Working with the choreographer Lillian Stillwell for her first season as director of Tanz Münster, we developed the idea of designing a ‘Costume Collection’ for the Tanz Münster 22/23 season, so that elements of the costumes are used for two dance productions, ‘Furien’ and ‘Vier Jahreszeiten’, effectively giving the costumes a longer life and allowing for a more sustainable use of human resources within the costume department. We also made the decision to exclusively use more sustainably produced fabrics for all items in the collection.
The main element of our costume collection is the ‘Base costume’ – a unisex unitard for the whole company which can be worn on its own or with additional layers over the top to create different looks:
Base costume fabric – made from 89% recycled polyester (Rpet) coming from PET beverage bottles.
Digitally printed fabric – Digitally printing patterns and solid colours onto fabric can be considered more sustainable than traditional fabric printing and dyeing due to a huge reduction in water and power consumption and water pollution. By only printing the amount of fabric needed for a garment or project, wastage is minimal.
Developing the fabric print – Wanting to combine the themes of skin, collective pattern formations in animals and nature and inclusivity, Lillian allowed me access to a personal collection of photographs taken by a late family member as inspiration. The final fabric print derived from a photo of tree bark, a perfect example of texture and layering in nature but also incorporating the many different tones of human skin.
