Maarten Van Der Horst

Maarten Van Der Horst

Maarten graduated with a BA from the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem, Holland. During his studies he completed an internship with Chloé in Paris, which “taught me enough to make me want to do my own thing”. He then moved to London for his MA at Central Saint Martins. His AW11 collection channelled transvestism and escapism, marrying intricately embroidered, second-hand nylon petticoats with Hawaiian shirts, Capri trousers and Bermuda shorts, creating a John Waters-inspired wardrobe.

HALFDROPPED by Alex Russell

HALFDROPPED is cartoons, drawings and text by Alex Russell. They’re generally funny ha ha, funny peculiar or funny boo hoo. A new one posts every day at 15:30 (UK time).

You can also find Alex at alexrussell.com

Neasden Control Centre

Neasden Control Centre is Stephen Smith, an illustrator based in London. He works a lot with a mix of hand drawn and found elements, layering everything up in Photoshop via the use of the Multiply blending mode. Well worth a good dig.

The Wanderer - A Film for Dior Homme

Dior Homme are promoting their AW 11 collection with a short film by Willy Vanderperre called The Wanderer. If you're interested in styling or promotion, this is well worth a look.

Sally Freshwater

Sally Freshwater’s work emerges from a continual fascination with the architectural potential of textiles. Working with a combination of pliable and solid elements she creates forms where all the parts work in harmony, each reliant on the next to maintain the structure, the works relating to the body through scale and how they occupy the field of vision. The intention is to provide a focus. While the textile is for the most part treated as a sculptural material, a detailed knowledge of the inherent qualities of the fabric is necessary for the structures success.

Walter Van Beirendonck, Nick Knight and stylist Simon Foxton

Celebrating the larger-than-life talent of fashion maverick Walter Van Beirendonck and his retrospective at the Antwerp Fashion Museum, in May 2011 Nick Knight and stylist Simon Foxton immortalised the finest pieces from his archive in photography and fashion film, showcased as part of the exhibition Dream The World Awake at the Antwerp Fashion Museum and also included as a retrospective editorial in Autumn/Winter 2011 GQ Style.

Sep 13 2011 Dream the World Awake

Sandra Backlund

Jun Nakao

Brazilian designer Jum Nakao has mastered the art of paper fashion. This dress collection made its debut in 2004 at Sao Paulo’s Fashion Week, in a paper themed runway performance titled Sewing the Invisible. At the end of the show, the models were told to tear up their dresses “as a reminder that fashion is a medium and not an end in itself”. (Quote sourced from Perfect Paper)

Radical Fashion

Radical Fashion

Eleven world-renowned contemporary fashion designers were invited to collaborate with the Victoria & Albert Museum to create the unique installations which make up this exhibition.

Motivated by different impulses, and of different generations and nationalities, each designer has in common a highly influential place in the fashion world. These designers cut through ideas as well as fabric. Challenging established views, they have committed their lives to seeking ever more demanding expressions of 'beauty', with diverse and often provocative results.

Amos Tranque

A PULLING FORCE. This Collection by Amos Tranque is inspired by magnetic therapy. More specifically, the technique that places magnets on acupuncture points in order to cure and improve human health. The collection represents an exploration for connections between alternative medicine and contemporary fashion. This reinterpretation of the office suit has magnets incorporated into the fabrics and accessories in a subtle manner. In order to achieve the ideal masculine silhouette, the office suit has been deconstructed with use of magnetic forces and sharp cuts.

Alexander Verchueren

Alexander Verchueren graduated from the Fashion Department at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium, where she is currently based. Her work had some very graphic influences which you can see in her scrapbook inspirations. Notions of origami and architecture play a large role in the intricate pattern construction of her work.

Junky Styling

Self taught designers Annika Sanders and Kerry Seager founded Junky Styling in 1997, inspired by the prevalence of recycling in places such as San Francisco and Tokyo and the resourcefulness of the people of Vietnam and Thailand. The company began in an exposed studio on a shop floor, reflective of a completely transparent working practice. Junky is an innovative design-led label. All garments are made from the highest quality second hand clothing, which is deconstructed, re-cut and completely transformed. The New Yorker described it as ‘an eccentrically chic line of mutant couture’. A focus and belief in individuality means that no two garments are ever exactly the same, a design concept which led Vogue to describe Junky as ‘high fashion street couture’

Kate Goldworthy

Kate Goldsworthy is a textile designer and researcher, working in the area of new finishing technologies, materials R & D and design for recycling. Her passion lies with tools for sustainability in the textile world, particularly the recycling and reuse of polyesters. She is currently completing a practice based PhD as part of the AHRC funded project 'Ever & Again; rethinking recycled textiles' with the Textiles Environment Design research cluster based at Chelsea College of Art & Design. Her project explores technologies that could potentially change the way we recycle our textile waste, placing the designer at the centre of a process of multidisciplinary design thinking and enterprise. By focussing on the concept of 'life-cycle design', her aim is to create beautiful and functional synthetic materials, while preserving them as monomaterials, suitable for future recycling.

‘Still or Sparkling’ Exhibition

‘Still or Sparkling’ (9 – 25 June 2011) followed up on the two previous exhibitions ‘Fired Up’ (10 – 25 February 2011) and ‘Down to Earth’ (1 – 21 April 2011). It explored traditional elements which link all these exhibitions. ‘‘Still or Sparkling’ explores a water themed exhibition; water in its mercurial beauty was the starting point for the artists as they examine the intuitive and the emotional qualities associated with water and the special place it was believed to inhabit between air and earth in classical symbolism. The ‘five elements’ or the ‘five great’ in ascending order of power, have always been Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, and Void.

