The Gerrit Rietveld Academie Fashion Show is the annual presentation of the Fashion department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. This year’s show features graduation projects by Anna Ammerer, Oline Bronée, Camille Doussy, Mads Lucky Hemmingsen, Elayne Henry, Olivia Sahl Jensen, Emmanuelle Martinez, Erin McClain, Dorka Morvai, Sophie Rintala, Vincent Schefz and Marlene Schienle, as well as a selection of works by first and second year Fashion students.
This edition of the fashion show is characterised by live sound. Amplified by a microphone, each student is literally given a voice. Like in the early fashion shows of the 1950s, where a presenter provided live comments on elements like the fabric, length and detailing, this microphone adds a sonic dimension to the work and gives a voice to others involved. The models are no longer silent, but breathe, hum, shout, speak and sing. Because the show is an inherent part of the work, integrated into the curriculum and not just a stage to display the result of a design process on, the students have developed their own performative dimension of the work.
Under the guidance of Elisa van Joolen (Head of Fashion department), artist Uta Eisenreich, Fashion department teachers Philipp Schueller, Oscar Raaijmaker, Ferdinand Schmeits, Tenant of Culture, Sanne Karssenberg and Marina Sasseron de Oliveira Cabral, and in collaboration with makers from various disciplines, such as voice and performance coach Deborah Abrahams, artist and choreographer Alexis Blake, scenographer Stefan Prokop and sound artist Jeroen Vermandere, each student expanded the multifaceted nature of their work through experiments with voice, sound, space, movement, light and shadow. The works show a wide range of personal interests, techniques, forms and materials, but come together in a play on identity, parallel universes and the twilight zone between fiction, dreams, memory and reality. The works explore clothes as an extension of the body, emphasizing its movements, clothes in cultural rituals, but also ‘clothing failures’ that stretch the standard of what is allowed to be visible.
Elisa van Joolen:
“Next to the voice of the designer, the show’s microphone grants a voice to the models, and assigns names to the audience members. Everyone has a role. Although fashion is often presented as the result of an ‘individual genius,’ it is in fact a collective activity; a composition of various human, material and cultural processes that create influential meanings. Like fashion itself, fashion education is a collective process based on the efforts of many: the student, the teacher, the workshop specialist, the coordinator, and so on. I hope that in the coming years we, together, can explore forms of fashion that are open, participatory, non-hierarchical, sustainable, research-based, diverse. Forms of fashion that re-value clothing and fashion as important cultural attributes rather than just commercial ones.”
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Gerrit Rietveld Academie Fashion Show 2024 is powered by Keep an Eye Foundation, Meester Koetsier Foundation, Stichting Van Stigt-ing and Stadsherstel
