Hello, i am the new one by veerle martens

concept

My collection ‘Hello, I am the new one’ is the inevitable consequence of my semester abroad in New Zealand as a Dutch exchange student. My collection is about the differences and similarities in both my and New Zealand culture, about adapting to a new culture, finding my way with all its comforts and discomforts. I was inspired by personal experiences, nature and people that I met here, but also people that I miss, Dunedin’s student culture and Dunedin’s atmosphere. This collection reflects my journey and development as a student, friend, stranger, foreigner, resident of Dunedin and being

‘the new one’

moodboard of personal experiences, Dunedin and New-Zealand nature

photoshoot

practice

The shapes of my collection are based on personal experiences while living for 6 months in the student town Dunedin, New Zealand. This outfit is inspired by the Maori ball for which I got invited. In the Netherlands a ball means that you usually wear a long dress, in New Zealand the dresscode is more casual and more revealing.

I tried to visualize this by creating a contrast in the outfit: long, short, covered and revealing. This also translates how I felt: excited and ‘out of place’ at the same time.

Next to actual experiences, I tried to capture my feelings about adapting to a different culture. How I felt and how cold I was when I discoverd that in New Zealand they don’t use central heating in winter, and everyone is sitting in their living room with big puffer jackets, but goes outside wearing shorts and flipflops. Again I looked for a certain contrast in my outfit to give the people that see my collection the same feeling as I had. I visualized this contrast not only in shapes (a big, warm jacket and a bare chest), but in the material too. I went to second hand shops, found warm sleepingbags and used them for my garments.

I took inspiration from the people I met. this collection was personal. So when I asked them later to model for me you could see that these people really fitted the clothes in a way that totally matched their personality, and that was really cool to see for me as a designer. I believe in sustainablity in a practical way: be aware of the materials you use and take the responsibility to choose wisely. I believe in emotional sustainability too: create garments to which people attach personal value, so they will treat it well and don’t throw it away easily.

I wanted to capture the atmosphere of Dunedin and the collection to be 100 percent sustainable. The only way I could that was by making clothes out of old materials. I immediately thought about using old curtains, because for me, the curtains in all the houses in Dunedin were something that caught my eye: they looked really old fashioned to me, like time had stood still. I combined these old-fashioned, used curtains with old jeans, because jeans are for me the opposite: a fabric that is timeless. I had a strict order in which I would make the garments so it would be as sustainable as possible. The last garments I made totally out of leftovers, such as these jeans: made out of little pieces of jeans.

I got inspired by the nature of New Zealand as well, taking pictures while travelling and doing hikes. The flow of the wild and calm nature at the same time, the movement and flow of the water, the trees and their roots made me think about how cultures flow over in eachother. I used this by letting different materials flow over in eachother; such as jeans and curtain fabric.

The communication of my collection is actually just as important as the collection itself; it is not just a collection, it is a story. I wanted the photoshoot to be a real experience and I wanted to make my concept in a full circle. So I came up with the following idea: I organised a party and invited the people I met here and inspired me. I photographed them wearing my garmets in our own student houses. After a while they even wanted to go out in my clothes and we took pictures in the streets of Dunedin..

My collection was based on personal experiences and valuable to me, now these clothes had to become valuable to others, by attaching new experiences and memories to them.

Hello, I am the new one by Veerle Martens 2017