Ottolinger
Ottolinger was established in 2015. Behind the young label are two Swiss lady designers who first met at the Fashion Design Institute of HGK Basel – Academy of Art and Design in Basel –, and are now based in Berlin. Their collections, which were presented first at Fashion Week in London and then at Fashion Week in New York, immediately made waves in the industry. The work of the two designers is characterised by an unconventional, fresh and irreverent approach. Their designs, as they say themselves, exhibit “a process-oriented character and are rather created in the raw”. Even when working with fine materials they are iconoclastic. “Textiles are manipulated and deconstructed, torn, sewn together with rough stitching or even set on fire. A circuit of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction.” And yet Ottolinger’s fashions are still focused on beauty – even if it is not beauty in the classic sense: “We are concerned with the boundary territory of beauty, which leaves room for oddity and at first glance has something unusual about it.”
Comments of the nominators
The young designers Christa Bösch and Cosima Gadient, who created Ottolinger as a joint project, have attracted considerable international media attention with their deconstructed/reconstructed couture in a very short space of time. Their designs have a powerful identity: they are experimental, personal, a bit rough-and-ready but at the same time professional enough to be presented at Paris Fashion Week.
Comments of the jury
Cheeky, unconventional, experimental – these epithets can be applied to the work of many young fashion designers. Going beyond that, the Ottolinger project makes an impression with the courageous radicalism of its design approach, the consistency with which it puts this into practice and the attitude that comes across from this collection. The considerable interest aroused by the designs of these young and hitherto almost unknown designers in the fashion world is an unmistakable sign of the relevance of their work, and of their having their finger on the pulse of the times.
More projects from edition 2017
