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Fabienne Gassmann is a designer working at the intersection of fashion, craft and social commentary. She applies her craft commercially in bespoke costume making,catwalk showpieces and her own design practice with a strong focus on sustainability and slow production. Gassmann is interested in stretching theindustry-led definition of fashion by focusing on the value of crafts.
Fabienne Gassmann studied knitwear at the RCA and fashion with a focus on sustainability at Goldsmiths College, London. Hand knitting, specifically lance and embroidery techniques, are skills Gassmann chose to acquire, as the preservation of textile skills and cross-cultural traditions of making are essential to her work as a designer. Debates around sustainable materials and slow production have revived the relevance of craft in Gassmann’s approach to fashion. Up-cycling dead stock materials such as RAF parachutes for her designs, she works toward a new material discourse in light of finite resources.
“In autumn 2018 I was a prize-winner in the Hand & Lock Prize for Embroidery. The brief encouraged a sustainable approach to the materials used. Consequently I made my garment, a classic parka, out of pink surplus parachute silk. The padding for the trapunto embroidery was from a sheep raised on a small holding near London, and the sequins were hand cut from empty milk bottles. To add sparkle, traditional goldwork embroidery was added to the mix.”
