Devoted to the mission of nourishing local, independent talent and driving conscious consumption, on Friday night The Creative Lab took to the runway. Powered by Colgate, the catwalk stretched across the concrete expanse of the Loods6 Baggage Hall to spotlight nine emerging sustainable designers, each presenting four looks.
DISIGOT’s Fifty Three collection revels in tactile excess and off-kilter proportions, pairing cocooning tailoring, shaggy faux fur and graphic knits with flowing culottes, feathery trims and bright pearled belts reminiscent of beaded car seat covers. Drawing on the handmade traditions that shaped their childhood in Romania, the sister duo behind the brand combine familial craft with contemporary textile innovations and experimental techniques.
INHERITANCE interprets SYLV’s Mediterranean heritage through a dialogue between contemporary ready-to-wear and historical dress. An earthen-red trench and sheer button-down paired with wide-legged trousers temper assertive silhouettes with relaxed confidence, while draped ivory looks turn to ancient Minoan dress.
Studio Selles’ vergeet-me-nietje explores the fragile balance between memory, nostalgia and dreams through delicately knitted, close-fitting garments in brown, white, pink and a hazy shade of forget-me-not blue. A vocabulary of millennium-era femininity — halter necks, asymmetric hems, low-slung waists and body-skimming separates — lends that nostalgia a sharper contour, offset by the sixties inflection of the rounded volumes of the puff belt and neck pieces.
Yuh Studios’ Changed Perspective plays out an intimate cultural exchange, tracing how Caroline Boeren’s relationship with her boyfriend and reverence for his Indonesian heritage expanded her own frame of reference and influenced new approaches to texture and colour. There is a compelling tension between structure and release, with lengths of richly woven textile slung across crisp unisex silhouettes or allowed to trail freely behind the body.
Developed through a creative exchange between Amsterdam and Madrid, TULA’s Collection One approaches the wardrobe as a pattern-making experiment, subtly unsettling the language of sportswear and everyday tailoring with asymmetric fastenings, billowing sleeves and luminous icy-grey and buttery-yellow satins.
Made entirely from the materials already inhabiting Meiling’s Amsterdam studio, Kelly Meiling’s Fragments embraces an almost scavenged abundance of texture, turning remnants of travel and previous projects into a joyful language of accumulation. Materially maximalist yet sartorially spare, the looks heap lace-like knits, fringing and patchworked textile scraps onto abbreviated silhouettes.
Across its four looks, U SO NICE moves through a number of registers of femininity, from the sparse sensuality of a bralette set and the long, spare line of a black dress to the deceitful sweetness of pink and ruffles, and the soft, almost old-fashioned romance of a translucent dress. The collection positions exposure as a kind of emotional transparency beyond mere provocation: vulnerability worn without apology.
Inspired by experiences of isolation, uncertainty and the growing pains of self-discovery, Uncommon Rage uses painted and distressed deadstock leather, trailing expanses of camo netting, mesh and hardware to build imposing, armoured silhouettes that borrow their visual language from both protective clothing and subcultural styling codes.
Ting Gong’s Wanting Each Other gives form to the instability of moving between places through subtly futuristic silhouettes that shift between openness and enclosure. Handwoven layers and draping in lustrous textiles play softness against the structure of padded shoulders, back cut-outs and the pull of corsetry lacing, lending this futurism a tactile, shifting quality.
Following the runway presentation, all featured looks were made available for purchase in the on-site showroom, alongside offerings by local jewellery and accessory designers.
Images by Katerina Bezede
