It's slightly comforting that the designers that I loved from Reykjavik Fashion Festival were ones that I had heard of or written about beforehand. On the flipside, it is also a little disappointing that nothing new grabbed my attention. Still, just seeing the designers I DID know about on their home turf made a world of difference in comparison to receiving PDF lookbooks and a few scatty emails. One of them is Hildur Yeoman, whose blend of whimsical accessories and beautiful images styled and illustrated by herself and co-collaborated with fellow Icelandic wonder Saga Sig has now moved up another level ti include clothing for the first time. On the second day of the festival, Hildur was the first in the line-up of designers to prompt her models to come out with full-on energy, having fun with the clothes that she had designed with a slew of girls in mind… 90s riot grrrls, 20s eccentric flappers, Factory girls like Jane Forth, gypsy queens and in general, women who basically don't give a shit… which is exactly the attitude portrayed in the show with models coming out bouncing, smiling, making slightly cheesy rock signs and turning the catwalk into Hildur's carnival basically.
Hildur's illustrations started the collection rolling with an impressionistic way of drawing that then translated into the clothes. The important thing was not to ensure patterns and silhouette were precise but that the attitude of the clothes that Hildur had in mind is conveyed properly. Weirdly, the angsty and sad expressions of the drawings though became a whole lot more exhuberant when it actually came to the show…
It's hard to attach a brief and succinct description to the clothes that actually played out. Grunge seems too broad and generic a word. Goth? Too cliched. Fun is a start when they walked past you accessorised with crocheted necklaces and crosses, netting ruck sacks and painted wedge trainers. The cycling shorts and crop top combos would suggest my ten year old self's weekend uniform complete with high ponytails.
Look up close and the scribbles that Hildur sketched out are stitched onto the clothes in a sort of haphazard manner with lines of stitches swirling about and going off into different directions as well as paint dabbed onto the pieces…
You can pick out motifs from the stitches that Hildur has transferred from her inspiration images to the top such as the leg shapes in the top right hand corner of this top…
It became an instinctive thing for Hildur to embroider her tops in a way that wasn't pre-planned and yes, the effect is a little DIY but it isn't in the way that you're rolling your eyes at it, thinking you can ACTUALLY do it yourself… well, I don't think I'd personally have the same instincts to do it in the way that produces results like this…
This finale dramatic cape is covered with an array of mystical/religious/esoteric insignia that I don't think is suppose to make complete sense but when it's a sheer black thing, worn by someone who is flailing her arms about, it's not necessary to analyse the ins and outs of the subject matter…
The crochet pieces that Hildur has been building up in her accessories collections have quite a few old ladies dotted around Iceland gathered up into a crochet community working on pieces that they might not necessarily understand the full context of. I like how the crochet pieces frame and weight the clothes in a way, strengthening a signature that Hildur has been working on…
The colours of this collection were hugely diverse – from 80s surf highlighter yellow and bright coral to copper-y tones, white and black…
Thank god the crocheted poodles lives on in highlighter yellow… like I said before, better to carry around a crocheted one with a leash rather than subject a real live poodle to odd colour dye jobs…
Aside from freeform embroidery, Hildur has also dabbled with handpainting shirts with velvet collars that are equally wayward reminding me of mirror butterfly paintings and I love the watery ink that seeps from one colour to the other…
Like I said though, it's easy enough to be purely descriptive with Hildur's clothes and I'm already at the risk of being overly wordy here but the important thing is that a real energetic force throbs through her illustrations, her accessories, her clothes and her fantasy world that has all of the above (and more) swirling about…
i love the illustrations and the water colour-looking splatter front blouses. beauteous!
january, x
http://www.jessicajanuary.com
The way the watercolours run into each other on the ultra light fabric is amazeballs, the cropped illustrations are the first i’ve seen which is always good! Suzie (I’m your number one Irish Fan and winner of Irish Project Catwalk “Style Wars”- David Greene)
http://greenewithenvy.blogspot.com/
I love when you share obscure designers with us! One of the best things about Style Bubble. In this case I was really taken with the embroidery, and did actually think for a second “Oh, I can totally do that!” As though I would buy all the perfect thread colors of various diameters and apply it to a shirt in a way that doesn’t look like a mess. You comment about the DIY-ness totally called me out.
In that way, these embroidered designs remind me of the best folk arts, where the craft is clearly self-taught and not technically as challenging, but just comes out being profoundly unique in the layering of materials and the resulting pattern/vision.
All that is to say, I enjoyed this post 🙂
N I C E !
This is really inspirational; it is different from the stuff that is out there. This has helped me to make my product design project unique .
Oh my goodness is that a glow in the dark popcorn crochet dog toilet paper roll cover? I swear it is. Sorry to be so undignified, but I sort of love those craft oddities. I love the first crochet necklace and the peach one with a cross. Indeedy.
Oh, god, what should i say, the designer is a genius, the clothes look nice
i love the illustrations and the water colour-looking splatter front blouses.