Woolmark helps three Dutch designers adapt to wool

Pauline van Dongen’s focus lay with creating a woollen fabric with a technical character and construction.

Inspired by space-time dimensions, she took unique properties of wool to the point where she was able to sculpt the materials. By taking advantage of wool’s resilience she created a woollen pleated fabric from which she designed a sculptural dress.

Van Dongen also created passements with wool yarn. This artisan technique allowed the designer to assemble a top without using a sewing machine, meaning the garment can be assembled and disassembled in many ways, increasing versatility.

The special collection created for the Wool Diaries is called Hyperspace and is made up of three different outfits.

Oda Pausma

Oda Pausma, a fashion designer with a simplistic and feminine character, utilises plenty of leather in her designs. This project challenged Pausma to use a sustainable alternative, wool, that could compete with the leather aspects on her designs.

In the TextielLab, Pausma researched different ways to recreate a hide out of woollen material. By creating a pattern with the same characteristics of animal hide, including veins and pores, she achieved an end result which resembles leather in many different ways.

The end result shows a feminine, contemporary design made possible by the two innovative fabric creations.

Woolmark