WITH(OUT) YOU

Josefine Fredrica

WITH(OUT) YOU is the MFA Fashion Design degree work by Josefine Neumann.
Discarding valuable material such as textiles and garments is common in everyday life without reflection, perhaps even more so with the letting go of valuable unmaterials such as memories and emotions. The aim of this work is to explore nostalgia as a storytelling design method within fashion design. By interpreting, translating, re-capturing and upcycling unmaterial human interactions from photographic, written and auditorial mediums, combined with traditional upcycling of materials, this work aims to evoke feelings of identification and/or empathy in dress. All in order to highlight the importance of unmaterial and material memory as social and environmental values.
The work resulted in 12 stories communicating a range of memories and relationships, all made in a quiet collaboration with the anonymous creators of the pronto mediums, such as photographs, calendars, postcards and a tape letter, saved from dusty half broken boxes in flea markets – their sentences in the designer’s own language. By using hands for both shape, display and symbolic meaning, the work showcases presence and absence on and by bodies. The designer has stitch by stitch built up these mysterious lovers, friends, relatives and enemies, and literally held their hands walking in between the sewing machine and the iron.
By contributing to the development of the upcycling field of fashion design, this work does not only broaden the perspective of what upcycling can involve, but also adds to the discussion of what fashion design could be by blurring the line between design and art, questioning the purpose of garments by exploring its therapeutic values.

WITH(OUT) YOU BESIDE ME
photograph after photograph, two sisters dressed alike, one always holding onto the other’s arm. suddenly one of them alone, seemingly desperately frame after frame grabs onto other objects in the absence of her sister’s touch.

UNDRESSING WITH(OUT)
a self portrait sent in an envelope. capturing an act which perhaps was as a remembrance of sometime with someone somewhere.

AT THE LAKE WITH(OUT)
two people in affection. bonded yet apart, with fingertips mysteriously floating in the air above wet skin.

WITH(OUT) YOU IN MY ARMS
aging of two people frozen in time. as days pass, a formation which can never be re-created. yet it is there, captured in a frame as a witness of what once was.

MAGGAN AND I ARE DANCING IN THE BORÅS PARK EVERY SATURDAY
a person over the years dancing in search for love. suddenly finding that someone and throughout that year describing her from full name into nickname, into girlfriend into fiancee. years later, every month, all that is written is their weekly dancing every Saturday.

IT HAS BEEN SO LONG SINCE I HEARD FROM YOU
in postcard after postcard, someone trying to reach someone which they have not heard from in a long time, begging for them to call. were they ever heard from again?

WITH(OUT) YOU ON MY HEART
a postcard sent to a woman from an old love. a photograph of a woman with a loved one. who is really closest to her heart?

I HAD LONG KNOWN THAT I WOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO STAY THERE
someone writing over and over again the need to move away. a life yet again torn up. why can they not stay this time? who is conflictingly or wants to be left behind?

WITH(OUT) YOU IN BETWEEN US
a pile of photographs capturing two men side by side with a mysterious someone in between them. the middle one being completely erased through aggressive brush strokes. who is it? who decided they were not to be part of history?

INGA AND I BROKE UP THE ENGAGEMENT
a man announces the breakup with his fiancee just before going into military service. over the following days, in tiny handwriting, he declares his longing and regret, writing her name in morse code. meeting up a week later, the loved ones are puzzled back together.

SENDING SOME BEAUTIFUL WOOD ANEMONES TO YOU THROUGH THIS CARD
a sister writing to her sister about what she is up to, and what she thinks the sister will be occupied with while reading her postcard. fragments of two lives in duo vision.

ENTANGLED WITH(OUT) YOU
entangled together in a complicated pose. is their relationship as complicated? what is frozen in the opposite angle that the camera simply can not capture?

Exhibited at

WITH(OUT) YOU / Rian Design Museum, Sweden [2024]

Slow Fashion Show 2024 / A house, Sweden [2024]

Class of ’23 / Paris Fashion Week + La Botica, France [2023]

Class of ’23 / Stockholm Fashion District, Sweden [2023]

EXIT23 / The Swedish School of Textiles, Sweden [2023]

MOMENTUM / Textile Fashion Center, Sweden [2022]

Recognitions

Selected for Slow Fashion Show 2024 / Czech Republic+Sweden [2024]

Shortlisted in Arts Thead x Gucci Global Design Graduate Show 23 / UK [2023]

Nominated by The Swedish School of Textiles for the 2023 Nordic Council Environment Prize / Sweden [2023]

Rewarded from Estrid Ericson’s Foundation / Sweden [2023]

Rewarded from Robert A:son Byttner’s Scholarship Fund / Sweden [2022]

Pronto mediums by

1-2, 16-17, 24 / Erik Kessels [collected & published]

3-15, 18-23 / unknown