Interview - Tilde Bay Kristoffersen


Combination of unexpected materials brought into a fantasy and dramatic imagery, the Copenhagen based designer Tilde Bay Kristoffersen gives a theatrical touch to her designs. A magnificent Graduate Collection, where poetry transcends thoughts to highlight a pure and artistic sensibility.

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"How can you express the soul of your garments ?"

Tilde Bay Kristoffersen
"Before one or more garments exists and have a soul, you have to have a need to express, and before you can express, you have to collect inspiration and that inspiration is influenced by your life (social heritage, emotions, experiences...)

Everything that is absorbed and registered in your mind adds to the collection of ideas stored in the memory: a sort of library that you can consult whenever a problem arises. So, essentially the more you have seen, experienced and absorbed, the more points of reference you will have to help you decide which direction to take: your frame of reference expands.” (Hertzberger, H., Lessons for Students of Architecture in Lawson, B., p.113)

Hertzberger does not distinguish between the conscious or unconscious memory.
Our consciousness consists sense-impressions that are more or less processed.
These, are all a part of the creation, of a sensation through which we experience the world.

In that sense, the inspiration that I work with, aren´t one-sided, but a collection of pictures, experiences and emotions through the past 30 years.
It’s the constant impressions such as smells, the weather, social relations, observations, experiences and emotions that together create the fundament and new frames for a creation-process. These things together with the need to be creative and the need to express and the need to experiment with various fabrics combined with all sorts of things and materials hopefully give the garments a sense of having a soul.

In this case garments that evolves around the gap between functional fashion-design and more expressive and decorative garments that relate to showpieces"

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"What makes you believe in Fashion ?"

Tilde Bay Kristoffersen
"It depends on what we choose to call fashion?

Is it fashion when Alexander McQueen makes extraordinary garments spray painted dresses or dresses out of gold feathers that relates to showpieces (Haute Couture) or is it when the same pair of slim jeans is sold in millions all over the world?

I don´t believe or not believe in fashion. Fashion has always been a part of the human history and in the beginning, a need to cover the naked body.

We figured that, with garments, decoration, wigs and makeup how to create ourselves as status symbols making ourselves into keys that would make it possible for us to access certain groups in the social system. 

I mostly observe trying to understand the needs and desires that always get replaced by new needs and new desires. I believe in a world which is constantly changing and that all these changes has an influence on each other and in the end have an influence on what I bring into my work"


Designer, Tilde Bay Kristoffersen

Photographs, courtesy of Kajsa Gullberg 

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