The Weleda Company created a video about their new demonstration garden featuring the dresses I made for them. It is in German but it tells the story visually by showing the garden and how they process the Calendula plants onsite. I make a brief appearance at the end talking about the dresses I made, plus footage of the models wearing the Wild Rose Dress and the Pomegranate Dress.
In June 2014 I was invited by the Weleda Company to create botanical garments for the Landesgarten Show, Between Heaven and Earth, in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany. Weleda has just opened a new garden complex in this area and my work for them was part of the opening events for this new site. Weleda makes organic beauty and medicinal products based on the Biodynamic© farming concepts begun by Dr. Rudolph Steiner in 1921 and this new 56 acre demonstration garden/farm was a fantastic place to be! The State Garden show was throughout the town but concentrated near the Weleda garden site and around the beautiful Villa Hirzel hotel I was staying in. I made 5 dresses that incorporated the natural ingredients that Weleda uses in their products. 2 dresses, one featuring the Rose and one made with Pomegranate were worn by models at a press event. The other 3 were on dress forms and installed in the garden. I of course took lots of photos, so enjoy! See all the photos on my Flickr page.
Detail of model wearing the Wild Rose dress
A collar of fresh oats from the Weleda garden
Madame Nicole aka Nicole Dextras gave free makeovers to shoppers as part of the StoreFront, objects of desire project at the Lansdowne Centre. Madame N was dressed in a white lad coat to emaulate the clean fresh authority of science of cosmetics and to mimic the free makeovers offered in shopping areas, which serve as a guise for selling products. Instead of makeup i applied flowers and leaves to embrace beauty plus the service was free with no strings attached. The intervention was staged in the middle of the atrium beside a white vanity with an ornate frame with no mirror. The participants ranged in age and cultural background, from shoppers to cleaning staff and it enabled intimate conversations and broke the new modern taboo of touching. This work is based on the concept that adorning the body is a healthy and natural thing to do. Working with plant material allowed me to pay tribute to the many cultures past and present that practice the art of body adornment with botanicals. I hope continue to explore the modern implications of beauty and adornment in future works.
Silvia and Luane get the last makeover of the day and pose in front of the vanity
EXTRA D'EXTRAS read all about it 