Fashion is a wonderful way to life live. Ever since graduating from a designing school in another country and gradually overcoming the difficulties of executing ideas in my home country I have gotten a much stronger feeling for culture in a very fun way I´d like to share. Thus and out of respect for ecology and work-ethics I decided not to throw out my older work even though this is a modern fashion site but rather put it in chronological order and review it with regard to art-history and the developement of fashion in Iceland. It´s a fun story.
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When I look at my portfolio from 1987 it reminds me of an art-book I recently got on a bookmarket called Naïve and Fantastical art in Iceland that portrayes among other thngs meticulously painted figures in wonderfully bright colors. The designer´s gouache is hard to control and I was relieved when the compter´s paintbrush took over my coloring even though I think it does promote fashion to consider it an artform. However my figurines are very different from the bent, hard working out-door people n the paintings in the book. Their postures are upright and have clear faces and long legs. I detect certain feeling there the stem all the way from childhood when my fashion interest started. In the better painted ones´ there is a growing sense of feminism and interest in textiles and details.
An idea executed 1987
My first attempts with patterns was to work with the fabric itself by creating my own forms on the knit. A former representant of a Icelandic wool production company called Álafoss that I had done some design and fashion work for during my fashion design student years abroad in ´86 had some wonderful indian cotton yarn that he wanted to make something out of. He had been inspired by a colorful post-card with coral-fishes that he wanted me to use. We wondered why fish hadn´t been such a source for inspiration in fashion in Iceland, there seemed to be such a variety of forms and patterns in it´s skin. My next step coming closer to traditional way of creating patterns was with a firm called Hilda that already used computers. Their blooming time had been in the sixties when Icelandic woolen goods were quite popular in the States. They also made coats for the Icelandic market and I remember I once worked in their coat-factory as a summer help when I was 14.
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Hilda, 1987
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Coral 1990
At last in ´89 I learnt a whole lot more about traditional Icelandic pattern making in a firm that produced Coral designs even though the designers weren´t computerized. Creating patterns was at that time the most viable way of making it as designer in Iceland. That firm manufactured knitted garments both in Icelandic wool and imported cotton and was an opportunity for Icelandic designers in the limited circumstances of Icelandic knitting industry. At the same time as a newly hired shop-assistant in a distinguished designers´ shop where I among other things drew fashion illustrations from a Jill Sander´s catalogue in the shop´s paper I was developing a stronger sense of fashion where the virtue of weaving or textiles comes through from a time when pensil was thought to display best the fashionable flighty, busy streetlife. I still remember an excellent fashion major from school that illustrated with colored pensils and how I thought it was the only means of illustrating fashion, whether it had something to do with the fact that she was caucasian or russian or that pollution wasn´t yet an issue. My grandfather Oscar, I was told was a true connoisseur of the fifties, boheminan, teacher and an accountant that died long before my birth. The pencil illustration reminds me of his times, when smoking was stylish and hats in. Good and heavy coats were also important then. Later I learnt that the first fashion show in the newly founded Icelandic national museum took place in 1949 also in order to enhance Icelandic fashion after war. Maybe these times were important for fashion.
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Fashion illustration from 1988.
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But back to modern times an all Icelandic summer in 1990, below are my first all Icelandic manufactured designs in cotton (also the three models picture above) where everything concerning fashion in Iceland came together, Icelandic model and modeling offices, collaboration with other fashion and textile designers and the Icelandic knitting and manufacturing industry.
The
pictures below show my illustrations from a window display at the Art Festival of
Reykjavík in 1990 where three Icelandic designer´s showed their work in Icelandic
wool. Unfortunately the new´s clip of the occasion was nowhere to be found! It
lasted for three weeks followed with a fashion show in the shop.
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The following winter the first designer´s day
took place in Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland, at Kjarvalsstadir. A design exhibition
there was the collaboration of various
designers´ societies, including the Icelandic architects´society that later
formed the Icelandic Design Center (www.honnunarmidstod.is). There have
been two fashion designers´societies formed since 1985, one called FAT (the
fashion and textile designers´ association) and FI (The Icelandic fashion
designers´society, www.fatahonnunarfelag.is) that was established in 2002 and is
is the more active one today. A wonderful modern feeling was ignited in this
exhibition that tied a knot between art, modern design and home industry. Below are some of my designs in wool from 1991 when I was freelancing for Drifa, a knitting wool and outdoor wear company in Iceland.
Despite crises in the wool-industry in the nineties determent handcraft´s women didn´t let the industry down and the popularity of producing wool products only increased also because of the emerge of a new product fleece. Also the founding of the Art University of Iceland in 1996 was a big stepping stone towards independence in the design area. My feministic endeavours towards independence in the design area was accepting a tempting offer as an editor for a knitting magazine “Lopi og Band” but that couldn´t finance the enterprize at the end, selling knitting recipes to a knitting magazine where I got frustrated with the photographer (no digital photomachines then) and making oversized, handknit sweaters with a grant from the Social Ministry for women in independent enterprizes. Sales tax being over 100% needless to say, the sweaters were a bit prizy.
A dream coming true, the computer, solved that problem. No 100% salestax any more. The idea of having a commercial site on the Internet was definately a dream by itself and an end destination So I went ahead and produced 30 blouses from a sample in a blouse line that me and another designer designed for a wholesale importer here in Iceland that wanted to try to manufacture something in Hong Kong but backed out again. Created a homesite where I also showed some pattern ideas from my previous design experience and put the blouses on sale there.
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Above are some pages from my first homepage and my first endeavours in producing and selling garments. Below are pages from the pattern-site of the homepage and variations from it in various knit designs.
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This time I sold little more than last time but still there was a big gap to be covered in the area, called sales and marketing! Since 2000 big offical steps have been taken in order to promote creation and especially in regard to entrepreuneurship so the future looks promising. In 2005 the first competition in fashion and textile design was held by a supermarket company Hagkaup that was the first company in Iceland hat made wholesales available to the public(Vörumarkaðurinn). The frock, my design made it to the finals (over 100 competed). It was made of a synthetic bouclé and could be worn inside out. Below are pictures from the final exhibition in the supermarket and some of the finalists´models (10 in all) in the competition.
