Still Paying Tribute to the Concept ”Design for the People”
I have always focussed on and had a partiality for surfaces and materials, for how, and from what silhouettes can be built – for me it’s a play on compositions in the form of references, structures and colours. It was undoubtedly my fascination with clothes and what signals or emotions they can express that steered me in the direction of the design education. It also made sense in my job as a trend scout for Levi’s, where rather than looking at catwalks it was a matter of what was happening with fashion at street level. For my graduation project, in continuation of my long-standing fascination, I started exploring the construction of the modern silhouette, concentrating on how the project society samples and combines its clothing drawing on references within the subcultures, groups and physical kinships you are in or wish you belonged to.
During most of my studies I worked at Femmes Regionales, and after graduation I got a job with them as part of the team developing concepts, branding materials, campaigns and shows in the fashion industry – in other words, a job pertaining to all the packaging and communication as well as the staging of fashion companies’ products.
The work on ‘Living Lightly’ at Design School Kolding’s Sustainability Lab was created as a suggestion for a potential approach to a large and often opaque area and was developed for inspiration as well as for implementation. It is a project that was meant to present some of the knowledge the Design School’s laboratory has developed, in a physical form. It’s an area that commands great humility, but at the same time sustainability in fashion is an area that needs to be demystified. Our hope and intention was to make just a small difference in terms of making the area more transparent and accessible to designers, companies and consumers.
In my position at Samsøe and Samsøe I draw on my experience about fashion at eye level from Levi’s and on my knowledge about concept development and campaign production, but most importantly my work with compositions, silhouettes and in particular material awareness are faculties that were nurtured at Design School Kolding. Our focus is on ‘modern day essentials’, and the lines of the garments are simple and lively with a focus on the materials. In many ways we strive to be an inclusive brand with a strong Scandinavian flair with respect to aesthetics, look and basic idea. When developing collections today we are still paying tribute to the concept of “design for the people,” which is deeply rooted in the Danish design DNA.
