Dutch Design Week: graduate designer Digna Kosse presents a series of dresses made of the smallest amount of fabric at the Design Academy Eindhoven Graduate Galleries exhibition this week.
Kosse made a series of fifteen dresses using different yarns and techniques.
Here’s some text from Design Academy Eindhoven:
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Designer: Digna Kosse
Department: Man and Leisure
Graduated: 2009
Website: www.digna-k.nl
Photo by: Lisa Klappe
Project: Minimal Dress
Description ‘May I ask how many costumes she wears out each year?’ ‘My dear sir, the clothing of a lady does not wear out through her wearing of it, but through her being seen in it.’ – Richard Steele
Our clothes are more quickly discarded as a result of changing fashion than because of wear and tear. The consumption of material by the clothing industry is gigantic as a result.
Digna Kosse designed fifteen dresses that are far from voracious consumers of material. She demonstrates that you can minimize these pieces of clothing to a few threads at the most. Minimal Dresses are wispier than wispy, yet they remain feminine dresses with which to make a fashion statement.
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Posted by Marcus Fairs
October 20th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
hahhaa!
oh! one thing! the bum of the lady on the third picture scared the hell out of me!
October 20th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
as much as I would like to appreciate this just for the fact that there are naked women. I would really like to see this project develop into more “complete” iterations of clothing. I think reducing the dress really makes us look at those beautiful details in the material’s composition and how it’s shaped… adding more and more material to make the project to make it “wearable” would arguably change the concept dramatically. I would love to see this explored more, it’s really very interesting.
October 21st, 2009 at 12:14 am
Yeah right – lets see it from the front then!
October 21st, 2009 at 12:29 am
Why do the photos not show the girls’ front?
October 21st, 2009 at 2:42 am
and perfect for a night out on the town… ill take 3
October 21st, 2009 at 3:29 am
Ahaza! Wonderful!
October 21st, 2009 at 4:21 am
I like this as a work of art but I don’t think it is successful in the realm of design. It is simply too impractical and ignores all of the programmatic functions of clothing.
October 21st, 2009 at 7:48 am
I like the idea. I think the blue and the white dresses work. But I think the dresses which have been modelled are stretching it a bit.
October 21st, 2009 at 8:11 am
This is a statement on over-consumption in the fashion industry?
And the result is: dresses no-one can wear in public?
How does that solve anything? Why try to sell it as a project on sustainability when it really isn’t sustainable?
I guess I don’t get it.
October 21st, 2009 at 8:44 am
can you put them in the washing machine or is it dry clean only ?
October 21st, 2009 at 8:50 am
Try to sell that to Karl Lagarfeld… or even to Vogue.
How many years does it take for a fresh graduate to wipe out all the academical crap in them?
Minimalism is still Coco Chanel’s best contribution to Modern cloth design, and to woman’s liberation from stupid fashions.
Minimalism in clothing means as well not pretentious, here it just means you are going to buy a piece of string for the amusement of your very trendy friends, without daring to ever wear it…How conceptual…!
October 21st, 2009 at 9:30 am
Literally the emper0r’s new clothes.
This exemplifies the worst of Dutch design – meaningless whimsy posturing as an intellectual consideration of design.
I blame droog…
October 21st, 2009 at 10:09 am
i think this project is very topical in concept (and brave), i actually lost the possibility of a job recently due to expressing similar (ish) views on fashion and the clothing industry. I don’t really read this as a project based on or suggesting minimalism as an aesthetic for fashion but more as a thought provoking project with regards to the use of materials.
October 21st, 2009 at 10:27 am
I have to say , if there was just a hint of cleverly placed fabric , it would be very beautiful ( love the back ) .
Jack would happily wear it ..
October 21st, 2009 at 11:45 am
@astro.
sorry to contradict you , but Gabrielle Chanel had nothing to do with ” minimalism’
she pushed accessories( the pearls, camelias… )
yes, she put women in a suit.but that is not minimalism, it is progress.
chanel was a modernist. minimalist would be margiela or yamamoto.
