Rachel Quimerez

Rachel Quimerez

Inverno Collection 2013

Rachel Guimerez is a Brazilian Fashion Designer, specialising in knitted garments. For her latest collection, ‘Inverno’, she is using solely recycled materials. 

‘In the point of view of the planet, throwing waste away isn’t possible, because nothing will leave here, until the day NASA provides us with a rocket... We decided not to buy anything else when we realised that we had it all’, [Rachel Guimerez, 2013]

She saved ‘anything that is left over’ from her production line from the last eight collections and four years of work. This amounted to ‘almost one ton of wool, cotton, silk, polyamide and acrylic, and all types of fibres’. 500g of one of these materials is what is necessary to make one piece. Instead, they had bundles of 300g, 200g, and even less. Her and her team needed to ‘separate colours, divide textures, put the tones together and start’. This means that each piece has to be individually designed and is completely unique. ‘This is a reasonable and creative way to use resources’

What Guimerez is doing would not have been out of place 100 years ago. Sewers would use every scrap of their clothes making materials. Any amounts of material too small to form part of a new garment would be used to patch or mend. In the modern age clothes aren’t made, they’re bought from shops and so the consumer has no control over the wastage of the garment they’re buying. This means they wont have a matched piece of material to patch a jumper if they make a hole. Taking it to a seamstress and paying for the repairs or alteration would normally cost more than buying a new jumper, and so logically it makes sense to bin the old and buy the new.

The continuous wastage we now face as a world is why designers like Guimerez are so important in the development of fashion. In this money motivated continent, designers like Guimerez get people excited about craft and making things for free. 

Flor de Lotus 

One way of cutting down environmentally unfriendly out-sourcing is to find a more financially viable production plan within the country. Although seemingly improbable, Rachel Guimerez found a solution. And ‘so with this will of creating fashion that goes beyond tendencies, beyond disposability, that brings cultural and emotional elements, ‘Doiselles’ developed the ‘Flor de Lotus’ project’ [Guimerez, 2012]. The project involved Guimerez training 18 prisoners at Brazils’ ‘Arisvaldo de Campos Pires’ maximum security prison. She’d teach them intricate knitting and crochet techniques to produce garments sold under her clothing brand Doiselles.

The initiative ‘is a chance for prisoners to earn money while serving time’. In addition, for every three days worked, one day is taken off the workers release date. Initially to some, the thought of wearing a garment hand crafted by a murderer may spur repulsion, but there are massive benefits to the scheme. ‘The project gives prisoners confidence, and skills they can use in the outside world... the project boosts prisoners’ chances of finding a job when their sentences are up’ [Celio Tavares, former prison inmate]. Most of the prisoners at the jail have ‘spent more time in than out’ [Celio Tavares], finding no escape from the cycle of crime. Giving the prisoners skills, savings and job potential, significantly deters them from returning to a life of crime that was awaiting them before. They are now ‘capable of changing their lives, as soon as they conquer their freedom’, [Andrea Andries, 2012]

In less developed countries in which production is often relocated to, employees are ‘frequently paid by the piece’ and homework that’s given to employees is ‘difficult to monitor’. This results in rushed work and a bad quality outcome. The alternative, are garments that are quality checked, from prisoners that are paid per day. If a customer doesn’t support the cause, they must surely still support that the cause takes trade away from factories that ‘frequently involves child labour’. 

The project of course, is on a small scale and relies on compliant and enthusiastic volunteers. It doesn’t offer a full term solution to discouraging ‘sweatshops’ but it does encourage change. Offering unique hand-crafted clothing usually means customers will be more likely to spend more, to cherish and keep the garment. This hopefully resulting in less waste, then less consumption.  

WEEK FIVE - Nick Cave and Femke Agema and Charles Freger

Emotional and physical experiences that clothing can give.
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NICK CAVE

Nick Cave is an american textile sculptor, dancer and performance artist. His project 'Sound Suits' is the creation of wearable garments that focus on sound, flow and visuals when worn during movement. He uses only 'found' objects to create his work - twigs, fur, buttons etc- so they're incredibly resourceful and environmentally friendly. I think this gives them much more intrigue and history.

The first suit, made of twigs was inspired by the brutal beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, 1992. He made the suit to represent armour. "To be heard you have to speak louder", and so he decided to base his sculptures on sound. Cave uses video to exhibit his pieces because they are made to be moved. The costumes static on mannequins seem out of place.

They inject fun, spontaneity and excitement into clothing.

