How have your relationships and life around you affected your work? Our surrounding physical environment has always influenced our work, much more so than personal relationships or things like this. It is a lot about the immediate space in which we work - our workshop, the city and country we live in. But we always have a lot of projective fantasies in this regard as well: we think a lot about places we have traveled to, and places we long to be at. We are living in New York, but we grew up in Germany.  So we are probably dealing with some sort of chosen geographic translations and displacements in the last few years, questioning an idea of “home”.

What is the main inspiration in your latest collection? The latest collection was an experiment like that, for instance. We both could not leave the country for visa reasons and we both decided to commit to stay in NYC for the entire summer. It was a great and dedicated city experience. We looked at people and what they were wearing. We saw lots of sportswear on the streets - tourists wear a lot of high-tech clothing for no reason. But those can be pretty with all these great shapes and colors. We took some of that as inspiration, and contrasted those elements to our own manufacturing methods and materials (which are often very low-tech, and incorporate hand-made textile and natural fibers).

What fabrics do you prefer working with? We mainly like to work with high-quality natural fibers. We use mostly knit fabrics made out of linen, cotton, or wool (depending on the season and the garment). We like fabrics with significant texture to them. We are interested in irregularities in the fiber, so we are often attracted to linen or natural silks, and to hand-spun yarns.

Where did you get the idea to incorporate knitwear into your pieces? We both have always been knitting, since we were children. We were born in the Black Forest, and grew up in the south of Germany. There were many local yarn manufacturing places, that did their own spinning and dying. There was always tons of yarn in our home! Years later we started making t-shirts, which are made out of jersey. Jersey is knit, of course. It seemed very logical and natural to bridge the two.

Generally how long does it take to knit your pieces? What kind of stitches to you use? We have been working on a lot of one of a kind pieces which always take much longer. Once we do a production of a certain style, things move much faster. And we get way more efficient. However our production methods are definitely very time-consuming.

Who is your target market? What kind of person do you see wearing your designs? These probably are not the terms in which we create. The idea of a target market seems a bit foreign to us.  We don’t really have an idea in advance as to who should be wearing the clothing and who an intended or idealized buyer would be. So we will change the terms slightly, and say that we think the clothes would appeal to anyone who has an interest in wearing things that are not mass-produced but made by hand and with care. Perhaps this person would have an understanding, or at least a sensitivity, to the process: the craft and the quality of the garment. We also like to see our friends wearing something that we have made.  We love to see what happens to the piece: how they wear it, how they make it their own.

How has your line changed and progressed from when it first began? We don’t try to do ten million things at the same time anymore. We have so much more knowledge and experience now. Of course it progressed a lot. There is more focus and depth, and also our skills are getting better and better.

Any current / upcoming projects? If so, tell us a little about it: We will start working on winter soon. We are also excited to work more with accessories and shoes. And we will put together an online store, which we have been looking forward to doing.

Have you ever experimented with other mediums? Yes - a lot. We actually studied Design at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and Photography in New York at Cooper Union and at the Art Institute of Chicago. We had always worked with and loved textiles, but until 5 years ago that was always very much a side project. We were more focused on making books and taking pictures and drawing. We still do these things, although the tables do seem to have turned.

Anything else you enjoy doing in your spare time? We both love to travel. But closer to home: We like to ride our bikes, meet our friends, go hiking, explore the city, go to museums.

What’s usually playing on your iPod? While we work we listen to a lot of radio and Podcasts. News programs.

For particularly arduous and time-consuming work, we listen to books on tape. And of course lots of music. An endless range, depending on time of day and mood and company. Music is a big influence and inspiration to our work.

Describe your everyday attire: It’s pretty basic. Vintage jeans, t-shirt, sweater. It is probably a little bit seventies, but not retro. Pretty classic, really.

www.daphneandveracorrell.com

Featured in issue No.5.

(Source: titlemagazine.net)

Posted 9 months ago with 7 notes
Tags: art interview  fashion  correll correll