UF Design Stu­dio — Meet the designers

To mark the end of the four-year Unit­ed Fash­ion project, MAD — Home of Cre­ators is organ­is­ing a clos­ing event next year in Brus­sels. MAD wants to make its con­tri­bu­tion by set­ting up a fes­ti­val ded­i­cat­ed to the future of fash­ion, a future that is respon­si­ble and sus­tain­able from an eco­log­i­cal, social and eco­nom­ic point of view. 

Besides an exhi­bi­tion and talks, the fes­ti­val will also present the results of a one-year fash­ion incu­ba­tor; the UF Design Stu­dio. The UF Design Stu­dio responds to research and devel­op­ment needs for sus­tain­able and acces­si­ble fash­ion. For one year, three design­ers will car­ry out research into, and con­se­quent­ly cre­ate and pro­duce a sus­tain­able fash­ion col­lec­tion. We are very excit­ed to intro­duce to you the three inter­na­tion­al design­ers that are tak­ing part in the UF Design Studio.

Max­i­m­il­ian Rittler

Max­i­m­il­ian Rit­tler, a 29-year old menswear design­er from Vien­na, was always fas­ci­nat­ed by fine arts and draw­ing in par­tic­u­lar. He worked with many mate­ri­als and exper­i­ment­ed with lots of tech­niques long before he was inter­est­ed in fash­ion. With­in his tech­ni­cal edu­ca­tion­al back­ground in Vien­na, he learned pat­tern­mak­ing, con­struct­ing and mak­ing of gar­ments, dra­page, shoe­mak­ing, knit­ting, millinery and print­mak­ing, before mov­ing to Antwerp to improve his cre­ative process. Last year he grad­u­at­ed from the Antwerp Fash­ion Depart­ment with a 100% upcy­cled col­lec­tion. Since then, he par­tic­i­pat­ed in Lon­don Fash­ion Week and is nom­i­nat­ed for the Hyères fes­ti­val 2020.

Insta­gram

Cred­its pho­tos: Lau­ra Knipsael

Karoli­na Jurikova

Karoli­na Juriko­va is a young fash­ion design­er from the Czech Repub­lic. She stud­ied at the Acad­e­my of Art Archi­tec­ture and design and interned at Uni­ver­sität Für Ange­wandte Kun­st Wien. Her wide range of works oscil­lates on the edge of art and fash­ion as inten­tion­al­ly accen­tu­ates a dia­logue between this two worlds. Cloth­ing is a medi­um of choice, which she uses for ques­tion­ing and sub­tle cri­tique. Her nat­ur­al way of expres­sion is to work with tex­tiles and the typol­o­gy of gar­ments. An impor­tant part of her work is imple­ment­ing eth­i­cal and sus­tain­able prin­ci­ples as the first rule of a respon­si­ble design­er and artist. 

Web­site — Insta­gram

Cred­its pho­tos: Veroni­ka Cechmankova

Dori­ane van Overeem

Dori­ane van Overeem is young, fierce and deter­mined to make a change in the fast-paced indus­try that is fash­ion. She is a Bel­gian fash­ion design­er, who grad­u­at­ed from La Cam­bre Mode(s) in Brus­sels and devel­oped her skills in the stu­dios of Man­ish Aro­ra, Bern­hard Will­helm, Mead­ham Kirch­hoff and Louise Gray. For Dori­ane, it is not enough to only cre­ate pret­ty clothes; they actu­al­ly ques­tion soci­ety, its insa­tiable con­sumerism and treat­ment of women.

Web­site — Insta­gram

Cred­its pho­tos: Leewei Swee