Dysfunctional Beauty - Pauline Dujancourt

Pauline Dujancourt is the winner of the Textiles - Knit/Weave category. Pauline is a Fashion MA graduate from Central Saint Martins UAL and is originally from France. Pauline’s work Dysfunctional Beauty is inspired by the clothing of DDR East Germany and Covid social restrictions. The collection explores the idea of making beautiful clothes anywhere and at any time, relying only on the designer’s hands with domestic tools such as a pair of needles; a playful collage mixing knitted drapes with distressed tailoring. Men’s style trousers and oversized jackets have been distorted and rearranged to fit the feminine silhouette, as if the DDR woman had been trying to repurpose old garments to wear at work.

These mismatched severe tailoring pieces contrast with the softness of the knits that have been carefully calculated stitch by stitch and hand-knitted with sustainable yarns. The stitch work is an intricate combination of cable works, laces and delicate crochet works slashed into strips. Within this collection, Pauline strived to turn an ancestral technique such as hand-knitting into a contemporary means of expression.