Working ten years in the fashion business allowed Niels Klavers and Astrid van Engelen to get a 360° perspective on the industry. Klavers lived his annus mirabilis in 1998 when he won the Grand Prix award at Hyères and created a surreal jacket that featured multiple sleeves. Van Engelen joined Klavers to assist him with his designs, but soon the duo launched together their own brand.
In 2003 they took a break from the world of fashion to teach at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and at the Design Academy in Eindhoven. Last summer the duo re-launched their label, won the Mercedes-Benz Dutch Fashion Award and started working on new and exciting creations. Their Spring/Summer 09 collection, presented during Milan’s White Club catwalks, was acclaimed for its finely pleated and gathered light fabrics, from silk to viscose jersey, in vivid hues.

Dazed Digital: How do you feel about showing your new collection in Milan?
Astrid van Engelen: The feedback we received when we presented our collection in February during the White Club catwalks was absolutely brilliant, so we were very honoured to be able to come here again.

DD: What is the main inspiration behind your S/S 09 collection?
AVE: We were inspired by an area in Amsterdam called The Jordaan. It’s a 17th century working class area where there are a lot of small houses and in many of their windows you can often see little curtains. The curtain draping was actually the main inspiration for our collection.
     
DD: Which is your favourite piece out of this collection?
AVE: It’s hard to say as it changes all the time. Yesterday it was one outfit; tomorrow it will be another. Our favourite pieces often change with our mood.      

DD: How did Klavers van Engelen’s design evolve throughout the years?  
AVE: We have been working on the label for ten years and in the past we were known as a very conceptual label. Our inspiration and the way we work today is the same as it was in the past - we usually work starting from one inspiration and elaborating it - but nowadays our creations are more wearable.

DD: In recent years both you and Niels took on teaching positions at fashion institutes in the Netherlands, what did you learn from this experience?
AVE: If you’re a designer, teaching can help you as it allows you to look up at your own designs with a critical eye. It’s quite funny, but when you teach you realise that you should be telling to yourself what you’re telling to your students.

DD: What’s the starting point of each Klavers van Engelen collection?
AVE: The fabric. It’s how fashion works for us as we don’t make any drawings at all, but we work from the material and the patterns. We start to drape and experiment on a dummy then develop the theme into a collection. We work in a very organic way, but in a different way from those designers who first draw their collections on paper and then translate it to fabric. I would define our way of working as three-dimensional.    

DD: The Centraal Museum in Utrecht purchased some of your designs and in March 2009 you will also have an exhibition at the Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen. In your opinion, can fashion be considered as a form of art?
AVE: It’s a difficult question. Clothes are contemporary pieces of art, but when they are in a museum you can’t touch them and you miss the importance of the movement that is an intrinsic feature of every outfit. It’s for this reason that whenever we are asked to exhibit our clothes in a museum, we arrange special installations, so that visitors are able to reach out to our creations and feel their dimension.      

DD: What is the most important aspect of the collaboration between you and Niels?
AVE: We always tell each other how happy we are to be working together. Designing is a tough job and collaborating for us means to be able to constantly exchange our ideas and thoughts.

DD: What are your ambitions for Klavers van Engelen?
AVE: We want to grow and develop and we also want to build a solid collaboration with manufacturing companies in Italy. In Holland there is no fashion history so there are no craftsmanship traditions, this is also why we are very happy we were given the chance of showing our collection at the White Club. It definitely helped us to get in touch with the Italian market and the buyers, but also with the local manufacturers and suppliers.