From M.C. Escher to Alexandra Verschueren

I woke up today with an inexplicable M.C. Escher obsession and I started wondering if it were possible to transfer Escher’s lithographs, engravings, woodcuts and mezzotints to fashion design.

What would Escher's three-dimensional impossible buildings and never ending stairways exploring infinity look like if they were turned into wearable sculptures, amazing buildings in which to wrap up your body?

My questions found an answer thanks to Alexandra Verschueren’s work.

Many pieces in the most recent collection of this Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts graduate are inspired by paper cut outs, origami motifs and above all Thomas Demand’s photographs, that often feature three dimensional models that look like real rooms.

Yet Verschueren’s designs make me think a lot about Escher’s works. The fabricated and the real mix and combine in Demand’s work in the same way as in Escher’s lithographs, creating impossible buildings that are convincingly real.

Verschueren applied the Escher aesthetics to her designs, from tops to dresses, though the effect is much better in jackets and coats, coming up with pieces that have something architectural about them.

Black jackets open up revealing tiny concertina stairs, three-dimensional cubes, chains of tetrahedra and logic-defying cut outs forming extraordinarily impossible structures and perspectives.

Though I find the dresses and tops rather interesting, I prefer Verschueren’s coats and jackets, since the fabrics used are more rigid and give a better idea of the designer’s work and attempts at recreating architectural structures.