Roberts draws inspiration from x-rays and CT scans, body-mapping and contouring the human form. For AW2011  the collection teams with accessories from Eye of the World; a collaboration between Liam Motyer [a teacher] and Hope Von Joel [a stylist]. Each wooded accessory is uniquely crafted and finished by hand in London. Both design firms have together achieved a subtle balance in which each piece offsets and carries the other into a higher vision.

Sandra Backlund is a textile artist, a fashion sculptor and a knitter. Her work is structurally convoluting, winding around the body, or interacting with it in some other ingenious way. The voluminous shapes evolve out of her fascination with the human body. Backlund is ever intrigued with the prospect of ‘highlighting, distorting or transforming’ . The sculptural garments evolve from a simple brick shape that is added onto, multiplied and attached in different ways.

These strange forms of soft woolliness and cavernous hollows make you want to crawl inside them, whether to hide or to be seen all the more. There is a quality within them that reaches into the senses and draws a response. This is not surprising given the exploratory nature of Backlund’s design development. The garments crawl and grow around the body. It’s a truly bespoke interaction, which is inherently a knit-wear quality to heart. Backlund is taking that humble knit chain and giving us something altogether considered, explored and exciting. Watch for her work and you will see the evolution of an artist on the fashion stage.

The incarnation of these questions, and perhaps some answers, can be found in Meindertsma’s works, some of which are displayed as part of the Pioneers of Change festival of Dutch design, fashion and architecture which is currently being held on New York’s Governors Island.

The festival celebrates 400 years of Dutch-American relations. The designer recently looked at all the products that can be gleaned from a single pig in her aptly titled book ‘ PIG 05049 ‘. She has also looked at the fibers Linen, Flax, Aran knitting, and objects at airports that are required as ‘checked baggage’. Her work leads one to look at products in a closer manner, seeing them either in a different light, a different scale, or even a pre-form of themselves.

Meindertsma’s knitted products for interiors evolve from a study of their components, and the fibres that they draw from. In the rooms of her exhibit are skeins and felted wads of 3 different sheep; Merino [which is fine guage and commonly used for garments], Texcel and Blue Texcel yarns [which are a much coarser fleece and therefore more suited to carpet and flooring].  Dye swabs and colour studies hang on the wall. In a back room a giant skein winder sits in mid wind, with a mass of long felted wool ready to be rolled, and it’s ordered and perfectly formed ball on the rod of the mechanism.

The works are in grand scales, many times larger than life. They bring the immensity and simplicity of form and fabric that is created by the knitting process into gargantuan proportions, and in so doing create new possibilities.