We connected with Zuzana Vrábeľová, the designer behind the striking “knitted beasts” that turned heads at CPHFW.
August 27, 2015
At Copenhagen Fashion Week SS26, the Swedish School of Textiles show, EXIT25, served up a lineup of stunning and experimental designs from graduating students. But it was Zuzana Vrábeľová who stole the spotlight, twisting yarn into untamed, almost alive sculptural forms. It’s the kind of work that makes you rethink what knitwear can be. We caught up with her to talk textile instincts, “knitted beasts,” and what’s next.
I was always interested in bodies and physicality of the material even before I was knitting. I would manipulate materials to resemble skins or furs. It is something that I am drawn to; fashion to me is a lot about material body, physicality and intimacy. The knitted beast came to be when I started my masters.
During a technical course I was experimenting a lot with materials and techniques —back then I didn't have a strong conceptual structure of my project that I would follow, so I was very free to just try stuff, try different yarns and enjoy the process of making something small.
Over time I would have a collection of small body parts, skeletons — a strange textile bestiary — so I started from there. That's the thing about my work, I start with the material and I let it inform the project a lot. In a way it has a lot of agency — that's why I like to think about it as something alive, because to me it is. Also, the transformation is a big part of my process. I often start working on something — but the material takes over.
What I consider really to be the first idea would be my wing piece that I made last February. It was my first work that was in full scale. Back then I was obsessed with birds and feathers, and I was working on a large wing piece. I was fascinated by how humans fashion their bodies by using materials from bodies of animals like feathers or furs. The piece helped me to establish materiality and the techniques I would use and work off of further. But it would also start the conceptual investigation of the project.
I think it was around a week for the wings. It doesn't have that much knitting, but I was taking it off and on the machine a lot to get the proportions right. With my collection it really varies. I made a piece — the opening look from the CPHFW show — that took 2 months just to knit. I am not even counting development and samples to calculate size.
I wasn't even sure if I should do it, because it would be just so much physical work (it's all knitted manually), and I wasn't sure if I would be able to finish for the exam. But in those two months I was also working on other pieces from the collection that required me to be more engaged mentally.
I had a routine when, in the morning and early afternoon, I was working on those, and then around 3 or 4 in the afternoon I would just sit and knit that piece until night — I really enjoyed that actually. But compared to that piece everything else took significantly less time.
I didn't always knit, but I was always very material driven. It just made sense to go into knitting when I had the chance. What I like about knitting is that it is relatively fast and very flexible. It allowed me to test ideas almost immediately, and the same idea would yield completely different results by changing very little. That way I can really get into the prototyping and perfect what I am looking for, and, what happens quite often, discover something new.
In a way, knitting gave me a structure to work, or a system within which I can think freely. I like to work with the machine and think with my hands. Knitting is quite a linear process and everything happens in real time. Also, it is very meditative. It has a rhythm that I can follow.
Their experimental approach to the materials and fashion. The school always had amazing projects coming out, and I think it stands out still with their approach. Every project is a focused experimental investigation of something.
I knew about the school for quite a while. I stumbled upon it when I was looking for BA fashion programs. Back then I thought that I would have no chance to get through admissions, so I didn't even apply. I then tried it years later for my masters.
I think the most inspiring for me is the material itself. I like to look for strange properties. For example, in this project I used a lot of Japanese paper yarn. It is a fantastic material, and it was available in the labs of the school in various qualities and thicknesses, and I just enjoyed finding different applications for it.
I am also inspired by techniques and possibilities of what the machines can do. I reference nature and historical costume a lot, but I try not to interpret it literally. I look at the details sometimes, but often I would just work from my memory or from an idea that I have of what something looks like - it skews the reality a lot and the result would be different, because the way I remember something doesn't have to be the way it is - I think that's where the sense of the fantasy comes from.
I think it is impossible that they wouldn't, at least within school I was free to put a lot of myself into my work. What drew me a lot to fashion was the physicality of it. When I was a teenager I struggled a lot with my body. It comes with being a woman, I think, and by extension I struggled with clothes a lot. Clothes hold a memory of a body, directly reference it, and are tailored to it. In my work now I work a lot with this sense of astonishment about the body, how stunning it is, and naturally this astonishment translates to the dress. These dresses somehow become bodies in itself, stunning creatures - beasts.
I would really love to collaborate with artists from other disciplines such as performance or dance, or even doing a project that would be more spatially focused. I would love to see my work in different contexts.
Connect with Zuzana Vrábeľová @zuza_na___
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