Let's continue the rainbow thread that started with yesterday's post with a knitwear inspiration courtesy of Daniella Koller. A graduate from the Fashion Institute of Technology (BFA Fashion / Knitwear Design), Koller's background wasn't in design, but in maths and science. Yet there is a lot of maths and science in knitwear - her passion - if you think about programming knitting machines, counting stitches and using them as building blocks to create innovative structures.
Koller graduated with with a knit dissertation inspired by her own childhood drawings, Dr. Seuss's The Lorax, and the need for interdisciplinary collaboration to solve difficult problems.
She recombined these inspirations in twin garments with joinable and extendable sleeves that symbolise the fact that in unity we can overcome difficulties no matter how hard things look like, a very relevant theme if you think about isolation during the Coronavirus lockdown and the fact that we still reached out to each other and kept on creating and debating online.
Her dissertation designs are also characterised by stretchable three-dimensional rainbow surfaces that create wave-like textures, patterns that can recover once stretched or that can't recover, because the stitch structure integrates a double memory that allows it to take multiple forms.
There is something architectural about Koller as she states that her main aim is to create knitted interactive textures (in some cases she employs 100% merino wool to accentuate the three-dimensional effect caused by the stitch transfers) that have a strong tactile quality about them and give the freedom to the wearer of rearranging them.
For her creations Koller used yarns from Consinee, Tollegno and IGEA and she designed the knitted textures and programmed them on Stoll machines. On her Instagram page there are also other swatches combining rainbow colours and black and white Op Art like geometries. Koller's swatches can also be admired on the Instagram page of the Fashion School at Kent State University's Knit-Art Student Exhibition, a digital event inviting graduate and undergraduate students to submit original knitted designs.
Comments