Quinten Mestdagh
DESIGNER TO WATCH
Quinten Mestdagh is a 2019 MA Fashion Graduate from the prestigious Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Quinten explains that it's almost like a status symbol when you study fashion. He wanted to do something else than the conventional silk screening and symmetrical compositions that have been a part of womenswear since the beginning of style. His garments are not only spectacular and complicated, but they reflect a modern obsession for messages and personality. His goal was to find a technique and an aesthetic that had nothing to do with each other but had a visual connection. Quinten says, "I like to mistranslate the aesthetic a bit by using the "wrong" sort of symbols that you would never normally associate with such as a chic scarf; the idea is to make it a bit more street and fun."
MFA Graduate Collection This colorful and robust collection entitled "Default By Bliss" was inspired by ripped up publicity panels and a love for fashion photography. He wanted to work around a concept that showed the power and strength of fashion photography and fashion imagery. He said, "I've always been attracted to highly stylized and iconic fashion images in magazines and advertisements, and they were the main inspiration for starting the collection." Quinten said, "I started by making collages and 3D paper compositions myself, with images I found in the archive of the MoMu library in Antwerp. Glossy pictures of women's faces are disrupted by paper rips and shreds resembling the damaged advertisements, creating tension and roughness in contrast to the beauty showcased in fashion photography." He goes on to say," I used trompe l'oeil effects by printing the paper collages on different fabrics and reinforcing them with stiff Vlieseline and paper. This way, it has the impact and lightness of paper, but the materials have enough stiffness and structure to hold the shapes." And you can't overlook the color palette as these gowns were more than just a pop of color. They had the perfect amount of your basic black and white with the perfect amount of vivid, eye-catching colors.
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