A Kilometer and a Half of… Contrasts

Mutual complementarity, balance, and the bringing together of contrasts. Static/dynamic; lightness/hardness; restriction/movement; order/disarray; natural/synthetic; monumental/illustrative; light/dark... These seemingly opposite material expressions come together in Alexander Gerginov’s garments to create a unique and mutually balanced look. The two garments, one in black and another in white, represent balance and contrast.

The white garment puts into question the expectation of the garment’s mobility and the body’s freedom of movement inside of it. The characteristic elasticity of the bands has been eliminated through a hardening process, and the upper part of the silhouette is sculpted, so that it is partly attached to the body and partly moving freely beyond its contours. The draped bottom part, on the other hand, suggests a sense of ethereality and lightness. The garment unites two contrasting ideas: the staticity of architecture and the monumentality of a sculptural object, together with the lightness of the unattached bands built into the garment, which suggest the idea of paths, directions, and flights.

A Kilometer and a Half of… Weightlessness

When a garment made of heavy, solid fabric manages to give us the sense of lightness that overcomes gravity, and when familiar, raw, smooth and natural mixtures of cotton and silk are treated and turned into tactile structure with a technological appearance, our senses and perceptions are provoked and surprised. Antonia Pashova creates light and flowing silhouettes which, when in motion, form complicated overlays and three-dimensional shapes that are simultaneously ethereal and sculptural.

Their appearance changes according to the movements of the body—even when it stands still, the notions of dynamics, airiness, flight have been encoded into the garment, thus revealing a much greater breadth of potential than initially expected

A Kilometer and a Half of… Meandering Thoughts

In Georgi Forov’s creation, distance is interpreted as an inward gaze toward the complex process of thinking, which weaves together a many-layered material, whose design is tactile and stands out from the surface. The elastic bands not only become the main element for the material’s construction, but—through their elasticity and varying widths and lengths, as well as the possibilities for treatment—they bring up associations with the meandering of our thought processes, with their peaks and troughs, with beginnings and endings. Just as the complex mental operations of analyzing, synthesizing, comparing, summarizing, abstracting, and concretizing, as well as their characteristic depth, breadth, flexibility, consistency, and economy, determine each person’s uniqueness, so does the material of the elastic bands, after processes of deconstruction, layering, multifaceted three-dimensionality and standing out from the surface create a unique substance of its own. This material is then used to make a voluminous outer garment in the shape of a jacket-coat, which is suggestive of a protective armor or a hidden interior that has been turned inside out.

The garment, usually used as a tool for uniformity and merging together with the crowd, for the creation of a sense of security and belonging to a community, in this case—by becoming frayed, contradictory, vulnerable, brave, and real—serves to make the individuality of our thinking visible. It becomes a conceptual object that encourages the creation of clothing that acts as a projection of our individuality and reduces our distance from our true essence.

A Kilometer and a Half of… Bird’s Freedom

Stepping away from the competition, the expectations, from the norms, prejudices, and ideals determined by others—this is the distance, imagined as a lifting up and away from the uniformity enforced by the globalized world, that Katya Lozanova interprets through her garments’ material, print, and silhouette. As we search for ways to realize our suppressed potential, the image of a bird’s free flight emerges: the shape of its feather-covered wings inspires the upper part of the garment—part bustier with wing-like sleeves, part corset made from elastic bands and resembling a cage, which does not allow for complete freedom.

The lowest part of the garment, the hem of the skirt, is marked by a print of the silhouettes of a stylized crowd, which seems to pull us downward—but its faded colors efface its contours and its material is transparent and ethereal, as though disappearing into air. The duality between one’s own self and others, between adapting and standing out, between uniformity and individuality, has been interpreted into the language of conceptual fashion through various materials, patterns, and forms, and though the combination of heterogeneous fabrics. The resulting garment gives its wearer wings and the courage to become a free individual.

