In 2008 Narelle Dore became the first Australian to graduate from the prestigious fashion program at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. The fashion department is famous for being tough (out of 450 applicants per year, only sixty-five start the course and only fifteen graduate), but also for producing some of the best designers in the world. In particular, in the early 1980s, the school became famous for producing the Antwerp Six – so named by the press during one of their many successful trips to London. Injecting a fresh, avant-garde style and each with a distinctive aesthetic, the six are Dirk Bikkembergs, Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Van Saene and Marina Yee. Their contemporary, Martin Margiela, who is often mistaken as being part of the group, also graduated from the same school.
The Glazy Days of Sun Rays by Narelle Dore.
Image: Frederik Heyman
Back in Perth, a young Narelle Dore began making her own clothes as a teenager and was encouraged in her fascination with art and textiles by her art teacher. It was through magazines that she learnt about Belgian fashion. “In Perth, pre-internet days, the only information you really received was through magazines,” Dore explains. “I kept seeing catwalk shows that really affected me on a visual/emotional level and when I started to piece the puzzle together I realized these images were all from Belgium (recognizable by the personal designs and memorable for their ‘strange-sounding names’). The clouds somehow parted and going to Antwerp was my only goal.”
After an initial move to London, Dore started applying for internships in Antwerp and was successful with Walter Van Beirendonck who, as well as being part of the original Antwerp Six, is also a teacher at the academy. From there she applied and was successful. The school itself, Dore describes as “challenging in every way possible.” Approaching her design from the angle of the person underneath the clothes, rather than how to express a concept that is then put onto the body, Dore’s graduation project, Knock on Wood, was a collection of twelve silhouettes inspired by the artist Marisol Escobar and her wooden box people. Using natural fibres such as wools, cottons and silks, Dore applied techniques like knitting and heat-setting details to achieve a wood-carved effect.
The Glazy Days of Sun Rays by Narelle Dore.
Image: Frederik Heyman
A visit home to Perth inspired Dore’s The Glazy Days of Sun Rays collection. Taking a pin-hole camera out to the salt lakes just outside Perth, she spent the day shooting the colours and the light and the results were the perfect inspiration. The unfocused feel of the images inspired the use of brush wools, brushed satin silks, silk and wool yarns for the knitwear and aged smooth suedes and leathers. The colours were also inspired by the lakes – sand, white, burnt ochre, black, grey and golden yellows. The sun rays themselves are expressed through laser-cut holes in the leathers and silks that leave a slight outline of burnt fabric. “The bright sunlight seemed to stream onto the film so beautifully and this – both the photos and the landscape – inspired my colour palette, detailing and fabric choices for this collection.”
Narelle Dore is just beginning her career, but is already stocked in Antwerp’s RA boutique fashion concept store – the brainchild of two academy graduates that gives a number of different designers one rack each within the space. Dore held an afternoon tea party there, making and selling clothes direct to buyers using a paper-cutting pattern on any material in any size, called The Sun Ray Blouse Pattern.
Considering Dore’s singular drive and ambition to attend one of the world’s best fashion schools, we can expect to hear a lot more from this Australian designer in years to come.
Source
People
Published online: 2 Mar 2011
Words:
Penny Craswell
Images:
Frederik Heyman
Issue
Artichoke, March 2011
