Exhibitions

Currently in the LAB

Asa bríet brattaberg

Coming from Iceland and the Faroe Islands, both with a rich culture of craftsmanship and historical struggles for their independence, handcraft leads in all of Asa’s work. Memories are entangled with previously owned garments, local materiality and intergenerational craft skills. We first showed Asa’s work in our DDW 2023 exhibition, Regeneration: Fashion from the ground up, via her zero-waste garment woven jacket made from her Grandfather’s old shirts.

We are currently showing a black zero-waste jacket, exploratory samples and the knitted works from the collection ’Tales told in tangles', which are made from Icelandic wool, directly from her grandparents sheep and hand-spun by her grandmother. Asa’s work has a deep respect for resources - tracing them to their origin and respectfully working with them to create no waste. The wool pieces are undyed, celebrating the natural colouring of sheep, and one day can return to the soil again. 

Kelly Konings

Dutch designer Kelly Konings has a background in traditional fashion design. Having worked for fashion giants such as H&M, Kelly has first-hand experience of the waste and distorted value systems of the fashion industry. Leaving the industry to return to studying, she focused her MA graduate collection from the Swedish School of Textiles on low-waste whole-garment wearing processes. The aim of this was to challenge perceptions of the value of textile being lower than the ‘design’ and traditional cut-and sew outcome of the fashion industry. Using deadstock natural fibre yarns from local Swedish industry suppliers, she creates sustainable garments that challenge traditional garment forms. The textiles woven reference traditional knit and weave structures in a trompe l'oeil  effect- such as denim and cable knits. Her contemporary understanding of garment construction means the textile and garment form cannot be separated. 

We are currently showing a look and samples from her collection ‘Hybrid forms of dressing’. The sweater and boots made with local Swedish wool, gathered at different farms around Sweden and spun on the island of Gotland by Ullkontoret. The vest is mimicking a doily lace and is made from deadstock wool woven as a double-layered weaving structure attached with buttons at the side. The oversized tank top is made from overtwisted cotton (to create the structure) and deadstock linen from the damask weaving mill Klässbols Linneväveri in Sweden, mimicking a jersey tank top.