Friday, April 22, 2011

Pauline van Dongen




It kinda sorta really irks me when editorial/artistic photos of a collection a) leave you with little to no idea what the clothing actually looks like, and b) the models are in such ridiculous poses that they complete detract away from what they are wearing. And so, when I first looked at Dutch designer Pauline van Dongen's work on NJAL (above), I mumbled to myself about kids these days and moved on to elsewhere in the Internets...and/or took a nap. Good thing I'm incredibly bored, as I went right back to NJAL when I awoke and saw that Pauline had posted another collection on her page. These clearer photos, coupled with the miniscule glimpses of what had the potential to be wonderful things in the other collection, then required my immediate attention. As it turns out, Pauline was the only Dutch designer to be invited to show at Vancouver Fashion Week last week, and so there are a plethora of runway photos out there so that I can more or less see what those 'desert-like undulations' (the most rigid of which are actually achieved by using buntal, a material made of wood fiber) in Pauline's F/W 11 'Stereopsis' collection look like in the light. I would love to wear that one-shoulder dress over my Wolfgang Jarnach trousers.



And since it's a pity that all the photos I could find from VFW have watermarks on them, here are a couple from Pauline's presentation at Magazijn in Amsterdam earlier this year. (P.S. You can't really see them in the photos here, but Pauline also designs the 3D printed shoes that go along with her collections. Go to Pauline's site to see more photos, and maybe tell Susie Bubble about them while you're at it.)


And while we're at it, here are photos of that other collection that caught my eye, being Pauline's 2010 MA graduate collection entitled 'Morphogenesis'. With those dress, you can see the beginning of the 3D shapes Pauline would continue to develop for her 'Stereopsis' collection. I, however, particularly love the illusion of the floating jacket sleeves, which gives the pieces an odd futuristic yet romantic vibe. If only I could find out how to get my hands on that black jacket...



(Photos via VFW Facebook, NJAL, and Pauline's site)


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