Claudy Jongstra

Born in the Netherlands in 1963, Claudy Jongstra was trained as a fashion designer. She first came under the spell of felt in 1994 when she saw a Mongolian yurt on display in Nederlands Textielmuseum. The tent had a pattern of laid-in colors. She recognized the technique from pictures, but was overwhelmed by the material itself and the colors. Jongstra quickly mastered the process of felting and started to make fabrics in which wool was felted with silk fibers or was combined with transparent silk organza. In the mid-nineties this was unheard of, but the process yielded a remarkable combination of transparency and density, of elegance and rawness, of craft and art.

Claudy Jongstra

Capriole by Iris Van Herpen

Iris Van Herpen, was born in the Netherlands. She graduated from the prominent fashion school ARTEZ(Arnhem) with a Fashion Design degree and then carried out internships with Claudy Jongstra and Alexander McQueen – whose influences pervade throughout in her style and techniques. That which distinguishes her creatively, is that she manages to create a unique type of couture that combines the qualities of hand-worked materials with the sublime effects of digital technology. In Capriole, her latest collection, the designer presented five architectural looks, which she developed using this combined technique.