Talking Textiles Issue 7

As if to counteract a loss of passion for dressing up and indulging in textiles, the creative community is working hard at keeping the memory alive with extraordinary characters created from scratch, waste, and shreds. Dressed by contemporary fiber artists and textile designers, these characters are extremely expressive and use a maximum amount of material, making them endearing and frightening at the same time, as many dolls as devils in disguise. They run the gamut from primitive shaman to independent robot and all the variants in between, such as the carnivalesque opportunist, the recycled activist, and the outsider artist. Shamanism has persisted all over the world since its inception in ancient native cultures and is now a source of inspiration for constructing the wildest of clothes. Young graduates have especially taken to the task of divining identity and have used the pandemic years as a pause to understand their innate needs for expression. The results are daring ideas of hid