Emotions and visions put into knitting – Designers in the Feel The Yarn competiton
“For emerging designers from Hungary, it is often difficult to get a foot in the door”, says MOME Fashion and Textile Design MA student Fanni Eperke Szabó. Together with her fellow student from the same programme Eszter Kain and BA alumna Kornélia Papp, the three of them made it to the semi-finals of this year’s Feel The Yarn competition. The initiative was launched in 2010 to reach out to and support young and promising design talents and provide them with international exposure. Pre-screened based on their concepts, applicants create two sets from materials received from Italian companies, and the works of the 10 finalists selected through an open online voting are exhibited at the Pitti Filati knitting industry trade fair. This article provides an overview of the semi-finalists projects by Eperke, Eszter and Kornélia.
Photo: Noémi Szécsi / Makeup: Nanett Kürti / Model: Karina Makláry
Eperke reflectedon the transition between emotional states, freely associating on the theme of this year’s competition – Feel The People – by blending different yarn textures. She used mostly comfortable, soft materials for her first set, and a scratchy, metallic yarn for her second. The latter fits the concept in an intriguing fashion, tolerating a certain degree of tautness only. The garment, which was assembled by manually sewing together the parts conveys the ephemeral nature of emotions through gossamer-like looks offsetting the coarse texture of the fabric.
Photo: Noémi Szécsi
Eszter explored a highly topical issue – the endemic of anxiety – in her project Kintxiety. Like most of her works, the garments created for the competition focused on various structures, yet her usual, light, monochromatic colour palette was replaced by a blend of dark tones suggestive of a depressed and frustrated state of mind. The ruched and gathered wool fabric practically wraps the wearer from head to toe, giving an impression of a suffocating feel. Eszter has put her own, difficult-to-grasp emotions into her sets, transforming her frustration into inspiration through the therapeutic process.
Though Kornélia’s interestsoriginallylie in different technologies while completing her textile design MA in Denmark, she briefly returned to knitting for the competition. Her project Revival of Mars was inspired by the ideal of humanism and the utopia of Mars that we are longingly contemplating while being stuck on our dying planet. The colours and structures of her sets of rayon and wool blend are dominated by details reminiscent of Renaissance fashion with chainmail and brocade bodices as well as futuristic Martian-style garments.
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