A Kilometer and a Half of… Better Failures

How can we shorten the real and actual distances that keep us apart from others, regardless of the closeness suggested by social networks? We communicate through online chats, send digital postcards, and look through our friends’ photos on social media. We don’t look into anyone’s eyes but just stare into our screens. Touch has become a fleeting reminiscence in our emotional memory. The global community cannot save us from the very real existential loneliness. How many real-life friends do we have? Whom do we truly love? Neli Mitewa tries to find answers to these questions by creating a garment that does not just encourage but demands physical proximity. The elastic band becomes the perfect metaphor of the “elasticity” of today’s relationships.

This garment for three seems to intertwine the bodies of several people into one and prevents them from moving away from one another. It is through this shared garment that the bodies are connected into a circle, or even a community. Each person’s very movement affects the others, while the bands’ elasticity permits a certain freedom, but always within the frame of commonality.

It is the painful realization that the lack of closeness is a phenomenon of the globalized world that has led to the creation of a conceptual garment, which nevertheless seeks to encourage efforts towards connection and a physical and spiritual coming together. Towards collaborations and interactions. Towards the living and experiencing of real emotions. Towards laughing in spite of the wrinkles and the taste of tears. Efforts and better failures.

A Kilometer and a Half of… Cause and Effect

How can we visualize a short, ephemeral moment that can change the direction of one’s life? A turning point in the otherwise smooth and linear flow of life, which decisively affects the subsequent course of events. An epicenter point, whose effect is disseminated to other points and which causes the explosive waves to disperse . . . Radostina Klinkova creates a dress-coat from a fabric made of elastic bands in concentric circles, all of which gravitate towards a point in the center, which attracts the gaze and then leads it along closer and further paths, parallels, and meridians, symbolized by contrasting black ribbons, wires, and threads that have been vertically interwoven into the horizontal white elastic bands.

The resulting fabric is divided into strict sections and creates the impression of an intertwined chain of interconnected events, emotional moments, and people that give rise to one another, with no beginning and no end.

A Kilometer and a Half of… Traveling Towards One’s Self

Distance does not only move forward and is not always a particular measurable unit. It can also be invisible, moving inward into one’s self. Through the total silence of looking inward, one almost seems to separate from his or her “public” self and comes closer to the inner self. Through this almost external observation, one realizes how closely those two are connected. The subject becomes the object—Sylvia Tsvetanova’s visual interpretation of this otherwise invisible separation and merging takes the shape of two silhouettes, which are connected through an elastic knit, where one flows into the other. The wide-open stitches symbolize one’s real feelings and thoughts when alone in the silence of one’s thoughts. The elasticity allows for a kind of stepping away—just like the distance needed for self-analysis. But at the same time, the cylindrical shape creates the connection and brings the outer towards the inner, while the built-in hoops and the circle are a visual metaphor for the personality’s wholeness.

The use of traditional, classic materials such as knitwear and elastic bands, as well as their characteristic qualities of elasticity and transparency, allow for the expression of abstract inner images through an artistic object that is “ready to wear.”

A Kilometer and a Half of… Touching on the Essence

The hidden nooks of human essence often conceal insecurities and inner conflicts, and the sensitive and fragile interiority is often forced to look perfect from the outside. What is invisible can be touched through words, gestures, intuition: the complex connection in the conscious and the subconscious, the depth of the psychological interactions between people and their thoughts, their awareness and contradictions. Stanislava Dimitrova finds the material expression of this look beneath the surface and the revelation of vulnerability and of the innermost thoughts and suppressed desires by creating an elastic “skeleton” that has been brought out to the surface and made visible. Taking the form of an endlessly long transparent dress, it presses against and gives a shape to the soft matter of the sensitive interior. The openness of the skeleton-corset at the same time allows access to the soft interior, to its real essence.

The turning inside out of the established “order” of the clothing, the placing of an under layer on the upper surface, and the unique gradation of the materials give the garment meaning and purpose and bestow it with a spiritual dimension that suggests the author’s own essence, her personal internal struggles, her defeats and victories.