ARTESIS HOGESCHOOL ANTWERP FASHION DEPARTMENT

MASTER STUDENTS 2012 SHOW. PART 1

Designer: ANISSA AOUAR  – Collection title: a SUPER drunk HERO

Taking inspiration from iconic superwomen, cartoons and comic books, Anissa Aouar presents herself with a collection based on exaggerated stereotypes of female heroines. The main character is a kind of superwoman who takes care of people during the day, saving and helping them. She needs to keep her identity secret, so she blends in the crowds by wearing classic outfits. Her daytime activities are quite tiresome, so what she enjoys the most when she comes back home, is to be by herself and chill out. She likes to wind down by having a few drinks and cigarettes. Sometimes she has one too many beers, and starts to imagine herself having crazy powers, resulting in cigarettes throwing huge flames and beers splashing around. The collection is a sequel to Aouar’s former collections which centered around the lifestyle of the West Coast material girls, pin-ups and fifties housewives: she likes to make fun of clichés, parodying them without raising a finger to anyone. “The most important is that I make people smile, I want to have fun with fashion,” Aouar says.

Designer: EVA DUNIS  - Collection title: The Sacred Cow

Eva Dunis took Indian culture and the role of women in Indian society as a starting point for her MA collection, which playfully subverts cultural and gender stereotypes by blending elements of kama sutra, cow reverence, British prudishness and orgies into a womenswear collection that defies cultural boundaries. Starting from the tension between Indian culture’s reverence for the cow (symbol of fertility) in contradiction with girls’ suppressed position in Indian society, she transforms this tension into traditional-looking garments that look prudish or decent from far away but feature orgy prints and kamasutra scenes from up close. The collection is rich in colour, technique and meaning, but the political issues underlying the collection are never stated in an aggressive way. As Dunis says: “You could call it superficial, but if you’re too aggressive, nobody listens. It’s better to serve difficult messages through beautiful things in order to criticize some things we take for granted.”

Designer: MARIUS JANUSAUSKAS  – Collection title: Sleeping beauties

The beauty of a bud that has yet to become a flower, or a girl which lies still and has to be revived, these are the images that dominate Marius Janusauskas’ collection. There are many ways to awaken the girl: by a prince, a beast, a witch or by a young woman. All these figures present symbolic promises or threats that are worked into the poetic, dream-like collection. The sleeping beauty is still young after 116 years of sleep, but the beauty is entrapped in medical corsets and high necks. The front of the silhouettes hold the promise of a flower, a blossoming body, but the back is medical and cold. Blood- red seams seep through the collection to conjure up the vital force. Inspiration comes from different directions: horror and vampire movies, fairytales, the pleated silks of Mme Grès and sculptures by Pablo Atchugarry. Fragile lace was buried underground and burnt at the edges; pleats conceal openings which present endless promising futures. The collection both as a testimony of loss and a celebration of eternal youth.

Designer: MANON KÜNDIG  – Collection title: Bowerbird

The male bowerbird, an ugly little creature that seduces the female by creating an odd composition of both natural and synthetic scraps to show off his creative skills, is a true freak of nature. He is the symbol of the eclectic silhouettes in this collection. Fusing good and bad taste, unconscious fashion and the male peacock, it shows how keeping up appearances can be done spontaneously and creatively. Materials that pretend to be something different, camouflage prints that are not what they seem, faux carré scarves turned into jackets. In Manon Kündig’s world, rubbish and haute couture are no opposites. Just like the bowerbird, Manon also looked at her neighbours’ style for influences: being Swiss residing in Borgerhout, she integrated typical ornamentation, materials and silhouettes that can be seen in this and other district’s cultures. As a true pick-up artist, Kündig collects inspiration from wherever she happens to find it, showing the beauty of l’art du hazard.