House & children jacket

With the re-launch of her label in 2003, Doris de Pont began to collaborate with artists to create signature fabrics for each collection. For the winter 2006 collection, Beausoleil, she worked with Wellington poet Gregory O’Brien. One print from the collection combines a woven flax motif and English and Dutch words from Greg O'Brien's poem 'House and Children'. The poem was translated into Dutch for Greg's reading at the Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam in 2005. "Using words in art is a very New Zealand thing to do, and I wanted to explore using words in fashion," explains Doris. "The fun part of this collection is when you cut the fabric into garments it breaks up the words and creates unpredicted meanings. The letters are both decorative images and meaningful symbols. It is quite fascinating." Greg agrees. "I like the idea of someone walking around inside a poem. Maybe these garments could be called 'kinetic poems', making their way through the world, changing all the time, depending on who is wearing them, what they are doing and on the conditions around them: shadow, wind, weather…" The women's jacket was named 'COR 831' and the men's jacket 'MEN 835' - tongue in cheek reference's to the Dewey Decimal Classification used in libraries.

Details

Credit: Courtesy of Doris de Pont
Copyright: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 Licence
Designer: Doris de Pont
Manufacturing location: Auckland
Garment type: Jacket
Features: A custom print
Label: Doris de Pont
Date: 2006