Lilly Heine

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The fold describes a the continuous and everchanging. Lilly Heine is a graduate from Central Saint Martin's who has created a collection inspired by the sculptural and dynamic art of Picasso. The meticulous and repetitive layering of laser-cut fabric creates a three-dimensional textural effect, while the strong use of curves and line througout the collection creates an architectural and sculptural look. The use of such techniques in fashion and constructed from soft fabrication transforms the garment into a moving and fluid sculpture.

Garroudi's paper like folds

Image source Check out these paper like folds by Pierre Garroudi. The repetitive use of folds creates an amazing and textural fabric.

Rock your Socks off in these shoes

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Andreia Chave is Brazilian footwear designer. She has pushed the boundaries of our perceptions of footwear and experimented with new materials and forms... Pretty rocking shoes!!

This Season's Folds

Commes des Garcon Haider Ackermann Gareth Pugh

Here are some more folds in fashion from the runway fall/winter 2010-11

Viktor & Rolf

Viktor & Rolf's collar to skirt pleated outfit

Viktor and Rolf never fail to amaze. Check out these garments from their recent fall/winter collection.... that is some serious folding

Selfridges store in Birmingham The water pavilion from 1997 by Lars Spuybroek in the Netherlands

Blobitecture comes from the term blob architecture, coined by architect Greg Lynn in 1995. This style of architecture describes an organic, bulging, curvilinear structural form. Soon after Lynn’s discovery of blob architecture many designers began experimenting with this new form.

Folding Architecture 2

Folding in architecture describes a fluid formless style of architecture, that removes the true angles and distinguished wall, roof and floor perceptions that we associate with a building. For the first time the floor, wall, and ceiling not only had the same colour, but become part of the same surface. ‘The fold’ meant a reduction of difference, as all floors became less and less distinguishable. Similarly Deleuze explores the fold as a continually multiplying device. He states that the fold holds no definition; there is no focal point, rather a device that goes out to infinity. The blob architects mutated, morphed, blurred and folded basic shapes into ‘flowing sequences of surging contours’ (Quinn 2003, p.210). They seek a more organic way of living

Leonardo Glass Cube

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The Leonardo Glass Cube in Bad Driburg, Germany, blurs and morphs architecture, interior design, and landscape. A white web-type structure covers and enfolds a large glass box. The white web structure spills and morphs into its surrounding landscape, as well as morphing through the walls into the interior of the building.

Unfolding Fashion

Deleuze’s concept of the fold denotes a form of continuity, fluidity, malleability and infinity. Fashion designers and architects alike are developing, unfolding and pushing our original perceptions of design and have moved beyond the definable and habitual structures we are so familiar with.

The Continuous Fold

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‘Complexity is the fold that as it is unfolded opens up further folds, which in being unfolded reveals further folds. What this means is that there can be no real beginning and, usually no real end’

Stylized Sculpture

Rei Kawakubo Junya Watanabe Issey Miyake

Stylized Sculpture is a contemporary Japanese fashion exhibition from the Kyoto Costume Institute. Some amazing designs and the photography, by Sugimoto, capture the garments’ shadows, lines, and fullness of form.

Junya Watanbe

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Japanese designer Junya Watanbe is constantly producing inventive and experimental looks. She has transformed the ‘puffer jacket’ into a high-fashion garment through folding, pleating and draping.

Backland Amazing!!

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Sandra Backland is an amazing designer, especially when it comes to creating new form, using interesting materials and experimentation.... oh and check out the folding!!!

Paper Stylin'

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Check out these graphic formations!!! Stylist and art director Petra Storrs takes the art of origami to a new level. She uses the concept of paper folding through her styling to create graphic and stunning forms. She truly blurs the lines between fashion, art and architecture.

Paper Exhibit

Image 1 Check out these amazing paper inspired garments. They were displayed at the Fashion Museum Province of Antwerp in 2009. Great use of form and texture.

The Ever-changing Fold

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The fold describes an activity that is ever-changing, thus suggest the idea of impermanence. This structure created by architect students at Cambridge University explores ideas of disposability and transformation.

Folding Architecture

Architects have adapted particular elements or qualities of the fold, as an interpretation of Deleuze’s theories. This idea is evident in Koolhaas’ model of Bibliotheques Jussieu in Paris. The model contains a sloped interior that works by connecting all the levels of the building; ‘...each floor wraps a bit of its structure into the floor above and the floor below’ (Quinn 2003, p.217). The levels become indistinguishable and it is impossible to define the beginning and end of each level as all the levels fold seamlessly into one another.

Voussoir Cloud

Voussoir Cloud is a site-specific installation collaborated by San Francisco based architecture and design practice IwamotoScott and, the design and engineer, Buro Happold. The structure is created by grouping together a light-weight, wedge-shaped modular element called the Voussoir. The Voussoir is formed by folding paper-thin wood-laminate along curved seams. The curvature produces a form that relies on the internal surface tension to hold its shape. The structure sets out to confuse the viewer as they question how the structure stands and holds its shape. All the individual parts work together in unity to create this curvilinear form. Just as Gilles Deleuze describes the fold as being made up of individual parts that form and morph together to create a continuous fold.

The more I explore into the fold the more intrigued I become. Although a simplistic form I truly believe ‘the fold’ provides for infinite possibilities. The act of folding is ever-changing and each fold continually creates new forms.

These moldable wooden textiles by German textile designer, Elisa Strozyk, seek to amaze me. The pattern is made up of tessellating shapes that form a flexible and moldable surface. Strozyk also explores different fabrications and asks if a hard material can become or appear fluid or soft.

The Malleable Folds of Tine De Ruysser

Deleuze’s fold is ‘a description of an activity, intended to flow smoothly and continually with no evidence of ambiguity or interruption. It is not a crease’ (Quinn 2003, p.215)

The element of malleability and pliability is evident in Tine De Ruysser’s designs. Ruysser is a Belgium designer/artist that has used an intriguing form of folding to produce flexible and transformational objects, just as Deleuze’s fold describes the ever-changing

Origamic Textural Textiles

A fold is to bend over or to double up. To fold is the act of surfaces coming together. As something is folded continuously a multiple of folds are created and the act of each fold creates many more folds beneath it. The fold multiplies and accumulates infinitely. Although a simplistic form, the fold divides the object into an infinity of smaller spaces and bends them one into the other.

I started this blog on ‘unfolding fashion’ after doing extensive research into the concept of the fold. The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze wrote a convoluted and complex book on the theory and philosophy of the fold and describes the fold as a ‘continuous discontinuity’.

Elena Salmistraro, is a designer that has experimented with the concept of folding and has truly pushed the possibilities of the art of origami. The continuous folding of paper has produced a delicate textural textile that she has designed into intricate headwear and necklaces.

Alexandra's Fabulous Folds

Alexandra Verschueren is another 2009 graduate from Antwerp. Her graduate collection revolves around the medium of paper. She has folded and cut into the fabric and has printed onto the fabric so that it resembles paper. The collection has some very graphic influences including the concept of origami and architecture that play a large role in the intricate construction of the collection.
I am slightly obsessed with linear pencil drawings, so when I came across Verschueren’s sketches, for her graduate collection, I had to include them. They have a delicate geometric/linear feel that follows the same linear effect as the garments.