Dutch Design Week will take place in Eindhoven from October 22nd to 29th. More than 2,600 designers and creative people of all kinds will exhibit their work at 110 locations in the city. From this, FashionUnited has put together a route especially for fashion lovers.
Plan B
A good starting point is Plan-B, in the very west of the DDW site. Here you will find, among other things, the project ‘Wearable concrete’ by Sam de Vries Robbé. “Concrete is often said to be resilient because it doesn’t burn, rust or rot. But it’s never used for clothing,” notes De Vries Robbé. He experimented with making wearable concrete suitable for clothing. A fashion film showing the first collection of the digital fashion label Netizens will also be shown in Plan-B.
Fashion Tech Farm
A kilometer and a half northeast is the Fashion Tech Farm, where several innovative projects in the field of fashion are presented. Here, for example, Pauline Vaandrager and Roxy van Kemenade show their Phygital Data Dress, a dress equipped with sensors that can recognize fingerprints and a data-based animation that is activated when the dress is touched by someone they know. Krizia Medero will be exhibiting 3D printed floral lace, and a library has been set up to showcase innovative forms of interactive textiles.
At the more analogue end of the spectrum is a presentation of Living Colour, the project by Ilfa Siebenhaar and Laura Luchtman, and the results of a collaboration between ‘Genuine Fake’ and ‘Strolling in Grandma’s Clothes’. Worn garments were used to create new, colorful objects with a story.
evolution
Ilse Kremer, founder of Fabulous Fungi, has developed a method of dyeing textiles with fungi. This method offers an alternative to today’s synthetic and often harmful dyeing processes. You can see how this works at Evoluon, which is just a five-minute bike ride – or 15-minute walk – from Fashion Tech Farm.
Yksi Expo
Fifteen minutes walk west is Yksi Expo. An exhibition was put together there, which mainly revolves around materials. On view is a work by Lena Winterink, who researched the origins of today’s fashion materials. She made a coat from thirteen hundred garment labels intended to provide information about the materials from which the clothes were made—but do they? The Hollands Wol Collectief features an installation that illustrates the potential of Dutch wool, a material that is often exported today but might as well stay within the country’s borders. Zena Holloway grows garments from grass roots, and the WINT Design Lab has developed a biodegradable performance textile that mimics the properties of cowhide.
Klokgebouw
In the same area is the Klokgebouw. In Hall 1, Brightfiber and Loop.a.life will present the results of a year and a half of research into the development of yarns and fabrics from waste streams in the Amsterdam region. It’s not just about designing new materials, but also about new colors: What color palette will be created from the mountain of textile waste?
In Hall 4, guests can have a tailor-made T-shirt made from a 3D scan of their body for a fixed price every day between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. and have it delivered to their home within a few days. Atalyé Amsterdam wants to show that it is not only possible, but also fast, scalable and affordable to have clothes made to order using modern technology.
Microlab Hall
The Microlab Hall is located on the edge of the Strijp-S district. Usually a collaboration space for creatives, during DDW it is the location for the New Crafts exhibition organized by craft platform Crafts Council Netherlands. Last year, the Crafts Council brought artisans together with digital makers, resulting in a series of hybrid projects. In the realm of fashion, there is work by Flavia Bon and Anita Michaluszko that show how valuable the convergence of digital and physical manufacturing techniques can be. Daniël Maarleveld and Martine van ‘t Hul have developed a new embroidery machine technique that can be used to personalize clothing.
The results of Christien Meindertsma’s research on the use of Rotterdam wool can be seen in the same place. There is also an exhibition by Zeeuws Museum in collaboration with designer Duran Lantink. Lantink explored the future prospects of regional costumes by making collages from Zeeuws Museum imagery and deconstructing and reconstructing locally acquired garments. Finally, the book Nobu Baba Henk, based on three films by fashion designer Lisa Konno and director Sarah Blok, is also presented here.
New Order of Fashion Lab
Around the corner, in Torenallee, is the New Order of Fashion lab, an international platform for up-and-coming fashion talent. On display here are work by fashion designers who have recently graduated, as well as material and art research by the creatives who work in the lab.
For those still going to the city center: at The Student Hotel, near the train station, an embroidery workshop has been set up on behalf of the New Order of Fashion, where you can have t-shirts embroidered or attend one of Martine’s workshops van ‘t Hul and Woo Jin Joo can participate.
housewest_
On the north side is Housewest_, in the former working-class neighborhood of Woensel West. Here you can see the exhibition ‘Sorry We’re Open’, which shows works by 14 different artists. The exhibition encompasses design, art and fashion, “inspired by Dutch street life and working-class culture,” according to the announcement. “Expect deconstructed plastic garden furniture, lots of concrete and galvanized steel, topped with a sprinkling of loose morals.”
End the tour here, or continue at one of the many other DDW locations offering work in the fields of fashion, architecture, interior design, food and health, among others.
This article was similarly published on FashionUnited.nl. Translation and editing: Barbara Russ