We continue to tease on what our master students will have on offer for SHOW2017! Don’t forget you can also take a closer look at each master’s collection in detail at EXPO2017!

Name: Yuhan Xu
Age: 25
Origin: China

Tell us more about your collection!
One of my first inspirations was a post-apocalyptic world, like in the movie “Mad Max: Fury Road”. I thought about a woman surviving a big disaster and living in this kind of environment, like Imperator Furiosa, the Mad Max protagonist. I made these collages about the environment and all of the ideas that come from environmental scientists thinking about how to save earth, but the truth is that earth doesn’t need humans to save it. All we can save is ourselves, because earth will always be here. I wanted to look at that in a positive way, creating a narrative that starts after the apocalypse, when it’s about embracing a new way of life. I always like incorporating tricks into my designs so you can flip them into a whole different silhouette. I want to create garments that are changeable and reversible. The woman I have in mind for this collection is a spy during a war so she has to be able to change her look in seconds to adapt to different situations.

Name: Joanna Chlust
Age: 31
Origin: Germany

Tell us more about your collection!
It all started with an exhibition featuring the works of Romanian artist Geta Brătescu that I went to. Her work, and especially “The Rule of the Circle, The Rule of the Game”, struck a chord with me. Her sense of colours, restriction and the way she creates an interplay between very structured elements juxtaposed with wilder ones somehow reminded me of a mental health hospital. I delved deeper into that subject and found these images of people lying in a bed wearing suits. That’s where the structural element of my collection comes in, the interplay of formal wear as a form of structure and the domestic private environment. That was the starting point. The work of photographer Deborah Turbeville was an added influence, mainly the way she captured the isolation of people and her sensitivity combined with a certain masculinity. I wanted to turn my menswear into something soft, not in a cross-dressing way but in a rather delicate way.

Name: Robbie Van Mierlo
Age: 21
Origin: The Netherlands

Tell us more about your collection!
Since this is my final year at the Academy, a certain chapter is coming to an end. One that I have been focusing on for literally half my life. For me, things ending usually translate into transcendence so I wanted to create something more than just a clothing collection. I felt I needed to do more, so I created a concept called the “Epos of the Ego”. It’s a story that illustrates my life in a sort of fantastic, illusionary way. This notion translates my own inner, symbolic and iconographic spiritual world, in a way. I wanted to create a kind of ‘homo universalis’, a being that’s a philosopher, a poet, an artist, a designer, a dancer, an actor.

 

♥ to Dominique Nzeyimana & Knotoryus.com for the interviews.