Collection ORLANDO — OODD Studios

Collection ORLANDO
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2020/2021

A cooperation between fashion and textile design, traditional craftsmanship and cutting-edge technologies.

The inspiration is the literary character Orlando from Virginia Woolf's book of the same name, who wanders with increasing complexity between centuries, cultures, continents and genders, driven by inner and outer upheavals and personal intellectual and emotional developments.

In a fashion collection with reference to the narrative figure of Orlando, tradition and history are reinterpreted and reflected in a contemporary context. Handmade, delicate lace created through innovative techniques is the source material that is then translated into couture garments through an exploration of form and materials.

Photography: Iona Dutz 2022

Orlando's story of over 300 years

begins in the late sixteenth century of Elizabethan England and ends in 1928, the year of the novel's publication.

Born a boy, Orlando undergoes what is arguably the most mysterious and revolutionary metamorphosis in literary history around the middle of the novel, attaining full-blown complexity as a woman in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

The possibilities for configuration and interpretation that arise from the book are inexhaustible. Apart from the obvious gender-stereotypical stylistic devices, the repertoire of cut construction alone opens up a wide variety of means of expression and historical reference points, from the English court attire of the 16th century with its chiselled ruffs, to the winter costumes of the "little ice age" and the outfit of the Russian countess "Sasha", the volume experiments of Victorian dresses to the modern, reduced wardrobe of the 20th century. Equally inspiring is the literary model for decisions on colour selection, fabric and texture.