STAND-IN - social design project for FASHIONCLASH Festival

STAND-IN is a project by fashion designer Antoine Peters and theater maker Lieke Benders (Hoge Fronten), initiated within the framework of the participation program Fashion Makes Sense of FASHIONCLASH. For STAND-IN, FASHIONCLASH worked together with The Masters, an innovative social organization from Maastricht that is committed to developing differently and to people who are on the sidelines of society.
During the FASHIONCLASH Festival 2021, the 'Stand-In boards' that were created during several workshops in October and November, were exhibited at The Masters community home.

Everyone knows those signs with crazy, iconic or cartoon-like bodies in which you can stick your head through a cutout hole. For a brief moment you imagine yourself in someone else's body.
Fashion designer Antoine Peters and theatre maker Lieke Benders used this concept to play with identity, and to question the (expressive) power of clothing and someone's personality. What happens when someone expresses himself without restrictions, and without body and face, in textiles? 

Antoine Peters & Lieke Benders

What happens when you step into a look and your own clothes are disconnected from your head? What does your clothes communicate without your face? Can you identify with the creator of the look and unravel his personal story? Do you put yourself in someone else's shoes, literally and figuratively? Or is your personality stronger than your adopted 'look'? The creations challenge you to connect with someone else and with yourself. 

STAND-IN project is developed in the framework of the Fashion Makes Sense participation program of FASHIONCLASH, with a mission to stimulate inclusive fashion participation and to explore methodologies based on equity and freedom of expression of all participants.
By connecting a fashion practitioner and a theatre maker FASHIONCLASH simultaneously challenges the boundaries of disciplines and initiate innovative representation of bodies and the ways in which fashion is performed. To reach the diverse participants as possible, collaborations are pursued with social organizations who support people who are on the sidelines of society.

All images are Laura Knipsael, except the self-portaits.

WORKSHOPS