Find out more at: gazelliarthouse.com

Sivan Royz

Sivan Royz, a student studying textiles at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Tel Aviv, takes inspiration from the world of nature when in bloom. Building upon the geometries of nature, she relies on silk as the base fabric which is layered continuously to shape each piece. Whether it is a bracelet, necklace or a purse, each piece reacts gracefully to movement just like a living organism.

Frictions by Steven Briand

FRICTIONS mixes human live action movements and stop motion animation to create a seamless and overlapping narrative. By utilizing colored paper in different sizes, the director, Steven Briand, also known as Burayan, creates the sensation of a pixelated field that adds shimmer and excitement to the movements. From the wall, the pixel animation moves onto the body and inside it creating a rich play between elements on the screen. Moving from axis to axis, the performance comes together and interacts.

FRICTIONS from BURAYAN on Vimeo.

demoreel 2010 from BURAYAN on Vimeo.

Zimoun

Zimoun, an artist from Switzerland, uses sound in order to create magic. In his installations sound is used as an architectural element, it defines space and it makes the spectator be a part of a totally unique experience. Zimoun is a big sound lover, passionate about exploring its possibilities. In this quest he uses simple element cardboard boxes, cotton balls, plastic bags, filler wire, motors and ventilators that when combined in the correct way they form an original orchestra of sounds. These sounds all at once define space, interacting with it as well as with the spectator.

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.

Container Architecture

Containers tell the world how well or how poorly the global economy is doing. Empty container ships indicate a downturn; fully loaded container ships—or orders for new, even bigger ships—are euphoriant symbols of better times. The container itself, which is 2.44 metres wide, 2.59 metres high, and either 6.06 or 12.192 meters long, has been the globally standardized transportation module since 1956. Thirty million of them can be found on the seas and oceans of the world. Now the container is also a source of fascination for many architects. The NRW-Forum Düsseldorf invited renowned architects, designers, and artists from around the world to submit designs for container architecture. Submissions included not only existing container buildings, but also new designs that were created specially for the exhibition: original, practicable, fictitious, sensible, fantastic, minimalist, exotic, pragmatic, futuristic—the breadth of submissions was very wide. Two dozen of these designs have been reconstructed as models on a scale of 1:5 for the ‘Container Architecture’ exhibition; the highest of the models breaks through the ceiling of the museum. Over 100 designs were submitted for consideration and every one of them will be included in a frieze of pictures running around the walls of the exhibition space. A catalogue of the exhibition will be published.

Raphael Vicenzi

Raphael Vicenzi is an illustrator based in Brussels, Belgium. Raphael's work has been featured in Illustration now 3, The Beautiful, The New Age of Feminine Drawing, Computer arts, Advanced Photoshop and many others.

Anastasiya Komarova

Russian designer Anastasiya Komarova created her brand, called FORMS in February 2010. The collection offers a series of alternative accessories which have both a vintage and futuristic feel. The collection includes a wide range of designs, including leather clutches, neckpieces and armlets, all with an architectural touch.

Anastasiya says about her work: ''I have never aimed to reflect any particular architecture developed or created by myself or other architects. I am just trying to reflect some fundamental things that architecture is based on. I really admire the laconic manner and unique aesthetics of some buildings and this is what I try to achieve in my accessories. It's true that there are plenty of buildings around the world that inspires me a lot.''

Groupa Studio

Groupa Studio have produced some innovative and creative products including this Books Lamp inspired by the way Ethiopian people carry loads on their back.

Anna Lewis

Anna Lewis is a contemporary jewellery designer based in South Wales. Her work explores ideas of memory and identity of story telling and fantasy.

Ella Doran

Ella Doran transforms everyday objects into design-conscious pieces through the clever manipulation of the photographic image, either on its own, in repeat or combined with striking hand-coloured backgrounds. Ella takes her cue from the everyday world, from the close-up of a flower petal to abstract US road signage, the hustle and bustle of a Moroccan souk to simple kitchen utensils. She has transferred her vision into a wide range of products that have breathed modern life into many interiors, from London to Tokyo and even film heroine Bridget Jones's kitchen and Buckingham Palace!

People will always need plates

People will always need plates

People Will Always Need Plates is the creation of Hannah Dipper and Robin Farquhar.

Launched in 2004, they aim to use high quality, low volume batch production to create witty, thoughtful and stylish products as a direct antithesis to the current proliferation of cheap, throwaway design. In keeping with their credo that good design should be used and enjoyed, treasured and shared, Hannah and Robin try to develop products that, while diverse in style and application, always retain the fundamental values of functionality and beauty.

Digitile

Digitile

Design and manufacture of digitally printed wall and floor tiles and wallpapers. Suitable for interior and exterior use.

Carole Waller

Carole Waller

Carole Waller is a visual artist who works with colour, light, textiles, glass, enamel and paint. She uses either figurative or site specific imagery to make paintings which become glass installations, clothing, textile hangings, or live projects and collaborations.

I AM CHEAPSKATE

I am cheapskate

Enthusiastic tea drinker, musician, writer

and illustrator.

Charlotte Farmer

Charlotte Farmer