A B O U T
Bundgaard-Nielsen is a small entrepreneurial company with a different outlook to fashion design and it can even be described as an artistic research and design laboratory. What Bundgaard-Nielsen creates is not only a product but value for the customer and the world.
The potential for responsibility in fashion has been the focal point since the beginning when, under her own name, she explores longevity, quality and flexibility in fashion and clothing. Mette Julie's work is both artistic and commercial, but common to them all is the focus on a sustainable life cycle, good craftsmanship, aesthetic sustainability and innovative flexibility.
Circle concept
A new, size-flexible garment system
The slow fashion concept, ‘Design to Reduce’, is about decreasing the Western world’s oversupply and overconsumption of garments. The objective is to introduce new ways of applied sustainability, through experiments of concepts, methods and processes in creative practices, resulting in a garment concept that will infuse the fashion system with creative longevity.
By methodically investigating the pattern system of the basic block as well as the size- and grading system, Mette Julie is exploring shape-forming cut lines made out of the basic blocks. In order to determine the essential parameters necessary for creating a good universal fit, the lines are aligned with anthropometrical data, body types and grading lines.
The mission is to create a new system of flexible, well-fitted basic blocks reminiscing the phrase; ”minimal construction for maximum effect”. Aesthetically, it will require extensive exploration and experimentation in design, materials, function, and their relationship in order to manifest the technical, technological and handcrafted character of the concept.
This investigation will be documented, presented and made available through selected process-garments, that will show the development, from status quo to this new garment system.
‘Circle 1 Dress’ mark the starting point of this investigation.
Reduce - Nominated for the Biennale Prize
With Reduce, Mette Julie Bundgaard-Nielsen brings the traditional lace technique into a new millennium. Reduce is a lace jacket that fits equally well into the new steampunk fashion trend and into a fetishist underground nightclub, and even if the work is a far cry from the concept of lace as a traditional needlecraft associated with domestic middleclass pursuits, Reduce still represents true mastery of both a traditional craft and an aesthetic tradition. 200 individually made triangle lace modules have been hand-sewn together in a ’honeycomb system’ that achieves a three-dimensional effect. The lace modules are mounted on a shoulder section and a loose collar made in butt leather and sewn with traditional saddle stitches. The jacket is sustainable, as the lace is made of old discarded jeans and anti-bacterial fibres, and butt leather is a durable long-life material. The lace can be detached and folded into a sextant, which can be pressed to
preserve its three-dimensional form. The materials are kept in light colours, both in reference to traditional lace-making and as an interpretation of the simple and natural style of Scandinavian design.
According to Dennis Dahlqvist (art and design critic - Sweden), Reduce is particularly relevant as:
“Designers are in a paradigm shift, after many years where a designer has been a person who draw things that later on would be mass-produced, are we now in a time where the craft again is the most important thing about a designer.”
“A clear example is fashion designer Mette Julie Bundgaard-Nielsens romantic “straitjacket” Reduce, a lace dress with brutal details is leather”.
