BRANKOPOPOVICBLOG: Gerrit Rietveld Fashion Show 2024

Camille Doussy

The Rietveld Academie Fashion Show is the annual presentation of the Fashion Department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. This year the Rietveld Academie Fashion Show presented the graduation projects of Anna Ammerer, Oline Bronée, Camille Doussy, Mads Lucky Hemmingsen, Elayne Henry, Olivia Sahl Jensen, Emmanuelle Martinez, Erin McClain, Dorka Morvai, Sophie Rintala, Vincent Schefz en Marlene Scheinle, as well as a selection of work by first and second year Fashion students.

This edition of the fashion show is characterised by live sound. Amplified by a microphone, each student is literally given a voice. Like in the early fashion shows of the 1950s, where a presenter provided live comments on elements like the fabric, length and detailing, this microphone adds a sonic dimension to the work. The models are no longer silent, but breathe, hum, shout, speak and sing. Because the show is an inherent part of the work, integrated into the curriculum and not just a stage to display the result of a design process on, the students have developed their own performative dimension of the work.

Under the guidance of Elisa van Joolen, Uta Eisenreich, Fashion teachers Philipp Schueller, Oscar Raaijmaker, Ferdinand Schmeits, Tenant of Culture, Sanne Karssenberg and Marina Sasseron de Oliveira Cabral, and in collaboration with makers from various disciplines, such as voice and performance coach Deborah Abrahams, artist and choreographer Alexis Blake, scenographer Stefan Prokop and sound artist Jeroen Vermandere, each student developed the multifaceted nature of their work through experiments with voice, sound, space, movement, light and shadow.
The works show a wide range of personal interests, techniques, forms and materials, but come together in a play on identity, parallel universes and the twilight zone between fiction, dreams, memory, reality and lies. Clothes that function as an extension of the body, emphasizing its movements. Clothes in cultural rituals, but also ‘clothing failures’ that stretch the standard of what is allowed to be visible.