Designer Faye Toogood showed off-the-rack clothing at London’s Design Festival with a reference to the Victoria and Albert Museum venue
September has become the location of London’s Design Festival for the past 7 years in England’s Victoria and Albert Museum. Artists are invited to present their works in this illustrious art and design exhibit. This year Faye Toogood, among others, showed „The Cloakroom“ from September 19th to 27th 2015.
Probably the most spectacular was a marble bathrobe with its unmistakable reference to the stairwell at the foot of which it was installed.
The installation comprised two sections: visitors first were shown a wardrobe, in which Faye Toogood had hung some 150 cloaks in innovative textiles. Visitors were invited to wear the pieces as they made their way through the installation: the check-out cloaks included a sewn in, fold-out site map to guide visitors through the exhibit to the 10 sculptures.
One was a chain-shirt set in 15th-century ambiance. Others were clothing made of wood in coffer-style. „Made in abstracted shapes and unexpected media, these individual couture pieces, constructed from varied materials, … will be hidden in the galleries ready to be discovered“ as can be read in the press-release of the museum’s exhibit.
Lapicida, the British specialist for exclusive design in natural stone, worked the cloak from a block of Arabescato Marble. The mockup crafted by the designer, had first been scanned and the cast was the basis for 168 hours of CNC shaping, at the end of which skilled craftsmen added another 24 hours of chipping, sanding and polishing by hand. The 1.70 m-high sculpture weighs in at about 300 kg.
Exceptional highlight: note the dark sash around the waist. To design a piece in this degree of artistic precision, one must have an in-depth knowledge of marble and the veins that run through the stone.
Photos: London Design Festival
(07.11.2015, USA: 11.07.2015)