What Women Make

Prescription: Design Therapy

Apartment Therapy Design Evenings at ABC Carpet are a bright spot in the design scene here – the incandescent lighting flowing through the oversized glasses of wine, the luxurious mishmash of couches and chairs, and a packed room of enthusiastic design and decor citizens smiling in their camaraderie.

It couldn’t be more fun, more lively. But as I looked around, I wondered, what exactly is this scene?

Coming from Europe where there’s a massive design presence to here where there are so many lovers of beauty and talented creative minds of every ilk, I’ve starting to see a distinction between Europe and Asia’s definition of design – the beautiful and functional and functionally beautiful object - and what design is in the U.S.

First, just to get it out of the way, yes there is the design awareness made possible by Steve Jobs and Apple Computers. There’s Fast Company’s championing of design thinking and design in business. But for the lovers of design festivals and design schools, furniture design, and manufacturing, the individual maker and craftsman, there is a big empty silence filled only by ICFF and it’s satellite shows.

New York is largely about Decor and Shelter. It’s Design Sponge and Etsy. Pinterest mood boards and Decor 8. It’s decorating tips and DIY. It’s interior design and real estate lust.

I love decor. I do. I mean where else are you going to put your design but within some sort of decor? Decor can be very practical and personal at the same time. Hey, even I found myself doing a DIY project for the first time and I’m pretty proud of it.

See? Here it is.

From this

To This

I found an old ugly beat up nightstand on the street and went out and bought some white high gloss paint, a bottle of Mod Podge, some paper from Paper Presentation and found endless how-to sites to make sure I didn’t screw the whole thing up.

Pretty cool, right?

But I’m not a designer. I would never call myself that. So there you go. You’ve got design and you have decor. America is about decor.

I really enjoyed what Maxwell, the founder of Apartment Therapy had to say when I asked about the state of American design (which meant where the hell is American design?) because it was clear that he cares about design as much as I do. He told me that it’s hard to nurture design here because manufacturing has left America. I told him about my experience in Europe and he said “yeah, Europe’s ahead of us.” So in our haste to automate and simplify everything, to sell everything and consume everything, to consolidate everything and to watch the bottom line on everything, we forgot about design. Not good. And honestly, not very modern. I think all of this DIY activity is just another sign of how desperately we need design leadership. It’s not just about dressing things up but making things that are truly beautiful, thoughtful and reflective. Right now, the design landscape is practical and commercial, not gutsy. It doesn’t marry inventiveness and innovation with reality. Design can be the perfect summation of right and left brain and, at the risk of sounding lofty, hope for the future. It’s a visual manifestation of spirit, intelligence, and hope. In other words, design is more than a gorgeous bedspread with eclectic throw pillows.

The last Apartment Therapy talk I attended was a few weeks back. It was with the very popular and very personable Deborah Needleman, the founding editor of Domino magazine who has gone on to start a beautiful style magazine at the Wall Street Journal. I was a subscriber of Domino. In fact, it was the very last magazine I subscribed to before moving to Paris at the end of 2006. Domino was so pretty and useful and collectible where nothing else really was. I was tired of the stuffy celebraphotog-generated nonsense, the Vogues and Visionnaires. I was tired of being talked down to and dictated to. Domino was different. It wasn’t ‘design’ but it was great. She herself admitted that while she loves the practical application of decor – she’s coming out with a book about making your home ‘cozy’ – she ‘doesn’t know anything about design’. It’s hard to wrap my head around but I think ultimately I know what she means. I just hope the dialogue will open up and decor-lovers will also start to see just what design is and how much value it has.

Just imagine, a New York with a design scene as robust as London.. Heaven!

(It looks like our company Show Love may be doing some yet-to-be-announced work with the American Design Club led by the effervescent designer and design advocate Kiel Mead so more excitement to come!)

-Chauncey Zalkin

links:

Apartment Therapy
Decor 8
Etsy
Design Sponge
Pinterest

Saturday • February 25, 2012 • by Chauncey Zalkin

Category: 3D Printing, Architecture, Blog, Cities, Clay, Copper Wire, Deborah Needleman, Disciplines, Embroidery, Essays, Fabric, Furniture, Glass, ICFF, Interior Design, Leather, Lighting, Materials, Metal, New York, Plastic, Polyamide, Porcelain, Product Design, Resin, Schools, silicone, Sugar, Surface Design, Sustainable, Tablewear, Textiles, U.S., Wood, Wool

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3D Designer: PAULINE VAN DONGEN

