Rozema Teunissen

[Estella*]

cfa.com

Melanie Rozema (1971, Heerlen, NL) and Jeroen Teunissen (1974, Dommelen, NL) have presented six collections under their collective label Rozema Teunissen. Rozema studied fashion design at the Fashion Department of the Arnhem Academy of Art and Design (Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Arnhem) while Teunissen was an art student at the school’s faculty for Fine Arts. Rozema followed an apprenticeship at styling bureau Ravage in Paris and Teunissen applied himself to fashion photography.

In 1998, Rozema and Teunissen were among the finalists at the Festival International des Arts de la Mode in Hyères with their first collection, Semiotic Dissonances. The duo considers Transient, their 1999 final exam collection for the Fashion Institute Arnhem, as their best work.

While still at the academy, the young designers used to swap sketches in order to ‘improve’ each other’s designs. This happened so naturally as if during a conversation the one completed what the other was saying. This synergy resulted in clothing design with strong autonomous qualities. Teunissen laid the basis for a concept while Rozema supplied fashionable style influences.

In contrast to many designers, Rozema Teunissen’s identity lays not so much in a personal style as in their particular mentality. Not clothing but social behaviour forms the basis for their design process. The image of a stadium after a mega pop concert can result in a form with the same freakish torn pattern as a trampled plastic bag, or red and white hazard tape printed with the word caution. By redoubling and use of linings, the layered content also gains an outward form.

In 2002, Rozema and Teunissen were awarded the New York Dance and Performance Award (also known as Bessie) for Best Costumes. According to the jury, their theatrical costumes for The Bang Group were both hilariously functional and dysfunctional. In Holland, they were nominated for the Rotterdam Design Prize and the NPS Cultuur Prijs.

In 2001 the label was dissolved. Rozema and Teunissen currently design collections individually and both teach at the Fashion Institute Arnhem and the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Arnhem.

awards:
2002 - NY Dance and Performance Award, with costumes for David Parker & The Bang Group

2001 - Nominated for the Dutch Design Prize, Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

2000 - Finalists at the NPS Culture Prize 2000, Dutch television award

teaching activities:
2001 - present: Melanie Rozema and Jeroen Teunissen give workshops in design at the Fashion Institute Arnhem, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

2000 - present: Jeroen Teunissen teaches design at the Arnhem Academy of Art and Design (Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Arnhem), the Netherlands

2003 - Melanie Rozema teaches design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Koninklijke Academie Den Haag), The Hague, the Netherlands

spring, summer '01

 

[Estella*]

cfa.com

Collection shown during a defile at Espace Austerlitz in Paris, October 1999, and also shown during the Osaka fashion week in Japan, November 1999.

The idea for this collection is based on making beautiful things out of leftovers/ waste: the kind of things you would see scattering around after a huge event. Rozema Teunissen used forms like garbage bags, big shopper bags, jerry cans and pieces of security tape, to modify their patters with. The feel of the collection is ‘people using whatever is left to dress themselves up with’, resulting into twenty-four outfits.

The collection consists of wearable pieces, as well as ‘showpieces’. Rozema Teunissen made the choice during their first solo defile in Paris, to present these elements mixed. In their collection catalogue they combined some of their most extreme pieces with the models own garments; this to further stress out the difference between Rozema Teunissens 'figments' and the reality of garments people wear everyday. From this point of view, the more extreme pieces in this collection show the possibility of what clothing could symbolize, socially and conceptually.

 

[Estella*]

spring, summer 2000
same source

Shown as the graduationcollection of the Fashion Institute Arnhem at Ircam in Paris, March 1999, and shown during the Osaka Fashion Week in Japan, November 1999.

Chaos, Electricity, Saffron. The collection counts 14 outfits, unique and handmade 'couture'-pieces next to more ready-to-wear pieces. All outfits were entirely made in the colour saffron-orange. The general silhouette of this collection: complex, scissors-cut, voluminous skirts and prom-dresses combined with mass-production sweaters or 1950's inspired jackets. Mickey Mouse masks popped up from under a big skirt, functioned as reversed hoods and as masks.

The source of inspiration for this collection was ‘energy’, in the widest sense. For Rozema Teunissen that is how particles burst out of an explosion, but also how to get the work itself the most intense. For them it's about unleashing all creativity from within, so that it gives space to both positive, as well as negative energy. According to Rozema Teunissen the most ‘uplifting’ one of chemical processes is when liquids turn into gasses, and thus when their particles start to float more freely...

 

[Scott]

I remember them rather fondly. Used to consider them as a favourite at the time but they haven't done anything for a long time...at least that I know of?? But they were extraordinary-their sense of cutting and the amazing volumes.

danke,estella