Finalists of the Dorothy Waxman Textile Design Prize are Presented at WantedDesign Brooklyn

Dorothy Waxman and Lidewij Edelkoort are pleased to announce the winner of the 2016 Dorothy Waxman International Textile Design Prize: Rhode Island School of Design‘s Julia Wright. For a chance to view all the work of the finalists, attend the Talking Textiles exhibition from May 7 – 17, during NYCxDESIGN. Talking Textiles is an initiative by Lidewij Edelkoort, a trend forecaster, curator, publisher and educator who studies the links between art, fashion, design and consumer culture.

All Finalists

Ryo Anno

Tokyo Zokei Univeristy School of Art & Design 

Over a period of years, the designer found a similarity in the scheme of the patterns revealed by these close-up looks, inspiring him to create new textile structures. With the addition of colour and texture to these multicast and hand weavings, he was able to create stunning three-dimensional and elastic textiles in silk, wool and linen.

Laura Admussen

Seaweed & Seagrass, 2015-16 – Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University (NSCAD) 

These textile explorations use various types of seaweed and seagrass that have been hand collected from Nova Scotia in combination with different linen, cotton and wool fibres. Natural materials that have been hand-spun, woven, sewn and / or sculpted. A sophisticated organic aesthetic is created, coloured in the dark greens and brown from the natural world.

Bettie Boersma

Finding Form For Perspectives, 2016 – LUCA School of Arts, Ghent

With her masters project, Boersma created a method which allows her to get the movement and tension of the two dimensional image into form. The idea is 
to take an image (the scan), translate it to a screen-print on textile, and then give the textile body and form by using pattern-cutting techniques. In this way the final form makes a slight reference to clothing, where the cut and stitching function more as a suggestion; subtle but definitely there.

Delphine Cobbaert

My Line Is My Poem (2015-16) – KASK School of Arts, Ghent

In these sophisticated fabrics one can see the idea of working in layers: both in production and in reproduction.
 For Cobbaert, “My Poetic Line” is not only the beginning of a construction, but it could actually lead directly to the designer’s own personality. 
To her, the line is like a poem, it wants to tell us a story. By approaching and following the line, one will discover textures, structures and other hidden things.

Alexis Victor Gautier

Stairs, Zebras & Bees, 2015 – Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Born from the will of appreciating the diversity of human’s visual expression, this collection aims to weave a dialogue between symbols, techniques and know-how from different cultures, through collaborations with artists, craftsmen and local factories.

Neil Grotzinger

Fur Hook, 2015 – Parsons New School for Design, New York

The art of latch hooking has existed for centuries, and is often mistaken as a domestic craft. Grotzinger was taught latch hooking by his grandmother when he was nine years old. They would make massive tapestries with intricate pastoral landscapes artfully embedded into the fibers and she would hang them on the walls of her bedroom. Traditional latch hooking is used today to create carpets and rugs, yet is rarely explored as a means for making abstract garment textiles.

Corinn Hakanson

Drastic Plastic, 2015-16 –  Fashion Institute of Technology, New York

As environmental issues become a priority throughout the world, people are taking action and coming up with new innovative methods for sustainable design. Hakanson wanted to challenge herself and incorporate various types of plastic bags within woven designs. Instead of adding more plastic materials to our landfills and oceans, there are many new ways of recycling plastic, and she wanted to focus on reusing them for textiles.

Julie Helles Eriksen, Bjoern Karmann & Kristine Boesen

Abstract – 2015, Kolding School of Design

This team wanted to make a concept and business model by which the customer has influence on the visual expression of a garment. Individuality is the starting point of the concept, a customer gives input, the input is translated into a visual output, made into a textile and later on into a unique garment. The pattern will depend of the consumer’s use of words and the speed and rhythm of their typing. 

Ai Ishii

At the Grassy Park, 2016 – Tokyo Zokei Univeristy School of Art & Design

Textiles are generally thought of as two-dimensional objects, but they can also be woven in a way that makes them three-dimensional structures. However, Ishii considers textiles much the same as print media and so, based on this, the designer has concentrated efforts on creating a three-dimensional textural effect on a printed fabric.

Maartje Janse

Digital Reality 2015 – ArtEZ, ArnhemAnalog

Maartje started her textile project with the fragmentation of images and the fact that images exist out of pixels. Together with a professional weaver she created a double weave to add pixels into the weave. Next to that she wove a fragmented image and because of movement, the image changed. Janse had a lot of contact with the weaving community in The Netherlands and started to understand how valuable these craftspeople are, learning weaving from them so that traditional craft won’t disappear.

