Thursday, 27 November 2014 06:54

Voith - Stories from the world of paper

Written by
Rate this item
(0 votes)

A Dirndl made entirely of paper

2014-11-27 065640

The Design students Ramona Summerer (l.) and Julia Hopper with their Dirndl

In Bavaria, the traditional Dirndl dress is not an uncommon sight. Yet if you take a closer look at the Dirndl on display in the Gmund paper mill’s exhibition hall, you will notice that this garment, meticulously created down to the finest detail, is something unique. The Dirndl is not made from cotton or linen but consists entirely of paper, or to be more precise, of superfine premium paper from Büttenpapierfabrik Gmund.

The paper Dirndl was tailored by Ramona Summerer and Julia Hopper, who are both studying “Visual & Corporate Communication” at the Academy for Fashion and Design in Munich. They collaborated with the Gmund paper mill as part of their “Communication with Paper” design project. After they had visited the mill and seen the papers for the first time, they were inspired by the rich colors and shimmering finishes to create a Dirndl from paper.

2014-11-27 065703The two students chose to make their Dirndl using paper from the "Gmund Reaction” collection. For certain parts of the dress they also made use of “Gmund Treasury” paper, a brilliantly shimmering paper that has become famous following its appearance at the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles. Official Academy Awards® designer Marc Friedland used the high-quality paper from Gmund to produce the 24 hand-made envelopes containing the names of the Oscar winners. And the two students used the very same Gmund Treasury paper for the apron and trim. “We had the greatest fun creating these exact details,” they recall. For the apron they cut the Gmund Treasury into strips and interlaced them. To create an organic form they arranged the top part of the apron into folds. The trim, using the “little frog mouths” technique, was sewn together by hand.

“The most difficult thing was to join the sheets of paper to one another,” says Ramona Summerer. “Gluing them didn’t work because of the special paper coatings.” So alternatives had to be found. From adhesive tape to drawing pins and photo mounting corners, anything that could hold paper together was used. Bit by bit, a genuine dressmaking masterpiece was created. “Finally, the Dirndl was fixed to a dressmaker’s dummy, and that is where it is going to stay,” report the two students. The roughly 50 hours of work it took to craft this world premiere in paper were well worth it. The Gmund Dirndl is scarcely distinguishable from its fabric equivalents. Unfortunately it’s not possible to wear this beautiful garment. But you can admire it, because it will be on display at the Paper World exhibition at Büttenpapierfabrik in Gmund until the end of the year.

Sources:
http://de.gmund.com/content/de/das-dirndl-aus-papier

http://www.amdnet.de/designkooperation-mit-gmund/

http://www.trendguide.info/de/tg_trendguides/tegernseer-tal/categories/szene-freizeit/contents/gmund-papierwelt--3

Read 2975 times