THE SEARCH FOR PURITY, IN DIALOGUE WITH A NEW REALITY.
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ANNELEEN BERTELS
Anneleen Bertels is a textile laboratory based in Brussels, merging textile, jewelry and embroidery design from an architectural perspective. The laboratory offers design for textile and textures. The laboratory’s power lies in an extremely refined versus raw, layered, tactile, sensitive way of working with textiles and 3-dimensional shapes.
The laboratory seeks for play, rawness, preciousness, depth, poetry and fragility. Oh, and purity. The laboratory embraces time and space in order to do profound research and develop new ways of perceiving towards intrinsic innovation within textiles and embroidery.
The laboratory offers a playful balance between femininity and masculinity, with a philosophical, poetic & intuitive approach on the process of creation.
The laboratory of Anneleen Bertels is a space for re-thinking, research, worshipping beauty and luxury, playing, celebrating tactility, collaborating and exchanging thoughts, repairing, 3-dimensional dialogues.
The laboratory questions our relationship to each other, to our surrounding and to objects surrounding us.
The laboratory aims to experience and feel more (raw) couture and craftsmanship, and explore other disciplines to create from a broader perspective.
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BACKGROUND
Anneleen Bertels is a Belgian designer who graduated at Artez Institute of The Arts (NL) in Fashion Design. She gained experience in the fashion industry at Bernhard Willhelm, John Galliano, Balenciaga, Maison Martin Margiela and Ann Demeulemeester.
Through multiple collaborations she explored different disciplines by doing research and building concepts for other design fields and crafts.
Anneleens former studies of architecture and interior design allow her to perceive construction and material in a more abstract, playful and architectural way. This architectural background still triggers her to create new ways of closing, layering, ‘building’ and binding garments and textiles to oversee new possibilities for the fashion and any other design industry. To her designing is the playground of maximizing and minimizing concepts. It is all about aesthetics and functionality, and transforming thoughts into other forms, proportions, bindings and materials.
Her true passion lies in the building of a research laboratory of textiles that feeds and inspires different disciplines.
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VISION
Anneleen Bertels aims to reach out for objects and products that have the power to create affective experiences and make us want to invest more in a tactile and emotional relationship and interaction with these objects over time.
As a creator she is fascinated by the interaction between craftsmanship, innovation and construction and how the development of new materials and tools interacts and clashes with the tradition of tailoring, and shapes unexpected forms and silhouettes.
To her the role of a (fashion) designer goes far beyond everything, and contains every (re)action in our life. It is an eternal dialogue with a new reality and a new state of human being and mind. Creativity has no borders and we have to outbid all disciplines.
In her work she questions the functionality of luxury and how we will play with its meaning in the future. To her it is a clash, resulting in a luxurious utility. A love for individuality and distaste for mass. The development of new tools will allow us to see nature in a different way. It will bring up new colours, shapes and construction methods.
The value and meaning of clothing and the relationships with objects that surround us, as well as the modern translation of its functions in the future, is really important to Anneleen.
Anneleen draws mainly inspiration from literature, arts, architecture and music, discovering new cultures, and observing human experience and behaviour.
It is her personal goal to recreate the curiosity of things happening all around us, as well as the way we experience and share this experience as an individual.
(Portrait by Io Cooman)