I happened to be in Antwerp in late April on a weekend city break when I dropped into MoMu, their fashion museum. Since the emergence of the Antwerp Six in the 1980s, the city has become as synonymous with fashion as it is with diamonds. Alongside their tentpole Man Ray exhibition was one in honour of the late Belgian artist, IO Van Oostveldt. Another graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, it showcased her design drawings and visual art which reveal her fascination with geometric shapes developing one-of-a-kind creations. I took some photos and started thinking about these elegant drawings and the process behind their creation.
It all starts with a thought on paper – a sketch, a drawing, a starting point, a means of expressing the moods, emotions experiences and potentialities carried by garments. What informs it? Where does it lead to? I decided to find out by asking to see the sketchbooks of the fashion class of ’23 in NCAD who are just about to graduate (grad show, June 9-16).
What myself and photographer Ruth Connolly came across is a wealth of ideas – channeling the past, informed by the present, predicting the future. Since judgment is usually cast on output, what we want to show is the ideas phase, where you get hints at where it’s going but don’t necessarily need to see how it turns out. There is a thrill about this, the beauty of ideas unsullied by objectivity.
– Michael McDermott
- PhotoIreland Festival preview.
- We chat about workwear and western wear with Avant.
- Dan Leo goes feral with his latest exhibition.
- Conor Stevens is double taking at Boss Stop and Yang Guo Fu.
- Brand New Retro unearths Irish magazine efforts to be Playboy in the ’70s.
- Brigid Mae Power discusses the blend of modern psychedelia and folk on her new album.
- Our Design column looks at our meme masters
- We find out what Windmill Lane is up 45 years into their adventure.
You can pick up a copy of the July issue in the city now or read it online here.
