Originally from Germany, the young fashion designer Melitta Baumeister is now based in New York from where she is currently running her own brand. She recently received a MFA degree in Fashion Design and Society at Parsons – The New School For Design, and her Fall/ Winter 2014 capsule collection was presented by VFILES during New York Fashion Week. Her unique and innovative clothes made of uncommon materials like silicon, have been met with great critic acclaim, while trendsetting stars like Rihanna and Lady Gaga have embraced their highly artificial and futuristic appeal.
Melitta Baumeister merges fashion, objects, sculpture and installation in her work – influences and perspectives which are constantly present in her design. Her approach is to focus on different ways of looking at fashion, and try to push the ideas of what fashion may look like in the future – by using new materials and new manufacturing methods. For her latest collection the young designer wanted to explore the possibilities of tomorrow and combine that aim with the process of casted garments, the absence of color and the notion hyperreality. She has chosen to work with casted garments which get their shape of the mold they are cast into. The specific technique of casting a garment is based on the many layers of silicon which embodies the shape of the mold, a technique Melitta Beaumeister describes as something which is in process, alive and in an ongoing state, where she captures a certain moment of this process.The mold makes it capable of endless repetition, something she considers both a metaphor for the repetitiveness of the fashion industry as well as one of its possible futures.
