Making a Name

The Cabinet of Curiosities / Le Cabinet de Curiosités

Every year some 70 – 100 interested students apply for courses in the fashion department of the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Some 10 per cent pass the entrance exams o the basis of their work and talent. In total, roughly 40 students study – at all levels – in the fashion department here.
The fashion department team includes a small group of highly-qualified tutors who plan the artistic curriculum and teach under the guidance of Veronique Branquinho.

Today graduates from the fashion department are working with international fashion houses and designers such as Helmut Lang, Prada, Hermes, Armani, Versace, Bally, and Vivienne Westwood; as well as starting their own individual designer careers, like Desiree Heiss for Bless, Wendy & Jim, and Claudia Lukas. Others have become stylists for international magazines like Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, I-D Magazine and Selfservice magazine. Others still work in the textile industry, in education or in sciences.

Here, a sampling of three very different approaches.

The Cabinet of Curiosities / Le Cabinet de Curiosités

17th century European rulers created curious cabinets as places of withdrawal for themselves. Inside the cabinets they collected natural objects, animals (naturalia), artifacts and machinery (artificialia), and in many cases, rather bizarre things like mermaid skeletons (Mirabilia).
Their goal was to reconstruct the world en miniature, where they were (finally) able to play God. These places represented an amazing manifestation of their megalomania, yet at the same time constituted their protective shield against the outside world.
“The Cabinet of Curiosities Collection used a purely experimental approach, through which I tried to explore shape, structure and color”, says designer Malin Troll of her collection. After some time working at Wolford Malin began studying, under Raf Simons and Veronique Branquino, at the University for Applied Art in Vienna. She describes her work as elegant and feminine, with a touch of humour. “My favorite thing about this is the opportunity to be playful, to spice things up a bit.”
She spent most of her working time on the project fishing for different objects all over Vienna’s antiques markets. At one point her apartment was so packed with stuff she could hardly move. “This was important for me, because only like this I could really live my collection – it was like telling a story. And I like telling stories! I most enjoyed putting the stuff together, so at the end it was more like sculpting than sewing.” “A new experience for me” she says with a grin, “and quite a deliberating one”.

Photo: Ditz Fejer (ditzfejer.com)
Photo assistance: Bernhard Schramm
Hair & makeup: Dalila Riccettimn Perfectprops
Model: Finley, Tempo Models

Forever Burka

After spending almost a year in Lebanon, Kathrin Lugbauer finally got the opportunity to realize her big fascination with dress/costumes of the Middle East. The result is a project called the Scarf Dress, inspired by the burka, the long, loose garment covering the whole body and worn in public by many Muslim women.
“I’d been visiting the flea markets of Beirut for a month trying to find all kinds of scarves before the war began in 2006. Afterward, I tried to find a new technique to use them in a different way. During the process I worked only on a model and didn’t use any cuts. In my work I’m really interested in using unusual fabrics. My working process is very conceptual”, says Kathrin who’s now working, after internships at Bless and at Wendy and Jim’s, on her diploma, under the supervision of professor Veronique Branquino at Vienna’s University for Applied Arts.

Photo: Ruth Ehrmann
Dress by Kathrin Lugbauer

Sewing Structured Chaos

“I’m trying to bring to my collections the casual ease of pyjamas together with the elegance of an evening robe. It’s a mix of spontaneous disorder and structure that I try to achieve’, says Leonie Leuenberger.
“Like this jewellery – it’s a total chaos of pearls and beads, all twisted and messed up but in the middle there’s a clearly defined circle left out. That’s what gives the piece as a whole structure – it’s a combination of the accidental and the intentional. It can function both as jewellery or as a top in and of itself. I like it when clothes still have the sleep in their eyes, when people wear their clothes with the ease of unscheduled naps.”
On the technical aspect of her work, Leonie explains the whole collection is based on geometrical forms, like lines and circles that lose themselves in draping and asymmetry, that appear out of special wrapping schemes – or out of chaos. It’s a sort of mix of sport and elegance.
“I believe in spontaneity, so I try to achieve a style that makes one ready for anything, anytime”, says the girl who spent last year as Oktober’s favourite design intern. “One should go for whatever comes. So you can run out of bed, straight to the opera, without changing, and then back again.”

Photos of Marie Leuenberger: Daniel Nerlich

Author: Špela Kasal