“All project pieces offer the wearer the option to actively participate and transform the clothing’s expression with but a few gestures”

Tine Bøhm

“The starting point was the idea to maintain the aesthetic, the playful and the sensible present, but at the same time make design solutions for a more sustainable world”

Tine Bøhm

Tine Bøhm’s vision of making clothes following a different kind of paradigm than the standard in the world of fashion goes as far as twenty years back. As the industry was moving more and more towards overproduction and overconsumption,

Tine realized the need to do something different. Thus, in the years from 2000 to 2003, she developed the modular clothing project. In a sense, she was a pioneer in sustainable fashion, having this mindset from very early on.

The modular clothing project represents Tine’s first attempt in creating a novel clothing conception, which offers an alternative to the conventional ways of creating and wearing fashion.

Modular clothing was a philosophy realized through five different series, introduced below, each with its own core within the modular clothing concept.

Film from the first series modula clothing SYSTEM

modular clothing SYSTEM – series 1

modular clothing SYSTEM has the module-system itself as its salient theme.

The modular elements are analogous to the individual constituent elements of the clothing. Taken together, they constitute what could be called a ‘modular clothing system’.

The clothing system consists of a limited number of constituent clothing parts which, by virtue of their individual elaboration and their exact fit to one another, make it possible to generate a countless number of new and different clothing combinations.

Accordingly, what we have here is a new interpretation, a redefinition of the very notion, of the ‘collection’. The way that the constituent clothing elements can be combined establishes a course – a rhythm on which the film, modular clothing SYSTEM, builds further.

The film could not have been realized without a huge effort on the part of the crew behind its making.

A round of thanks goes out to:
Film photographer: Natascha Thiara Rydvald
Photographer: Marc Fluri
Film editor: Rikke Malene Nielsen

modular clothing KITS – series 2

The second series, modular clothing KITS, is built on the principle of ’a (do-it-yourself) kit’. Each and every garment is a kit. A kit consists of two elements: the base and the modules.

The base could be a coat, where the collar, the hood, the pockets and the belt, for example, are left out and the modules serve as – or substitute for – these “missing parts”. The modules are multi-functional and are available in various versions (basic and expressive).

The wearer is provided with the opportunity to combine many or few modules with the base and to create an individual garment that suits the tenor of the moment.

MULTI modular clothing – series 3

In the third series of MULTI modular clothing, each garment is a multi-functional form that can be used and shaped in various ways.

The garment has no front, no back, no side, no right and no wrong sides. On the other hand, it does have an ‘x’ number of openings, where one and the same opening can be used for the neckline or the armhole. The other openings function as decorations. The garment is reversible: ’right and wrong’ consists of two different but equal fabrics.

The wearer can twist and turn the garment into any style for purposes of expressing herself

modular DIGITAL PRINTING

Projected series (requires the participation of an international research group)

With a point of origin in satellite photos, graphic pattern formations are elaborated into digital prints imprinted on the clothing. What is entirely central here is the interaction between the print and the form. The print follows the form in the sense that when the form is opened up, the print is unfolded – and the converse is also the case! The variable/modular aspect is accordingly seated in the fact that form and print can change character through the agency of different holds: closed/open mechanisms or other “active” functions. Digital print distinguishes itself namely by virtue of its capacity for adapting itself to one single form and by virtue of the fact that the final model can be printed in limited quantities, in even one or two examples (the ’print on demand’ principle).

What is also central here is the idea about microcosm and macrocosm: the Earth photographed from outer space, brought down to human proportions

modular INTELLIGENT TEXTILES - projected series

In this phase, the textiles are modular in themselves. Here, the textiles are developed so that they possess a high degree of flexibility, which renders them capable, when they are used in making clothing, of establishing different forms and functions in relation to the body.

For example, we can imagine a textile that is compact in one state but which, when subject to a given influence – for example, that of water or warmth – can be brought into a different state, where the textile suddenly becomes loose or even transparent – “just like that”.

The images  show examples of the award winning ”Climate Dress” – realized through collaboration between students fra KADK, Diffus, Institute of Technology, the embroidery company Forster-Rohner  and Tine Bøhm.