As seen in the previous post, we can use fabrics to make a sculpture, but, according to Amsterdam-based Dutch designer Antoine Peters, it is also possible to use recycled fabrics to paint. At least that's what he has started doing with his "Soft Dot" series.
In the last few years, Peters has been experimenting with textiles, coming up with innovative solutions like his lenticular weave. His passion for clothes and textiles, but his aversion for a fashion system that is unsustainable and polluting for the planet and incredibly stressful for designers and for their teams, has prompted him to look for other solutions and for more arty ventures.
The "Soft Dot" series is the latest of his adventures in fabrics: Peters started studying colours, textures and shapes and then tried to reinterpret them through textile abstractions.
For these works he takes some second-hand fabrics and clothes, strategically cuts them and reassembles them together and then uses them to create a canvas, on which he tucks, folds and pleats by hand the textiles.
The making of the "Soft Dot" series is therapeutic for the designer, but the dot also refers to a symbol of creation and a metaphor for a new beginning. By reusing discarded clothes and fabrics for these pieces, the designer makes a point about fashion, quantity and overproduction.
Besides, the canvases have got an even deeper meaning for people who commission him these pieces: his sister, for example, asked him to create a "Soft Dot" from clothes she wore when she was pregnant, so, in this case, the clothes incorporated in the canvas become a physical material that evokes memories.
Peters also did other types of soft three-dimensional sculptures: entitled "Space Garments" and displayed during Dutch Design Week, they look like knotted and tangled masses of extra long legs or arms, from which a hand or a foot emerges.
Bizarre, surreal and funny, while they may be metaphors for the many traps of fashion that engulf and swallow us, they have one main purpose, attracting people's attention and forcing them to look and think. This is also the main aim of all Peters' projects – exploiting the power of wonder and delay.
The artist and designer recently created a new site-specific "Space Garment" piece especially for the Cupola of the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht (people will be able to experience it from 26th November until 1st December at Bonnefantenmuseum as part of the local Fashionclash Festival).
Peters was recently part of a project aimed at children that also took place in Maastricht – the Voelstof workshops – a collaboration between fashion designers Daisy van Loenhout, Esra Copur, Anouk van de Sande x Vera de Pont and Iris Desiree Claessens.
In this "Residency for Responsible Fashion", the designers invited primary school kids to talk about their emotions – from amazement and happiness to anger – in an engaging and playful way through a dress up game, developing their social skills and strengthening their resilience through a form of non-verbal communication with fashion and textiles.