Judit Eszter Kárpáti & Esteban de la Torre

Liquid Midi, 2015 – EJTECH Moholy-Nagy University of Art & Design (MOME), Budapest

Liquid Midi is an experimental textile interface for sonic interactions, exploring aesthetics and morphology in contemporary design.The technology is screen printed directly onto a textile surface, then through an Arduino micro controller communicates with the desired software, using MIDI protocol. This unique interaction with this textile interface allows the medium to become part of the message, where the interface becomes part of the process of creation itself.

Maria Kazakova

The Displaced, 2015-16 – Parsons The New School of Design, New York

The Displaced was conceived as a variation on the theme of sportswear. The idea of using sportswear as both an inspiration and a material for the collection stemmed from the designer’s observation that, from the streets of America to the steppes of Siberia, the same standardised sports clothes were worn everywhere.

Jennifer Kobler

Lace Weaves, 2016 – Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University (NSCAD)

Kobler’s woven samples were conceived using a lace weave structure. The warp is a mercerised cotton and the weft varies from piece to piece in order to obtain different effects.

Alexandros Kotoulas

Allotropon, 2015 – (Greece)Design Academy Eindhoven

To create an intermediate step where the qualities of the material are still important and highlighted. Alexandros’s main goal was to keep the skins as pure as possible, excluding any chemical process that would increase its already high footprint. Together with an extended collection of material samples, applicable to fashion, interior or the automotive industry, Katoulas created Allotropon (meaning “other manner or form” in Greek), a collection of textile samples, where leather left-overs are first cut in very thin stripes (2-3 mm) and later woven into various bindings and in combination with other yarns.

Ayano Kumagai

My Plants, 2016 – (Japan)Tokyo Zokei Univeristy School of Art & Design

Kumagai’s newly developed textile works incorporate different types of techniques-dyeing, silkscreen printing, knitting and embroidery. The designs were inspired by the nature the designer comes in contact with during daily life. Plants, in particular, impress us with their shapes, colours, textures and smells. Some may be poisonous, others not. By mixing techniques and media, Kumagai strives to create a visual and tactile experience that will express a deep curiosity to the viewer who, in this way, will feel like they do when viewing actual nature.

Katherine Matos

Woven Collage #5, 2015-16 – (United States)Fashion Institute of Technology, New York

This piece of textile could become an alternative art fabric for an outerwear garment. It has a rough and rugged appearance while still maintaining the purity of the fiber and it’s inherent softness. The non- traditional material, found in mop heads, is great when used for this purpose! It’s a thick loosely spun 100% cotton cord and was woven by Matos into nine separate tapestries on a peg loom, carefully pieced these together using more cord.

Federica Melpignano

Knit Wrap, 2015 – (Italy)Accademia Costume & Moda, Rome

Knitwear stitches are digitally-printed and embossed onto raw hide leather in different thickness for clothes and bags, and on padded neoprene, expressing three dimensions in various ways. By transforming sleeves and rethinking the male silhouette, this collection investigates also echoes a medieval spirit that is so current in fashion today.

Christian Frank Müller

TexLab, 2015 – (Germany)Kunstuniversitat Linz, Austria

As a multi skilled designer and PhD student with a specialisation in textile design, Müller realises a wide range of different projects along the themes of diversity, details and simplicity with a twist. He perceives that design has a crucial influence on our lives. Good design improves our everyday lives and should be sustainable in terms of long lasting, timelessness, the use of the right materials and flexibility in use. And of course it should look good in every situation.

Tamara Oake

Rust Weaving, 2016 – (Canada)Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University (NSCAD)

Brazil wood natural dyes, used steel wool, old nails, a bottle and string are just some of the ingredients incorporated by Oake to create her Rust Weaving series. By balancing motifs, imagining compositions and measuring repeats, the designer has handwoven cotton and hemp yarns into organic cloths that are suitable for fashion, accessories and even interiors.

Léna Perraguin

Ni Vu Ni Connu, 2015 – (France)ENSCI les Ateliers, Paris

Ni Vu Ni Connu (“neither seen nor known” in French) is a product range of textiles for gardens, patios and balconies that includes different elements that enable oneself to re-create a personal space: visual barriers, carpets and pavings. The textiles are made by weaving PVC yarns with wood and metal or by heating PCV yarn leftovers. For this last process, the plastic yarns are cit into tiny pieces, brought together and dated with a hot press.

