Friday 29 October 2010

sandra backlund

Sandra Backlund is a Swedish fashion designer best known for her chunky architectural knitwear. She has to be one of the most recognised and exciting contemporary knitwear designers in Europe.


Her innovative designs are pieced together from individually crafted elements that evolve into three dimensional formations.




These designs are constructed textiles at its extreme. They verge on the borders of wearable art, and are certainly created through a process more affiliated with sulpture than fashion design.

She says about her designs:
"My work is very personal to me. I improvise and allow myself to loose control and see what happens if I do not think so much about practical things. The human body is always the starting point. I am really fascinated by all the ways you can highlight, distort and transform the natural silhouette with clothes and accessories."
Backlund's designs fascinate me, and as inspiration for my proposed creative project, they certainly give me a lot to contemplate concerning design & construction. I feel the urge to unpick and unravel,  to deconstruct and dissect.

Her work is quite different to my intended outcomes as she uses mainly hand knit and crochet techniques, working in heavy yarns as opposed to my finer machine knitted samples.

Mostly I am in awe of her concept. In a recent interview with Blend magazine she explains how her work is never planned, and how important the act of improvisation through coincidence and accident is in the evolution of her designs.

This is certainly an ethos I would like to aspire to. I think the process of knit naturally lends itself to this way of working as a fabric is created from scratch. I recognise that often losing count or forgetting to change colour can result in a more interesting effect than the one that was originally being strived for.




No comments:

Post a Comment