THE UNDAUNTED & UNUSUAL BEAUTY OF 'AND BEYOND' PART 1

IT’S ALL IN THE NAME: JOLANDA VAN DEN BROEK (1977) AND BRIGITTE HENDRIX (1978) MAKE MORE THAN JUST ANOTHER PRETTY DRESS. THEY DO FASHION…AND BEYOND. WITH THEIR LOVE FOR UNUSUAL SILHOUETTES AND INNOVATIVE 3D- PRINTED DRESSES, ‘AND BEYOND’ IS ABOUT TO BECOME BIG. ICONIQUE TALKED TO THESE TWO DUTCH DESIGNERS ABOUT THEIR ARTISTIC VISION, SENSE OF BEAUTY AND GOT A SNEAK PREVIEW ON THEIR NEXT COLLECTION, THAT WILL BE PRESENTED AT THE ARNHEM FASHION BIENNALE THIS MONTH.

HOW AND WHY DID YOU START WORKING TOGETHER?

Jolanda: “We both attended the same academy, the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, it’s here where we started working together. From that point on, we realized that we worked very well together and that we reinforced each other’s work. Although we did graduate separately, from day one, we joined our graduation works and ‘And Beyond’ was born.
It’s really nice to experience the highs and the lows together. To be a fashion designer is very hard work, when you’re working late at night, it’s good that you don’t have to work alone. Also, it really makes our work better. We are quite critical to each other while ‘ping-ponging’ our concepts and designs. Brigitte makes the prints and I’m responsible for the silhouettes. So when one of us is stuck, the other one can always distance oneself and give good critique. I think this really makes the works stronger.”

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE ‘AND BEYOND’ SIGNATURE?

Brigitte: “We design without compromise, showing subtle details of modern life in avant-gardist fashion collections. We take modern life and modern day society as an inspiration source – that’s a very significant thing- but we don’t want to make pamphlets. We want to translate it in a subtle way. It’s not about protesting or making a point, it’s just about translating it to the clothes and into an attitude, which is the attitude of the wearer we imagine. We really like the poetic sense of fashion. For instance, in late 1900’s people were wearing a lot of black because they had to express that they were troubled by the times. This is the way feelings start to be reflected in the clothes people are wearing, that fascinates us. This is how we approach putting our conceptual base into the collection.”

WHAT’S THE IDEA BEHIND YOUR ‘SPECTACLE’ COLLECTION (S/S 2009)?

J: “The subtitle of the ‘Spectacle’-collection is ‘Trouble in paradise’. The silhouettes and prints are a bit disturbing. For example, the designs have tight shoulders that are tilted to the front. In the prints, there is a lot of vanitas (symbolic still life painting red.) symbolism. We wanted to create a real ‘trouble in paradise’: it looks beautiful, but underneath there is a bit of a harsh reality. It’s like the crack in a beautiful painting.”
B: “Actually, this is a concept that fits in the development of And Beyond. Our collections are just different translations of the same starting point: we want to make beautiful things, but with a rough edge and a relationship with the times we live in. The ‘Spectacle’-collection is a result of our first collection ‘Blinded by the lights’, so the story kind of continues.”


“We want to make beautiful things, but with a rough edge"

WHAT INSPIRES YOU IN YOUR WORK AS FASHION DESIGNERS?

B: “We like the way people dress. We’re not inspired by fashion, but by how people carry themselves and how they use the personal space around them. That really fascinates us. We both have our own approach; Jolanda is always very intrigued by how people carry themselves from their posture, their body or their behaviour. I’m always interested in how people create their own way of dealing with clothes. I can be really fascinated by a bunch of Leonardo di Caprio t-shirts that are dumped in Africa and are worn by a whole army of children; that’s where fashion starts to become something else, it becomes a signal.”

WHO ARE YOUR ICONS?

B: “Maurizio Cattelan, an artist who makes installations and sculptures, is a big inspiration, because he’s aware of the fact that his work first amuses, and then disconcerts. He adds a layer to what he does. This is also the case for our work.” J: “We do have a muse, but she is not famous or anything. She is a friend, who represents the combination of a strong woman with still a hint of vulnerability.”
B: “We like Roisin Murphy too, but rather her attitude than her music.”
J: “It’s all about the attitude. For example, for the coming collection, the personality of the girls who are wearing the designs is very important. Not just a fashion model like personality, but we wanted them to be real, characteristic people. Their look and presence is one of the main reasons to choose a girl or not. We like a kind of unusual beauty.”

‘ANDBEYOND’ IS MORE THAN JUST FASHION. YOU’RE ALSO KNOWN FOR YOUR ART PROJECTS. WHY DO YOU CHOOSE TO COMMUNICATE THROUGH CLOTHING ANYWAY?

B: “Well, we tried to get away from it, but we just couldn’t.”
J: “In the end, the medium works really well for us. Before I started my fashion education, I did sculptural design. One of the reasons why I started at the fashion department of the Rietveld Academy is because I realized all my work evolved around the female body. So fashion was a small step. Also because fashion is a very pleasant way of telling your story; it has a lot more emotion. It’s definitely a different thing to have a fashion show, instead of having a book presentation. Fashion is a lot sexier; it’s on your skin. It becomes part of people and that’s very different than a painting on the wall.”

DO YOU ALSO MAKE WEARABLE FASHION DESIGNS?

J: “There are definitely pieces in which the concept stands above all; concept pieces that tell the story. However, we do find it important, that if it’s a dress, it should fit and wear well. For example, the showpiece of a dress in the previous collection had really tight arms and wasn’t really comfortable. So when we decided that this dress should be for sale, we made a more wearable version. A wearable design is good, as long as it doesn’t leave the concept.”
B: “It’s really essential. But that’s also Jolanda’s and my thing: we design for a body, not as a pamphlet or an autonomous expression. It’s just that we don’t design for a market yet, but we do design for a person who will be wearing it.”

YOUR WORKS HAVE BEEN PART OF NUMEROUS EXHIBITIONS. DO YOU THINK IT’S IMPORTANT THAT YOUR DESIGNS ARE ALSO IN REACH OF A WIDER AUDIENCE AS WELL?

B: “Yes, because, in the end, we do make clothing. I find it really inspiring that there is this development that fashion is being shown in an exhibition context, not just in magazines and things like that. We like the combination, that you show your way of thinking in an exhibition in a more silent environment, just as much as we like it that somebody is actually wearing our design.”
J: “Also, if we give a show, we like it to be accessible for everybody. This makes our fashion low profile and in reach of different kind of people. That’s also why we are here in the Red Light Fashion project(ateliers for fashion designers in the Red Light District of Amsterdam, supported by Dutch government, red.). This way you make fashion more visible on a street level, which is important nowadays, because the fashion industry is quite closed.”

WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO ACHIEVE WITH YOUR WORK?

J: “We believe that there is a lot of the ‘not so beautiful’ in fashion – there is so much. It would be very nice if we would be able to contribute in a way that has meaning and importance in fashion.”
B: “And it doesn’t matter on what scale. Ee don’t have a scale in mind, for example, a goal like: ‘we want to be in this many stores or we want to grow towards this or that’.We just want to develop as designers and continue to work in a way that touches people. And that the work we’re making is relevant - is relevant for us as a start. We have a million ideas, all the time, but the thing we’re learning now is to be relevant.”


CONTINUE READING
THE UNDAUNTED & UNUSUAL BEAUTY OF 'AND BEYOND' PART 2 of 2

WRITTEN BY STYLE REPORTER MEHTAP GUNGORMEZ