This month’s news includes all kinds of unusual crafting ingredients, from mycelium to gingerbread. Students are also offered the opportunity to have their design projects 3D printed by London company Batch.Works. I hope there’s something for everyone.
The bride wore cork
Choosing a wedding dress is a special moment. Some brides go for family heirlooms, while others dream of designer dresses. Dasha Tsapenko is probably one of the few people who grows her own dress. The bio-textile designer is fascinated by the common connections and production issues of fashion and agriculture, and Atelier Dasha Tsapenko explores ways to produce materials from agricultural by-products and plants. In the workshop, fur was produced from bean pods, textile dyes and cork felt were produced from crop waste. For her dress, Tsapenko was inspired by the tradition in her native Ukraine of women wearing hand-embroidered wedding blouses.
Tsapenko sourced vintage flax lace from a Ukrainian flea market and seeded them with fungal spores before placing them in a nutrient-rich growing medium. Over the course of two weeks, as the mycelium grew, it transformed the lace into a fabric, which could then be fashioned into a mushroom-shaped dress. It predicts a new wedding tradition in which the dress is buried after the wedding.
“It felt good not to be careful because I was worried that the wedding dress would be dirty, wet, dusty,” says Tsapenko. “Knowing that the dress would return to earth after the wedding in the neighborhood forest made it easier to run, jump, and do somersaults. Wedding is an emotional moment that you want to experience deeply. When that moment is over, you want to keep it in your memory, not in your closet.”
For more information, contact Dasha Tsapenko via her website.
Written in black and white
In 2016, Washington DC-based graphic designer Tré Seals was surfing the internet for inspiration. He felt like everything he looked at looked monotonous, and after reading that over 85% of designers working in the US were white, he started thinking about how the two things were connected. As he says on his website: “You could argue it was our obsession with grills and perfection, but the truth was there was no culture or character.”
He decided to start his own diversity-focused type foundry and Vocal Type was launched. Seals draws inspiration from the culture and history of underrepresented communities to create custom typography. Examples include the VTC Garibaldi type, inspired by anti-fascist posters and pamphlets produced during the second world war, and the VTC Du Bois, which comes from civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois’ infographics showing how African Americans were affected by racism.
This year Seals was shortlisted for the Emerging Designer award at the annual Dezeen Awards, the winner of which was announced this week. He says: “Everyone needs to have a seat at the table. “The world is becoming increasingly diverse and our industry needs to keep up.”
For more information about Seals, visit Vocal Genre. Winners of the 2023 Dezeen Awards will be announced on November 28
Streets paved with sweets
The Museum of Architecture’s (MoA) Gingerbread City has become a tradition in London at Christmas time, but this year is the first time the charity has opened in New York. The MoA aims to get the public interested in the buildings around them and how they are used. Every year the charity asks leading architects to create gingerbread buildings to celebrate the festive season and also get visitors thinking about the challenges of the built environment. New York’s Gingerbread City features the work of more than 50 architects and shares the theme of Water in Cities with its London twin. There are daily gingerbread making workshops, and NY restaurant Balthazar has created sweet treats you can take home. Melissa Woolford, founder and director of MoA and creator of The Gingerbread City, says: “We use this to showcase design and the impact it will have on our towns and countryside, taking into account climate change and how we live in the future. Creating a metropolis using sweet treats.” “It allows us to make complex ideas accessible in an inviting environment that smells delicious!”
Visit New York’s Gingerbread City through January 7
Simple. Practical. last built
Braun is one of the few brands that is ubiquitous yet groundbreaking. The electronics company was founded by Max Braun in Frankfurt in 1921, right around the time of the radio boom. First Braun and then his two sons, Artur and Erwin, kept the company at the forefront of technology and design for decades thanks to their commitment to aesthetic and functional design. The new monograph by Klaus Kemp, professor of design theory and history at HfG Offenbach, Germany, tells the story of the company that became a part of history by combining philosophy, technology and design. Braun: Keep to Keep contains more than 500 images and catalogs of Braun’s defining moments. The Braun brand is known by happy customers for its stereos, kitchen appliances and electric shavers. But it is also admired in design circles for a Bauhaus-influenced working practice and for providing a launching pad for some of the world’s greatest product designers. Dieter Rams, Gerd A Müller and Roland Weigend are just a few of the names associated with the company. Designer Virgil Abloh even helped celebrate Braun’s 100th anniversary. The company’s slogan is unsurprisingly apt: Simple. Practical. Last build.
Braun: Klaus Kemp (Phaidon, £59.95)
make the cut
“No clothes can be on the catwalk without cutting a pattern,” says designer and teacher Monisola Omotoso. As a creative who has worked in all aspects of fashion, Omotoso certainly knows what she’s talking about. In the 1990s, the innovative Jac Sac design, a combination backpack and jacket, was the epitome of creative streetwear styles in the UK at the time and was sold at Paul Smith and Duffer of St George. Omotoso continued producing women’s clothing and accessories collections before growing tired of the constant change of the fashion industry and began working as a pattern cutter (Alexander McQueen and David Koma were among her clients) and was able to pass her exams by training to be a teacher. It provides skills to the new generation of producers. She also produced pattern kits that people can try at home. “Pattern cutting is a core skill in the fashion industry that combines creativity with technical expertise,” says Omotoso. “It plays an important role in transforming concepts into wearable, functional products.”
Omotoso’s iconic Jac Sac is currently on display at The Missing Thread, an exhibition of Black creativity at Somerset House in London. Pattern kits are also available for sale in the pop-up store.
Omotoso’s sewing and pattern making courses at the V&A are coming up. For details see website www.patterncuttingdeconstructed.com
New generation printing
Batch.Works is a British manufacturing company focused on local and circular production using recyclable materials. In collaboration with design consultants Seymourpowell and the Design Council, the company has launched a competition for design students called Products for Planet. Batch.Works needs to train an AI-powered 3D printing machine. “To do this we need to print around 10,000 parts on our pilot machines in Brighton,” says Milo Mcloughlin-Greening, partner and head of R&D at Batch.Works. To turn this into a truly creative exercise, students are offered the chance to suggest items that should be printed for their school or community. “This competition takes advantage of this amazing manufacturing opportunity to make objects designed to solve real problems,” says Mcloughlin-Greening.
Batch.Works is looking for a product idea themed around food, materials, mobility or energy, and it is clear that the product must be suitable for production using a 3D printer.
“So many young people have great ideas, so we’re delighted to be able to support turning some of them into reality through this competition,” added Cat Drew, chief design officer at the Design Council. “By asking students to co-design products with communities, we can educate AI-powered printing in a truly immersive way.”
Send applications to competition@batchworks.co.uk by 15 December. For more information on how to submit your submission, go to Batch.Works.