The Marga Weimans Weekend Special that started in a previous post continues today. The special celebrates the first large-scale solo exhibition dedicated to the Rotterdam-based Dutch fashion designer opening today at the Groninger Museum (until 23 November 2014).
Apart from featuring designs from Marga's previous collections, the exhibition is also an architectural exploration of the Fashion House conceived by Marga as a series of spaces where a designer lives and works.
In the following quotes taken from interviews I did with Marga while researching to write the entries for her catalogue, the designer talks about some of the spaces and installations included in them. Enjoy!
On "Atelier": This space features two sculptures in a rough form that represent the early stages of my creative process, when I experiment with shapes and materials, I collect wood and make rough collages, I take pictures of my life or of my apartment or make foam sculptures. I studied sculpture during my preparation year before moving to study in Antwerp, but I kept on experimenting with this medium after I finished my studies. The sculptures in this section are rough sketches and they could be considered as artworks. This phase is a development of the creative stage and during it I usually work like an autonomous artist. For the sculptures in "Atelier" I employed the steel commonly used to reinforce concrete in buildings, combining a steel grid with printed fabrics. I was interested in seeing what you could come up with by playing with the notion of the grid which is an essential shape in architecture, but also in nature.
On "Trade": Visitors will find the "Trade" section towads the end of the exhibition, after they have passed through all the other spaces and have seen the previous collections. This space is about transforming the rough creativity in "Atelier" into elements – key chains, bags, shoes or perfumes – that a designer can sell and that can be considered as tokens or fetishes, ways for the public to buy into the story of the fashion house. Ideally, I would like my customers to be able to buy a block of sculpture made by myself in my atelier that would represent a piece of my work-in-progress. It would be a bit like buying a section of a dress and it would be an act charged with a fetishistic meaning as well.
On Luxury and Branded Spaces: If I had the chance I would only buy designer clothes. Even when I was a child I used to love beautiful, interesting products and for me a conceptual piece of clothing that has a lot of thought behind it is extremely luxurious. Luxury is about the time, energy and concentration behind something and doing it in the best way you can. If I had my own shop and branded space I would love customers to have an interesting spatial experience and I would really like the place to have a social element as well, with maybe a café in the shop, and a space for exhibitions and book presentations.
On "The Invisible Dress": My first idea about this space was that of making a beautiful dress, something spectacular and overwhelming. After meeting with OMA*AMO perspective changes and we decided to move away from the spectacle to something visitors could experience in an interesting way. I turned the dress into a space since, in my mind, a dress can be interpreted as a building. Making sure visitors "experimented" the dress by responding to the space was a priority, and, by allowing visitors to enter the dress, we offer them the chance to become part of the logo of my fashion house. I hope visitors will be inspired by a sense of wonderment and maybe learn more about the story behind the designs and the conceptual side of things, I would like them to realise that fashion allows you to tell many stories, and that therefore a dress isn't just a piece of clothing, but you can talk and interact with other people through it.
On working with Rem Koolhaas' OMA*AMO: I have found fascinating concepts in architecture and, whenever I spot an interesting idea in this discipline, I try and translate it into fashion. What I liked about working with them was the fact that they had done their own research and they knew everything about me, so there was a mutual knowledge that made collaborating together pleasant. A key aspect in this collaboration was the value of exception: none of the parties involved did anything conventional, as I reworked the idea of a beautiful dress as an interactive space and OMA*AMO, who are used to make big spaces for big clients, found themselves working with an independent and small fashion designer.
On the exhibition in general: Visitors coming to see my exhibition should go through a spatial experience. I would like people to wander around the fashion house and see it as an ideal space. For me part of the appeal of a museum is that it has a lot of space – high ceilings, space to think, space to look at things and discover things, move around and maybe look out towards other environments.
"Marga Weimans – Fashion House" is at The Groninger Museum, The Netherlands, from 15th June 2014 to 23rd November 2014. From Saturday 21 June 2014, the Amsterdam Public Library will present a small-scale parallel exhibition, featuring a large part of the "Debut" collection.The Marga Weimans Weekend Special started yesterday on this site.
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