Grit et Jerszy Seymour

Grit Seymour (b. 1966, Halle) and Jerszy Seymour (b. 1968, Berlin) – the former a fashion designer, the latter an industrial designer – created the fashion label TAPE® in Berlin in 2001. Their designs are based upon an original concept for assembling pieces of fabric, replacing sewing with the use of adhesive tape, thus inventing a new way to produce clothing and freeing themselves from fashion’s conventional restraints. Clothes-20 pieces forms part of their Spring–Summer 2003 collection and blurs the boundaries between fashion and art. The installation consists of twenty garments – trousers, skirts, tops – assembled using the innovative TAPE principle and suspended freely in space. The interplay of bright, solid, contrasting colours renders their technique visible: here, adhesive tape is as much a technical element as it is decorative colour, forming a key feature of the designers’ visual vocabulary. Experimenting with the idea of ‘cut and paste’ clothing, this collection takes the term literally. Their presentation method – using hangers – accentuates the two-dimensional perception of garments capable of being worn in three dimensions. Although their collaboration ended, Grit and Jerszy Seymour developed an original language and means of production that made it possible to work more spontaneously with materials and fabrics.