Marie Labarelle

I went to hear a talk by Marie Labarelle this week. She is a fashion designer who trained as an architect. I was very inspired by the way she talked about fabric, pattern-making, dressing the body and structure. She looks at the space between the body and the clothes and how that space changes fluidly. She also looks at the structure of clothes, aiming at eliminating waste offcutting. She mostly uses squares and rectangles. She works with a lot of interesting fabrics like japanese handpainted silk, indonesian batik, handwoven fabrics and engineered fabrics with metal or felted fabrics which hold a form. 


She often works with dancers and her models are often dancers. I like that she considers the body as a moving work rather than a static one like many designers seem to do. As someone who danced for almost 20 years, I appreciate being able to move in my clothes.

She has an English website: http://www.marielabarelle.net/ as well as a French one: http://www.marielabarelle.com/ Both have images of her designs and some short explanations. My favourite is the Meharee Dress which is made of wool and tencel and made from 2 rectangles and a square. I also love the Butterfly Coat which is made from linen and the Chimera Skirt which is cotton and metal thread. The Litham Dress is made from embossed fabric and the Nimbus Dress is made from cotton and metal thread. All images are from the websites above.

Nimbus Dress

Nimbus Dress

Litham Dress

Litham Dress

Butterfly Coat

 

Chimera Skirt

 

Meharee Dress

Meharee Dress