Karen Lukacs Studio

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PANEL PRESENTATION: Weekend Wardrobe Revolution

Selvedge Magazine presents:

WEEKEND WARDROBE REVOLUTION
featuring Karen Lukacs

Saturday, October 8, 2022
3:00 pm Eastern Time US
Hosted on Zoom

Cost: £50 GBP
Sign Up HERE.

Zoom details are emailed to you as soon as you place your order.  Check your spam folder if you do not receive it. A recording of the talk will be available to ticket holders after the event.



FEATURED SPEAKERS:

  • Karen Lukacs

  • Vivienne Richmond

  • Hanna Rose Shell

  • Arianne Engelberg

  • Crispina French

  • Rodrigo Müller


We are at a critical point in human history. The need to adopt sustainable and environmentally friendly practices has never been so important - especially regarding our fashion and textile choices. This is no easy task and will require a community effort that is both local and global – intimately interconnected. We are bringing together pioneers of slow design and textile activists who are working to reinvent the way we think about and produce clothing.

Presentations will look at methods of repairing, mending, and recycling our clothing; innovative industry-led initiatives to produce carbon-neutral clothing on an industrial scale; and Indigenous knowledge systems and practices of textile making. We hope to inspire you to find ways of reducing your own clothing carbon footprint, as well as contributing to finding new ways of rethinking the global fashion system.

Description of Karen’s talk:
From her studio in the Sonoran Desert, Karen Lukacs is a designer/maker transforming reclaimed garments and textiles into functional forms of artisanal fashion.

Starting from a place and time when textile arts were heralded and the arts wearable movement blossomed, Karen shares her journey, inspirations, and her explorations in textiles. From traditional stitchery techniques to her inventive work in reimagining garments, Karen is a practiced artisan with a passion for textiles and an unconventional way of utilizing discards.

For the past twenty years, Karen's work has been in response to the plethora of discarded textiles, the result of a cultural habit of over-production, over-consumption, and thoughtless discard. When she began this exploration, the fashion industry’s vernacular did not yet include upcycling, sustainability, and zero-waste design.

Resources are hand-selected with an eye to their reinvention. Reaching for technical challenges and contradictions with these materials is her design focus: shaping knits into structured totes, enveloping hand-formed frames with silk neckties, reshaping garments into artisanal fashion.

The Denim Collection began as a curious exploration into this iconic fashion item renowned for self-expression and individuality – denim jeans. Denim’s gritty richness reflects that of the beautiful Sonoran Desert, Karen’s studio home.

Traditional mending techniques, inventive surface design, and piecing techniques are all employed to create new textiles from the various fibre compositions and hues.

Original marks, scars, and unique details are strategically incorporated into the new design. And garment silhouettes morph onto various body shapes and sizes, a rejection of outmoded sizing models. Her process follows a hierarchical design strategy that leaves “no scrap behind”.


Learn more about the other speakers’ presentations HERE.

Weekend Wardrobe Revolution
ENROLL HERE