I admire his use of old objects. Working with found materials takes a lot more initiative and skill than using new material. He has to "have a large volume" of the materials he plans to use, so sourcing the right material in a large quantity alone will be a struggle. The suits optimise everything I've been writing about within my research project. I think his work ethic comes from being brought up on hand-me-downs. It teaches you to not waste, and to be resourceful.

"It's the materials that provide impulse for me"
I can relate to this. The reason i'm so interested in fashion is because of my collections of second hand clothing that grew from my hand-me-downs. I couldn't bear to throw any of them away even when elastic had broken, and when my mum had taken my old clothes to use as cleaning rags I'd be upset. I didn't like material swapping purpose. I felt it should always be decorative and so the purpose of saving these clothes was to find a new use for them.

“It’s the materials that provide that impulse for me,” Cave tells Co.Design. “I may pass a beanie baby for 10 years, and then just one day, whoa, I’m vibing with something.” Cave, who runs the fashion department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, also has to take quantity into account. “I have to have a large volume of what I need to use.”To hold the pieces together, he uses different types of knotting techniques that function as a webbing infrastructure. And a lot of the suits--like the ones made of rugs or twigs--also have armatures underneath them, mostly made of fabricated metal, to give it the necessary volume. And on top of that, he uses draping techniques for embellishment and added volume. “For the most part we’re building three-dimensional cloth,” Cave continues. “The combination of that in addition to the apparatus underneath creates an unusual thing that opens up ideas associated with architecture, or as a body as a carrier or shell. [http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665221/nick-caves-sound-suits-stunning-wearable-art-for-modern-witch-doctors#2]

'Pretty much anything is material for Cave’s Soundsuits. The 54-year-old artist and Alvin Ailey-trained dancer has been foraging, recycling and repurposing since he was a kid.
“I was always a maker,” he said. “I would always make things with my hands.”
Cave grew up in Fulton, Mo. As one of eight boys, he even redesigned his hand-me-downs.
“I would cut the sleeves off, or add something to the surface,” he said. “So it was thinking about, how does one establish one’s identity being raised in a sort of lower-middle-class family, and not having much but realizing that the surplus around me was enough to keep my interest.”
Cave loves to incorporate the piles of stuff he finds in nature, on the street, or at antique flea markets. “What’s powerful about that is that you know you can make something out of nothing,” he said. '

So, like many other successful creatives he came from background of hand-me-downs and having to make-do.

This encourages the imagination to work overtime and see beauty and potential in seemingly ordinary objects.

http://artery.wbur.org/2013/03/04/nick-cave-soundsuits-peabody-essex

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FEMKE AGEMA

'The only limit is your imagination'

 'I think the world of fashion is already so fast. I like to dive in a theme or concept, so it works for me to work this way.'

Femke Agema combines art and fashion. She uses her more abstract pieces to draw attention to the ready-to-wear pieces.

Nigliktok (inuit word for “cold,” created as she says “for the inevitable snowpocalypse.”)

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Elders 

"Femke Agema’s Spring Summer 2013 collection, is her vision of the world springing into life after winter. It’s inspired by the simple joy we feel in being let loose into the wild to play in an environ-ment overflowing with possibilities. A world where you make treehouses, huts and rafts from whatever you can get your hands on. A world made to be explored, bursting with colours and textures, where the only limit is your imagination." http://thisispaper.com/Femke-Agema-S-S-2013

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Can you introduce yourself ? Tell us more about you and the beginning of the brand.My name is Femke Agema, and I am running a fashion label called Femke Agema. I started making collections in 2010, before that I was working as a freelance designer/artist. I was doing art projects, but at the same time I was making wearable clothes to sell. And at one point I missed to think in collections, I mean I missed telling a story with my clothes. So I decided to combine the two: wearable (and sellable) clothes and experimental objects.    [http://ligature.ch/2013/06/femke-agema-interview/]

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RELATED ARTIST- CHARLES FREGER

The photographer Freger captures other cultures unusual dress, in 'tribal' Europe.

This opens our eyes to the expressive dress that are still prominent in the present day.

ITALY - Schnappviecher (snapping beast) on Shrove Tuesday

AUSTRIA - Every five years the men of Telfs collect lichen to create Wilder Mann, or Wild Man, costumes for the town’s Carnival festival. Tradition dictates that they nibble on a piece of this lichen before the festivities.

FRANCE - Spring festivals in the Pyrenees feature local men playing the role of bears awakening from hibernation.