Mild-mannered and polite as we are, we still occasionally find ourselves causing offence, arousing feelings of mild outrage and generally causing people to turn against us; invariably, when we contend, as we regularly do, that fashion isn't design.
Which of course it isn't.
"This winter we'll be wearing stripes" is obviously as vacuous as it is untrue.
Fashion isn't design.
It's styling.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Just don't call it design
Textile design is design, because textile design explores new ways of approaching and working with textiles, of finding new understandings of our relationships to textiles, new possibilities in terms of materials, of manufacturing, and ultimately new ways of integrating textiles into our social, cultural and economic lives.
In their temporary exhibition Textile Design Today – From Experiment to Series the Bauhaus Archiv Berlin aim to explore the current status of textile design and thus the contemporary importance and relevance of textile design.
Realised in cooperation with the Textile department of the Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle, Textile Design Today promises to explore the multi-faceted universe of contemporary textile design through seven subject areas - tradition, material, colour, cultural transfer, technology, smart textiles and sustainability - and through numerous fields of contemporary textile use such as architecture, interior design, automobiles..... and yes, fashion. Featuring contributions from established designers such as Hella Jongerius or Janne Kyttanen as well as projects by Burg Halle students and examples of commercially available products from firms as varied as Kvadrat, Création Baumann or Freitag, Textile Design Today promises to be both an extensive survey of contemporary textile design and also a reminder that many of the the subjects explored in the exhibition, were just as contemporary at Bauhaus as they are today.
Textile Design Today – From Experiment to Series runs at the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung, Klingelhöferstrasse 14, 10785 Berlin until Monday September 5th.
Full details, including information on the accompanying fringe programme, can be found at www.bauhaus.de
