogenisation. It is too soon to say what will happen in the process of this fermentation, but one thing is clear: the human as we know it will cease to exist.” 27
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Yaroslav Glazonov RU/RUS 1990 yarosloveee@gmail.com
Yaroslav came all the way from the beautiful Siberian city Krasnoyarsk, a major hub on the Trans-Siberian railway line, to study fashion in The Netherlands. He started out at ArtEZ in Arnhem with a special scholarship for non-EU talent, but after two years he chose to continue his education at the Rietveld. All the while eagerly practising his skills working at a local tailor. Before starting his graduation project Yaroslav interned at Aitor Throup, participating in a Company Wayne McGregor dance performance called ‘Autobiography’. For his thesis, which proceeds and informs the development of the graduation collection at the Rietveld, Yaroslav immersed himself in an ambitious quest defining the artist of the future as a hacker. With Malevich’s Black Square as a starting point he took an intellectual journey, steering entirely on his own compass, to reason himself and his audience to a ‘point zero’ from whereon true free creation would again be possible. He even orchestrated a performance to help everyone including himself understand what he was onto. Yaroslav’s thesis got nominated for the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Thesis Award 2018. The final collection named ‘INTUISM’ is a direct result from Yaroslav’s theory. “After my deep research process about the zero-point and the hack, I decided to use only my own experience for understanding how to get to a zero point, and then to step over it into a dimension of future information.” 29
Credits Head of Fashion Department Niels Klavers Head of Show Production Py Tswang Jin i.c.w. Good Mood Productions (Michelle den Hollander) Art Direction & Technical Production JUR (Stefan Prokop and team) Art Direction & Choreography Frontrowbackstage (Bas Andrea and Nathalie Haelermans) - House of Orange Music Direction & DJ Sounds Like Tamara (Tamara van der Laarse) Hair & Make-up House of Orange Styling Marleen de Jong - NCL Representation Catwalk Photography & -Video Team Peter Stigter Front- & Backstage Assistance Amber van Iersel, Anastasia Dimova, Brandi Lacertosa, Evan Warner, Joep Maasdam, Kate Kern, Lotte Kuiper, Merel Zoet, Roy Doron, tutors of the Fashion department and students of Mode & Jean School and ROC Mondriaan.
GERRIT RIETVELD ACADEMIE FASHION SHOW 2018 is made possible with the generous support of NDSM Loods, NDSM Werf and the City of Amsterdam. Special thanks to the Executive Board of Gerrit Rietveld Academie, NDSM Loods, NDSM Werf, the City of Amsterdam, tutors of the Fashion department (Amie Dicke, Ea Polman, Gert Jonkers, Lise Lefebvre, Mo Veld, Nicky den Breejen, Oscar Raaijmakers, Peter Jeroense, Peter van Gorp, Riette Wanders and Sonja Kip), the Graphic Design department (Bart de Baets, Deimant� Jasiulevi�i�t�, Jurgis Lietunovas and Manon Bachelier), Public Rietveld (Bieneke Bennekers, Ásgerður Birna Björnsdóttir, Merel Kokhuis, Tomas Adolfs and Vere van Hal), RietveldTV, Anne Lakeman, Denim City (Jos van den Hoogen), Diane Pernet, EARTH Water, Fenna Lampe, Folkert de Jong, Fuz, Jonathan Aldenberg, Karen Al, MakerStreet, Marcelo Horacio Maquiera, Margreeth Olsthoorn, Marion and Peter Spreekmeester, Mark van Vorstenbos, Milou van Rossum, Omri Bigetz, Pablo Londono Sera, Pernilla Phillip, Pllek, Resoluut.com, Sociëteit SEXYLAND, Thera Hillenaar, We Are Public, all workstudents and many more.
Graphic Design Deimant� Jasiulevi�i�t�, Jurgis Lietunovas and Manon Bachelier PR & Communication schoon den boer PR i.c.w. Public Rietveld Crew Catering Oh My Guts
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Colophon
This publication is made for the GERRIT RIETVELD ACADEMIE FASHION SHOW 2018 Text Mo Veld Photos Fashion graduates Graphic Design Deimant� Jasiulevi�i�t�, Jurgis Lietunovas and Manon Bachelier Editorial Board Bart de Baets, Bieneke Bennekers, Niels Klavers, Py Tswang Jin and Vere van Hal Print Rodi Media
GOOD MOOD PRODUCTIONS
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