Cool Hunting

Flocks by Ami Kealoha

Flocks

Sweaters made by Flocks, the brainchild of Dutch fashion designer Christien Meindertma are exciting to me for a multitude of reasons. Here are two.

First, my father is Dutch and I’m always excited to meet people with obtuse Dutch names doing obtuse things with their lives. Second, in my undergraduate years, I studied agricultural journalism and worked for the World Dairy Expo. In the end, I realized I was just another urbane ‘ghetto slicker’ resigned to a Gotham life and believing everything we buy comes from a branding expert. Flocks offers the chance to reengage the elegance of raw materials.

Wool for each Flocks sweater originates from the body of a singular sheep born into a small Welsh flock. A different sweater is handknitted from each member of this family. Go to Meindertma’s beautiful black and white website with suburb typography, (because it’s Dutch of course), and you can meet each sheep and the sweater made from his or her coat. The final product maintains the original color of the animal’s coat thus ‘personifying’ what you wear. (Each comes with a 'passport', a photo of the sheep, and a rug.)

As far as the gestalt of her sweaters, they are flat, angular and quite Mies Van Der Rohe as opposed to chunky. Retention of unique spotting in the yarn is subtle, not calico cat. This brings Meindertma’s holistic approach and her merchandise out of the hippy lady store.

Still, brilliantly Meindertma unifies places where things are made and places where people must exist. In our time, increasingly disparate locales. She also beautifully blurs the line between fabric artist and fashion designer.

On a similar tip, Korean designer Hiyon Kim and Giles Mendel of J. Mendel have both recently played with pushing the textural boundaries of wool. It goes without saying Flocks is closer to the heart of someone concerned about animal-to-human relationships within biosystematics.

by Kristopher Irizarry

Tools
Print
Email
Save / Bookmark
fShare Share
Permanent link
Sphere It
This entry posted on 27 March 2006 at 5:02 PM
previous entry
Unisex Toy
next entry
Magpie iPod Outfit
Related Entries
Advertisement
Clothing That Arranges the Body
Clothing That Arranges the Body is British industrial designer Hannah Perner-Wilson's attempt to reconcile with our attachments to gadgets, calling attention to the way our minds and bodies relate to electronic devices. "I find myself drawn towards the ways in which objects, whether of material nature or data, convey their content," she says. In this first prototype jacket, Hannah created five pockets for gadgets...
New Projects Watches: Chroma, Iridium and Twilight
Witty and modern, these latest editions from Projects Watches continue the brand's reputation of making affordable accessories with high design pedigrees. Since 1992, the Michael Graves-founded outfit has been producing timepieces by the likes of Richard Meier, Maya Lin and Cesar Pelli. The Twilight watch, which illustrates the fading light cycle every 20 seconds, comes courtesy of web typography guru Daniel Will-Harris. Using two...
Free Bird Boots
Free Bird is a handmade line of customized military boots applying recycling to fashion in a new way. Created by young New York-based designer, Stacey Howard, the boots were originally collected from military bases in the South. As Howard says, "It felt most natural to my aesthetic to use vintage native American garments and paint to refabricate the boots. Using a soldier's boot and...
Fashion Geek
Part DIY, part inspiration for the future of fashion, Project Runway (and Cool Hunting Video) alum Diana Eng's recent book "Fashion Geek" is filled with creative ideas on how to tech up your wardrobe. Our personal favorite is the digital locket, which takes the usually drab digital keychain and gives it a sparkly new purpose in five easy steps. The result is an embellished necklace...
Recent Cool Hunting Videosview all Cool Hunting Videos
Advertisement
Advertisement
Recent Entries

J. Howells Werthman: We Are Making Plans


PhoneSuit MiLi Pro Video Projector


iPhone HP Calculators


Society6


Bedol Eco-Friendly Water Drop Clock


Context x Kicking Mule 1980 Hand Dye Jeans


Liquid Image Camera Goggles


Interview with Erik Madigan Heck of Nomenus Quarterly


Photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten