What Design Can Do!

Fashion breakout session: Not Just a Label
Stefan Siegel, the founder of the online fashion store Not Just a Label, gave a presentation on the conference theme of "Connect" and spoke with the audience about digital technology's role in fashion’s future in Premsela's fashion breakout session. Joining him were panellists Mariette Hoitink of the fashion recruitment consultancy HTNK, Leslie Holden of AMFI Amsterdam Fashion Institute, Dutch Vogue online editor Rinke Tjepkema, Margreeth Olsthoorn of the Rotterdam fashion store MGH2O, the designer Anne de Grijff, and Robbert Wefers Bettink of Studio Sober.

During the session, Tjepkema emphasised the importance of the online community for magazines. "As a magazine, we can only pay attention to brands that are available for sale here in the Netherlands. The Internet has enormously enriched the market. Now we can write about designers from Japan whose clothes are available online."

Siegel’s Not Just A Label uses open-source tools to help more than 9,000 designers from almost 90 countries sell their work to the world.

 
Not Just A Label’s What Design Can Do! photo report.

Food breakout session: Honey & Bunny
In the performance Eat Design, the design duo Honey & Bunny – aka Martin Hablesreiter and Sonja Stummerer – arranged foods according to colour and function. Using ingredients not normally found on western tables, such as insects, they examined the cultural origins and social functions of western eating habits and showed in a humorous manner how food reinforces existing hierarchies and xenophobia.

Eat Design. Photo: Sander Marsman.

April preview with Anuj Sharma, Eindhoven students
The Indian fashion designer Anuj Sharma and Design Academy Eindhoven students discussed their recent projects at a What Design Can Do! preview on 12 April. Premsela and conference founder Richard van der Laken hosted the event at the Designhuis in Eindhoven.

Sharma, whose convertible clothing system Button Masala features in the exhibition Connecting Concepts, talked about his work and Indian fashion in general. Students from the Design Academy Eindhoven’s Man & Communication course introduced a project they hope will liberate their city from labels such as “Brainport” and “birthplace of Dutch design”. They aim to use communication design in a down-to-earth, hands-on way in order to get in touch with everyday people and their problems.

What Design Can Do! 2011
Premsela ran two breakout sessions at the 2011 conference. What Design Can Do for Textiles! focused on sustainable textiles and revaluing craftsmanship. What Design Can Do for Food and Agriculture! looked at how designers might contribute to agriculture, a sector that employs few designers but has introduced new business practices that mean they could play an important role.

What Design Can Do! is an initiative of Richard van der Laken of De Designpolitie. It receives support from Premsela, Dutch Design Fashion Architecture, Design Cooperation Brainport, the Association of Dutch Designers and the Netherlands Architecture Institute.