STITCH!
What is fashion? And what do fashion and clothing mean to us? That's the point of departure for STITCH!, the installation by Meta Struycken at EENWERK gallery Anyone looking around sees a variety of interesting handcraft techniques and a statement about our relationship with clothes.
'Clothes should no longer be seen as fleeting passers-by, but should become part of our lives.' With small hints such as Repair, Revive and Reuse, Meta reminds us that we must cherish our clothes instead of throwing them away. By way of her objects on a mini scale, she invites us to pay attention to, adjust and mend our wardrobes.
In these times, when fashion is mainly mass-produced, it is also an invitation to embellish and personalise garments. Ultimately, as an installation of 90 clothing objects, STITCH! is also a clear statement, a pamphlet against today's fashion industry.
At this point in history, we've lost our way concerning our relationship with fashion and clothes. We see a rapidness in trends that can no longer be kept up with. Labels and influencers do launches every day, new styles and trends every hour. Fast Fashion looks good in terms of the image, but is often poorly made; from low-quality fabric and with a bad fit. It has led to a culture in which we, in Europe, wear a piece of clothing only seven to eight times before discarding it.
The fashion industry – we know that by now, too – is extremely polluting and produces far too much. Fashion is a 'push market', in which labels put goods on the market and already make a profit when 30% is sold. Then 30% goes on sale. The remaining third ends up on the rubbish heap. It has been calculated that so much clothing is circulating today that we could clothe several generations with it.
Meta Struycken was trained as a fashion designer at ArtEZ University of the Arts Arnhem and subsequently fulfilled all sorts of roles in the fashion industry. Out of dissatisfaction, she turned her back on it for several years, to withdraw to her studio and dedicate herself to experimentation and the use of 'traditional handcrafts' that were once part of life in nearly every household.
Because clothing was expensive in the past, it was considered normal to repair it or reuse it with techniques such as quilting, appliqué work, felting, embroidery, stitching and darning. And sometimes things could be embellished due to a wish for variation. And these very techniques that were brought together by Struycken, have an enormous potency and can help us to build a loving relationship with our wardrobe and give fashion a new and more sustainable impulse.
'Traditional textile handcraft techniques offer the opportunity to look back, but at the same time to take a step forward and to define new values that are about awareness, care, nurturing, quality and artisanal craftsmanship,' Struycken says. During the Covid period, she began to post on Instagram about why we should revalue these 'domestic textile crafts'.
The theme takes us back, first of all, to the culture of manual work, as it existed in the 18th- and 19th-century salons where women made samplers and kept diaries of fabric samples and embroidery. This was a social, loving and contemplative activity. Just as a vegetable garden and cooking with basic ingredients brings us back to nature and the essence and value of our food, so does the activity of performing manual crafts brings us closer to the creative process of making clothes, the appreciation and knowledge of textiles and yarns. Furthermore, textile handcrafts are the perfect way to personalise clothing (still being mass-produced) and to add one's personal taste to it.
In order to ensure that the clothing has a timeless quality, and not the seasonal look of fashion, STITCH! adopts the universal visual elements of the artist's studio as its point of departure where the garment is seen as a blank canvas. With modernist abstract principles – such as form, texture, composition and divisions of the surface, a play of fine lines or, on the contrary, expressive brushstrokes – the aesthetics of traditional handicrafts are renewed.
In See All This Art Magazine, Lidewij Edelkoort recently argued that we should transform ourselves from being consumers of fashion to collectors of fashion. As collectors we learn to enjoy fully the beauty of the object, and we engage in a long-term relationship with it. It strikes her as a sustainable solution to continue enjoying fashion and clothing without damaging the planet. The installation STITCH! is the materialization of this: it presents us with timeless, stunning artefacts to collect.
Text: José Teunissen
Object images courtesy of Zora Ottink
STITCH! is on show at EENWERK gallery until 7 September 2024.
Find out more and plan your visit:
www.eenwerk.nl
'Clothes should no longer be seen as fleeting passers-by, but should become part of our lives.' With small hints such as Repair, Revive and Reuse, Meta reminds us that we must cherish our clothes instead of throwing them away. By way of her objects on a mini scale, she invites us to pay attention to, adjust and mend our wardrobes.
In these times, when fashion is mainly mass-produced, it is also an invitation to embellish and personalise garments. Ultimately, as an installation of 90 clothing objects, STITCH! is also a clear statement, a pamphlet against today's fashion industry.
At this point in history, we've lost our way concerning our relationship with fashion and clothes. We see a rapidness in trends that can no longer be kept up with. Labels and influencers do launches every day, new styles and trends every hour. Fast Fashion looks good in terms of the image, but is often poorly made; from low-quality fabric and with a bad fit. It has led to a culture in which we, in Europe, wear a piece of clothing only seven to eight times before discarding it.
The fashion industry – we know that by now, too – is extremely polluting and produces far too much. Fashion is a 'push market', in which labels put goods on the market and already make a profit when 30% is sold. Then 30% goes on sale. The remaining third ends up on the rubbish heap. It has been calculated that so much clothing is circulating today that we could clothe several generations with it.
Meta Struycken was trained as a fashion designer at ArtEZ University of the Arts Arnhem and subsequently fulfilled all sorts of roles in the fashion industry. Out of dissatisfaction, she turned her back on it for several years, to withdraw to her studio and dedicate herself to experimentation and the use of 'traditional handcrafts' that were once part of life in nearly every household.
Because clothing was expensive in the past, it was considered normal to repair it or reuse it with techniques such as quilting, appliqué work, felting, embroidery, stitching and darning. And sometimes things could be embellished due to a wish for variation. And these very techniques that were brought together by Struycken, have an enormous potency and can help us to build a loving relationship with our wardrobe and give fashion a new and more sustainable impulse.
'Traditional textile handcraft techniques offer the opportunity to look back, but at the same time to take a step forward and to define new values that are about awareness, care, nurturing, quality and artisanal craftsmanship,' Struycken says. During the Covid period, she began to post on Instagram about why we should revalue these 'domestic textile crafts'.
The theme takes us back, first of all, to the culture of manual work, as it existed in the 18th- and 19th-century salons where women made samplers and kept diaries of fabric samples and embroidery. This was a social, loving and contemplative activity. Just as a vegetable garden and cooking with basic ingredients brings us back to nature and the essence and value of our food, so does the activity of performing manual crafts brings us closer to the creative process of making clothes, the appreciation and knowledge of textiles and yarns. Furthermore, textile handcrafts are the perfect way to personalise clothing (still being mass-produced) and to add one's personal taste to it.
In order to ensure that the clothing has a timeless quality, and not the seasonal look of fashion, STITCH! adopts the universal visual elements of the artist's studio as its point of departure where the garment is seen as a blank canvas. With modernist abstract principles – such as form, texture, composition and divisions of the surface, a play of fine lines or, on the contrary, expressive brushstrokes – the aesthetics of traditional handicrafts are renewed.
In See All This Art Magazine, Lidewij Edelkoort recently argued that we should transform ourselves from being consumers of fashion to collectors of fashion. As collectors we learn to enjoy fully the beauty of the object, and we engage in a long-term relationship with it. It strikes her as a sustainable solution to continue enjoying fashion and clothing without damaging the planet. The installation STITCH! is the materialization of this: it presents us with timeless, stunning artefacts to collect.
Text: José Teunissen
Gallery images courtesy of Rob Stolk
Object images courtesy of Zora Ottink
STITCH! is on show at EENWERK gallery until 7 September 2024.
Find out more and plan your visit:
www.eenwerk.nl