Prized Dresses Made from Worthless Materials – the Fascination of Stephan Hann’s Creations.
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„Couture Remixed“ or „Recycling Couture“ is how the designer Stephan Hann designates his aesthetic fashion objects. They move in the interface of the applied and fine arts.
In his fashion creations, Stephan Hann combines fashionable materials with materials that perform duty in other areas and that one doesn’t exactly associate with fashion. His dresses are made of thousands of Tetra Paks cut down into tiny squares and sewn together to suggest fish scales, or of hundreds photo negatives that have been skillfully combined to form frothy loops, from construction plans folded into wings, rosettes, tops or skirts, or the foil caps of champagne bottles formed to suggest body-armour. He folds paper into the finest plissée, cuts colour-printed photo paper into stripes and loops it. Celluloid strips are rolled up and rose petals sewn onto them. Many of the materials are recognisable only upon closer inspection, like the wallets of French armed forces from which a minidress arose, the lightbulbs that are part of another dress object, or the medication blister packs with which Hann drapes a dress. It is in his draping that one recognises Stephan Hann’s true, creative artistry, as it is here that – far from “merely” combining materials – his relationship to couture becomes especially evident. His creations bear melodious names such as Paradise Island Woman, City Girl, Le Charme Discret de la Bougeoisie, Electric Ballroom, Le Plaisir or Amazone. The original pieces always create a sensation – as in 1999 in the Museum of Architecture in Rotterdam, in 2000 in the State Museum of Baden-Württemberg, or in 2003 in the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg, just as they do in fashion shows in Berlin or Moscow. The exhibitions are accompanied by aesthetic photographs that present the clothes on living bodies, where they lose nothing of their fascination here, too. Questioning triviality
Stephan Hann’s creations reveal the optical qualities and aesthetic effects of every-day materials. Seemingly worthess materials are ennobled by their „investiture“ as clothing, thereby gaining a new significance.
For this artist, recycling means both preserving the memory of trivial materials by means of altering their contexts as well as questioning their triviality in the first place. The ecological aspect of recycling does not appear to have priority here. Most of the materials look unused, clean and without any traces of wear and tear, and in addition they are subjected to Hann’s standard of haute couture perfection. Each model is a unique piece whose production demands intricate, top-quality hand-craftsmanship. Born in Berlin, Stephan Hann was trained as a men’s bespoke tailor. At the end of the ‚80’s, he worked in the costume ateliers of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, the Deutsches Theater and the Berliner Ensemble, and in textile restoration in Berlin’s Museum of Decorative Arts. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he studied costume and stage design at the renowned University of the Arts in Berlin-Weißensee. As a “remembrance of a bygone country,“ Hann made a top out of red gift-wrap paper such as was used in the Palace of the Republic, and a matching skirt with photos of the former DDR. In 1998, he designed the costumes for the baroque opera, Les Indes Galantes, for the Stuttgart State Opera. In 1999, he produced a collection made of architecture plans for the Museum of Architecture in Rotterdam, and following that, collections for the U.S. firm, Lexmark, for the company Tetra Pak, and for Moet et Chandon in Paris. In 2003, Stephan Hann moved to Paris, where he now regularly designs exclusive handbags, headgear and jewelry studded with crystal beads for the firm of Daniel Swarovski. In 2004, Hann designed models made of string for the opening of LouLou de la Falaise’s (Yves Saint Laurent’s assistant of many years) own salon. Ennobling the things of everyday life
Stephan Hann’s extraordinary gift is based on his ability to visualise in advance the possibilities and effects of the unrelated materials from which a men’s suit or an evening dress will arise. But his work bears not the slightest hint of the pop-art character of the non-textile creations that made Paco Rabanne so famous in the 1960’s (a dress made of lozenge-shaped pieces of coloured plastic, for instance).
Hann is neither interested critiquing consumer and throwaway society, nor in making visible the traces left by time and use. In this sense he makes no intellectual claims in the manner of a Martin Margiela or Hussein Chalayan, and also does not aim at dadaistic alienation as does Hermann Hiller, who created a custom-tailored suit entirely out of measuring tapes, or street clothes made of asphaltic felt. |
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Stephan Hann sole aim is to to ennoble the trivial things of everyday life: often, the special qualities of trivial materials only become visible when they are decontextualised. This artist celebrates the beauty and aesthetics of superficial appearance. His creations are timeless, but not without their stories.
Stephan Hann lives and works in Paris and Berlin
Dr. Ingrid Loschek (1950–2010) |
www.loschek.de
online-redaktion@goethe.de
