The Recreations of Andrea Crews
Andrea Crews, Orlan
www.andreacrews.com
With sewing machines, a designer stitches together various new styles—each with its own connections to assorted niches of culture and each with its own significance or value. After the season is through, these clothes are sold by valueless bundles in plastic bags or left to mount up as the age passes.
Andrea Crews, who is established in France with her own self-titled line, uses her sewing machines to darn these secondhand clothes into her own original creations—and with them shores up to the same eccentric and absurd culture.
“The excessive consumption of clothing creates, every season, tons of secondhand clothes… It is this material” she says, “that we revalue by transforming it, by offering it a new cycle of exploitation and distribution.”
Within her workshop, there are heaps of clothes, “the raw material” Crews uses for creative projects, such as her very experimental Summer and Spring/Summer 2007 collections—each one shot plainly, and perhaps most significant to her way: gracelessly provocative.
With her unending supply of colorful garments she makes conceptual art pieces or decorates her performances. Several interesting runway shows have also been organized, including one titled Nothing is New.
Beyond a simple craze for vintage clothing, the concept “Post-Vintage of Andrea Crews” has taken secondhand clothing and made it to be something novel and current. With this advantage, she claims her own alternative on the fashion market and for ready-to-wear clothing. She also contradicts the leading uniformity and highlights above all, personal independence in dress.
Through these bizarre clothes that go too far, there is a sort of innocent, childlike creativity.
From the Summer collection, several colorful rompers, two with buttons and suspender straps, and one appearing to be from a flowery picnic table cloth, are worn by themselves. Many things appear to be unusually sewn; a skirt made entirely from a mens dress shirt or from a much longer dress with ruffles, or a ladies shirt made from a tartan mens shirt. The Spring/Summer 2007 collection also, is absurdly creative, and has several jumpers with straps.
Jeans are cut into shorts and random pieces of pleated cloth are made into shawls and scarves.
