Melitta Baumeister
text by Haris Giannouras
When first confronted with Melitta Baumeister’s minimalistic ballerinas I was instantly drawn by her usage of materials and her ability to transform clothes into fashionable human sculptures. Figures that seem to overcome the status of a simple garment and achieve the power and charm of an artistic installation.
The German New York based fashion designer recently received her Masters in Fashion Design and Society at Parsons. Her work was featured in New York fashion week, while receiving a great deal of media attention. It was actually spotted and picked up by Dover Street Market and worn by fashion A lists in likes of Rihanna. A crucial component of her creative process is a deeper and more universal understanding of fashion and design it self, while at the same time curiosity is what drives her to work and explore her inner expressive possibilities. Her ss’15 collection circles around matter, volumes, geometry and a balance between a clean conceptual approach and commercial wearable pieces.
Simplicity is a rather contradictory concept, for the art of evoking the most subtle and kind of emotions consists of an abstractive perplexity than can either fascinate us or lead us to boredom. Melitta Baumeister is a case of an up and coming fashion designer with the expressive voice and creativity of a pure minimalist, capable of transforming shapes and forms into an artistic medium of clean poetry. Sculptural cotton, soft pink leather, sheer mesh and glossy black, all become vital parts of a world that echoes Jill Sander’s sharpness, Margiela’s deconstructionism and Van de Rohe’s architectural design. But the most intriguing part of Baumeister’s pieces are merely the artistic references and memories they cary, but first and for most their vital core, that of balanced and highly sculptural body of work. A series of carefully constructed shapes, in interesting and modern day volumes that resemble a game of geometry, voids and transparencies. Because at the end we never seem to loose interest in her black and white figures and the oddly charming fashion performance they are about to unfold right before our eyes.
images via melittabaumeister.com
view the collection at melittabaumeister.com