Pauline van Dongen was born in Amsterdam in 1986 and had a childhood filled with art and music attending an arts conservatory at the age 15. In 2004 she was accepted into ArtEZ, the academy of arts in Arnhem. It was there that she first developed an interest in the French method of pattern drafting called “moulage” (which literally translated means ‘mold’). As she explored surfaces and textures, she began screen printing silk jersey with puff ink applying heat to the fabric. During this process, she discovered that the ink expanded and pulled the fabric into a resilient and flexible plissé. Draping the luscious material onto the body, voluminous shapes began to emerge. Her graduation collection, Sibylle, was inspired by body language and the stories she could tell with her textile creation. In 2008, she went on to the Masters Program at the Fashion Institute of Arnhem. During a shoe design course there, she discovered a love for product design and 3D printing. Innovations in 3D gave her the opportunity to translate the sculptural feel of her garments into a rigid polyamide that maintained the organic lines she so loved. The outcome are these striking shoes lend a futuristic look and feel to her overall collection which includes clothes and jewelry.

In 2010, her Vertigo shoes won the Sacha Golden Heel Award.
Her graduation collection Morphogenesis was awarded ‘most creative collection’ by the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana at Mittelmoda, the Fashion Awards in Italy.
She’s also been selected as one of ten finalists at the Belgian fashion award to be held on October 20th.

Tactility, texture and no-frills modernity are the essence of Pauline’s work. As she continues to explore the use of new and unconventional materials, she says she’s creating “a proposal for the future.” At what women make, we quite agree.

PAULINE’S STORE-Y

THE INTERVIEW

wwm: Who wears a Pauline Van Dongen shoe or dress? (Who do you see being your customer?)
PVD: I design for a woman who lives in the present. Her vision is open-minded and she thinks about today, but she also has a vision and an eye for the future. She is naturally cool and radiates a relaxed elegance. My customer appreciates the tactility and no-frills modernity of my designs.
She is not concerned with the clothing shaping the body in a pre-determined mold. I prefer the idea that the body is what gives the clothes a certain volume, creating an organic and sculptural shape. I give the wearer a sense of this freedom in my clothes, which makes it a pleasure to wear.

wwm: Name three of your favorite items you own and how they speak to your aesthetic.
PVD: 1. A ring made from a shell, which I like because of it’s natural sculptural aesthetic. 2. A prism, because I’m fascinated by light and the refraction of light. 3. A PET bottle made of glass, I like it’s simplicity very much.

wwm: You talk about the future in your bio. How do you see the future of constructing clothes, let’s say 10 years from now? What part in that will you play?
PVD: I think in the future the construction of clothes will become more personalized. For instance with my Morphogenesis shoe, it’s not hard to imagine that we would make a 3D scan of someones foot and adjust the 3D file of the shoe, so it will have a perfect individual fit. Also there will be new technologies that provide new ways to make and finish a garment individually. For instance, seams won’t always be sewn – they may be glued or fused together. We will create garments that ‘grow’. You can find research on this subject at www.biocouture.co.uk. Textile design and technology will increasingly merge and I hope to play a part in this development.

wwm: Any characters from movies or books influence your work? If so, who?
PVD: For me it’s mostly the atmosphere of a movie that triggers me. A certain mood can influence my work. Recently I saw a documentary about the artist Olafur Eliasson (Space Is Process, 2010) which was very inspiring. The way he talks about spatial research is very intriguing. I also really like the way, for example, fiction and reality get blurred in the movie ‘The Fall’ (2006). At the moment I’m looking forward to seeing ‘I Am Love’ with Tilda Swinton.

wwm: You say you feel you’ve been freed from all boundaries due to advances in technology, what’s your favorite innovation in fashion and how does it work?
PVD: I really like innovation because it advances our concept of what fashion is or could be. At this point I’m very fascinated by 3D printing. Maybe in the future it will be possible to print out a whole dress. I’m also interested in interactive fashion. Clothing that incorporates movement or react to the environment. A designer who I recently visited in Montreal, Ying Gao, works with these concepts a lot and she does amazing things with it! My interest always begins with the material so I’m always looking for new textile technology. There is so much going on right now, from using recycled materials to growing fibers and fabrics.

Tuesday • August 31, 2010 • by Chauncey Zalkin

Category: 3D Printing, Design Mix, Designers, Fashion, Interviews, Jewelry, Pauline Van Dongen, Polyamide, Shoe Design, The Netherlands

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Inspired Monday: Two Visual Visionaries & A Young Playwright Who Stole the Show

Meet 28 year old Katori Hall from Memphis. She won Best New Play at the Olivier awards. The Mountaintop is an imagined account of Martin Luther King

Pauline Van Dongen 3-D Printed Shoes. Featured on Fast Company. (later part of our What Women Make – Women in Design 1st edition show at the London Design Festival, autumn 2010)