Viviana Saponari & Vitantonio Vitale

Wool Gradients, 2016 – (Italy)Politecnico di Bari

This Italian design duo’s concept consists in making different tactile gradients, using manual and automatic knitting machines. The project is not focused on the form of things: the focus is on tactile sensation. Our hands, when sliding on the surfaces, feel a gradual change from light to heavy, from soft to hard.

Meghan Sickler

Wash, 2016 – Fashion Institute of Technology, New York

Jing TanRoyal

This Anagenesis specie is __________?, 2015 – College of Art, London

Since the 15th century, naturalists started to explore the world and tried to record the species they found through illustrations. Some of the illustrations were completed with a combination of observation and imagination. The curiosity of the unknown could stimulate the temptation to investigate and explore. People at that time were full of passion and interest in creatures and a huge amount of bizarre and delicate objects were collected at that time. In this collection, Tan created a series of creatures that I called the Anagenesis species.

Tal Trilnik

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 2015 – (Israel)Shenkar College of Engineering & Design, Tel Aviv

Inspired by the Hunchback of Notre Dame; a symbol of deformed body. Trilnik focused on beauty that draws from the deformed and the chaotic, creating a knitted garment which references skin and skeleton distortion. A free form, two needles technique allowed the designer to model the garment freely, but precisely, transforming the wearer’s silhouette whenever it is used.

Ayane Uchida

Images of Tokyo, 2016 – (Japan)Tokyo Zokei Univeristy School of Art & Design

Highways, parks, skyscrapers, lights and lots of people are just some of the many elements that make up the huge city of Tokyo. Uchida started by taking many photographs of these elements and piecing them together into collages that represent the metropolis. From these collages, the designer created works from different types of materials: a ramie warp with different natural fibres, using tapestry and leno weaving.

Julia Wright

I am My Mother’s Only One, 2015 – Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)

“I am my mother’s only child, only daughter, only friend.” The structure of Wright’s family has shifted significantly since her parent’s recent divorce, and as such, each member of what was a three-person unit has learned to live on their own. This piece was created through Wright’s reflection on childhood and her relationship with her mother, serving as a sort of necessary step for the designer to accept this new situation.

Sophie Yan

Substance, 2016 – Cranbrook Academy of Art, Cranbrook

Substance is a textiles developed for different applications; it can be used in apparel or fashion accessories as well as in the interior for furniture of flooring. The two elements in the textile – recycled rubber and cotton cord – depend upon one another for structure and support; the cotton ten grid keeps the rubber from over-stretching and the rubber knots secure the conn ton twine grid at the interstices.

Gu Zhenyuan

Animal Patterns (2016) – Tokyo Zokei University, School of Art & Design

The stencil dyeing process is a disappearing art and Zhenyuan wants to revive the technique when making contemporary textiles. Animals have been a major influence on man since ancient times, and this designer would like to shine a spotlight on some of the more unfamiliar and overlooked animals in nature. Many of these animals can be described with the Japanese expression “kimo kawaii,” which means both grotesque and cute at the same time.

About The Dorothy Waxman Textile Design Prize

The Dorothy Waxman Textile Design Prize honors Dorothy Waxman, the original driving force behind Trend Union and Edelkoort Inc. in the United States and contributing reporter to the magazines View on Colour, Textile View and Viewpoint. Waxman’s insatiable curiosity and discerning eye for the avant-garde has inspired Edelkoort and her team for decades. Waxman also introduced the American fashion industry to European textile partners with her work at the Fashion Group. As an avid textile aficionado, she believes that creative fabrics can change the design landscape in profound ways.

Proudly supported by Edelkoort Inc. in New York, the award winner will receive a prize of US $5,000 and coverage on the online interactive trend platform, TrendTablet.com. The award is part of Edelkoort and Fimmano’s Talking Textiles initiative that promotes textile education, creativity and awareness.

About Lidewij Edelkoort

Lidewij Edelkoort is one of the world’s most famous trend forecasters. As an intuitive thinker who travels the world studying the evolution of socio-cultural trends before sharing this information with her clients in industries as diverse as fashion, textiles, interiors, cars, cosmetics, retail and food. Under her Paris-based company Trend Union, Edelkoort creates trend books two or more years ahead that are tools used by strategists, designers and marketeers at international brands.