October 21st, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Remember, it’s a work of art! I think it’s beautiful!
October 21st, 2009 at 1:58 pm
some wonderful weaving and technique going on here…??????? just pop along to the hardware store for some string and voila, hung correctly it is a dress??? what are things coming to…? not much obviously…can imagine this going well in a bar!!!
October 21st, 2009 at 2:21 pm
I think it is the modern Emperor’s New Clothes!!
How magnificent!!
October 21st, 2009 at 6:37 pm
its great !,,, lets hope it becomes a trend among women,,,, not men though, that would be just vulgar.
October 21st, 2009 at 7:19 pm
i think it’s dry cleaning only…
October 21st, 2009 at 11:11 pm
its all fun and games until you see your 70-year-old neighbor wearing this dress
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:21 am
this would look nice over something else, probably the only way it can really be “functional”. im really enjoying the buttons in the first picture.
nice concept …
(I think marylin manson’s gf wore something like this to an award show…)
October 22nd, 2009 at 5:59 am
hope my eyes never wear out for seeing the ” costume “
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:37 am
Very environmental friendly
October 22nd, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Just for the fun: Imagine putting 10 of these dresses in a washing machine. With other clothes in. 2 min to put in, a life to untangle!! arf arf!. Love the idea though.
October 22nd, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Really Beautiful!!!
October 23rd, 2009 at 7:18 am
I like minimal dresses in general, but I prefer the ones you can find in a sex shop.
On the other hand, the designer should also design these dresses for men. Women and gays would appreciate it.
Anyway, I am not surprise that this kind of things are made in The Netherlands.
October 26th, 2009 at 9:29 am
who’s going to wear this anyway? they are all strings..
October 28th, 2009 at 11:55 am
beautiful!
October 28th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Another case of the Emperor’s new clothes?
October 28th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Ah, the statement of mvb caught my attention!
“Anyway, I am not surprise that this kind of things are made in The Netherlands.”
How so?
I do know they try too hard to be modern and cutting edge. At my academy they sometimes tried so hard it seemed pathetic at times. However, in some cases it turns out for the better.
Or did you mean to allude to something else? I would like to read more about your views then, it’s something I cna certainly learn from!
Personally I feel the concept and the problem addressed is a sound basis for the designs. I interpret the designer trying to turn a full dress back into the lines of an initial sketch.
If it would work: I’d say “naaahhh” but there’s a way forward here. It certainly sets you thinking.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Definitely dry-clean! NOOOOO NOT FROM THE FRONT!
October 28th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Hmmm… now wearing nothing but a repurposed badminton net would seem to be overdressed.
October 28th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
I’m looking forward to the Bridal collection!
October 28th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Interesting comments! I enjoy a radical statement about environmental issues and how Humans have become so extreme and excessive. Should have used yarn from reused clothing. The issue addressed is about how NEW things are constantly being manufactured, so using something “pre worn” would be appropriate. I like how they used this to mak a “stink” in the design world
clever…
October 28th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
i think these would really work when worn over a dress of contrast colour, especially the white one on the left in the first picture. what a great way to make any outfit unique!
October 29th, 2009 at 12:01 am
what’s the difference between this and nude
October 29th, 2009 at 5:05 am
Dress??? what dress ???
October 29th, 2009 at 6:11 am
Is this not decorative accents absent any structure or enveloping fabric, and a celebration of the nonessential? Maybe interesting, intellectually, as an exercise in deconstruction, but the intellect is overwhelmed by voyeurism and the urge for privacy, modesty, and dignity. So, as clothing, the exercise is a failure.
October 31st, 2009 at 5:26 am
New definition of the nude.
November 2nd, 2009 at 12:27 am
Well if the saying is true that , “you get what you pay for” I’m assuming these
don’t cost much.