Fans of photography and nature may be familiar with Karl Blossfeldt's volume "Art Forms in Plants" (1928) that features 120 plates of plants captured in extraordinary detail.
The book was the result of a series of experiments: from 1898 and for three decades, Blossfeldt taught design at Berlin's School of the Museum of Decorative Arts where he started taking images with a homemade pinhole camera with custom magnifying lenses.
Blossfeldt used the photographs showing plants in great detail to teach students patterns and designs in nature that were difficult to see to the naked eye.
Writing in 1906 to the school's director, Blossfeldt explained about his project, "Plants are a treasure trove of forms - one which is carelessly overlooked only because the scale of shapes fails to catch the eye and sometimes this makes the forms hard to identify. But that is precisely what these photographs are intended to do - to portray diminutive forms on a convenient scale and encourage students to pay them more attention."
From educational materials the images turned into an art book when gallerist and collector Karl Nierendorf saw the photographs and published them in the volume "Urformen der Kunst" (Art Forms in Plants). In his introduction, Nierendorf explained that Blossfeldt combined in his pictures three elements - nature, art, and technology.
Threeasfour's S/S 20 collection, showcased during New York Fashion Week, revolved around these three elements and displayed the same obsession Blossfeldt had for patterns found in nature.
Adi Gil, Ange Donhauser and Gabi Asfour's starting point was actually their 1999 collection (so this was also a 20th anniversary celebration), inspired by organic forms and entitled "Human Plant", but they actually approached the themes tackled in that collection with the current environmental crisis in mind.
The result was different from that first collection: models came up wrapped in giant curvilinear leaves and in mini-dresses constructed with layers of fabric leaves that resembled woven Palm Sunday fronds.
Patterns based on an algorithm of leaf veins were printed on skirts and jackets, but there were also tactile experiments with cut-out dresses that evoked skeleton leaves, that made you wonder if Threeasfour were trying to replicate what Blossfeldt did with his pictures - portraying diminutive forms on a larger scale to encourage people to pay them more attention.
Technology was introduced via dresses with three-dimensional 3D printed patterns reminiscent of iridescent insect wings and in the hand-pleated organza design that closed the show.
For this collection Threeasfour worked with Stratasys, the global leader in 3D printing and additive solutions, and with designer Travis Fitch. Stratasys developed 3D printed lenticular lens, small translucent photopolymer domes or cells with a strip of colour inside that bounces light through the lens, so that looking from different angles allows you to see different colours. The tiny domes engineered by Stratasys were then printed on pieces of polyester fabric that were then employed to create Threeasfour's dresses.
In a way this collection was a sort of conceptual representation of modern clothes for Shen Nung, the Chinese "Divine Farmer" dressed in traditional garb made from leaves (View this photo), believed to have taught the ancient Chinese their practices of agriculture and the use of herbal drugs.
Maybe in future Threeasfour will manage to develop not just garments inspired by natural forms, but also clothes in biodegradable textiles. With US President Donald Trump mocking the climate change crisis, let's hope creative minds will become more involved in the environmental effort, turning into genuine beacons of sustainability.
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