Thomas Ven Der Jeught has been designing layered and industrial pieces, inspired by visual artists, and he has continued to evolve his style to adapt to the changes in his personal feelings and his environment. Often in monochrome or pale muted colours, his clothes seem to evoke a bleakness or solemnity through his range of materals such as wool, mesh, denim and paint.

Dazed Digital: How old are you?
Thomas Van Der Jeught: I'm 24 years old.

DD: How long have you been designing?
Thomas Van Der Jeught: Literally designing, I started when I was 18.
 
DD: Where are you based?
Thomas Van Der Jeught: I have just lived in Vienna for seven months and at the moment I'm based in Belgium.
 
DD: How would you describe your own style?
Thomas Van Der Jeught: My style evolves out of different personal feelings and impressions I get from my surroundings. I always deform the human body with different shapes and materials. Its an individual style, I'm more a loner.
 
DD: Who would you like to collaborate with?
Thomas Van Der Jeught: As a designer it's more interesting to collaborate with different visual artists. The clash between both different mediums can result into something new.
I like artist like Violette Banks or Terence Koh. But there also so many new interesting young artists i like.
 
DD: Who do you have in mind when you design?
Thomas Van Der Jeught: I don't have a certain person in mind. It's more a mood or a feeling i think off when i'm designing. Something i felt or noticed on my way ismostly the startpoint of a new creation.

DD: What inspires you at the moment?
Thomas Van Der Jeught: I'm very inspired about this wave of people on there way, travelling. A lot of my friends are moving constantly abroad, they are like a kind of modern nomad.
What's also inspires me is the today's crisis that creates new ways of designing and surviving.
 
DD: Who are your favorite designers and why?
Thomas Van Der Jeught: I like designers like Fabrics Interseason or Hedi Slimane because they do more than only designing clothes. They have their art installations and are searching for different ways to explain and show their visions. The scanning of different mediums is a more open minded way of working, it creates a clearer vision and shows more of the world of the designer.
 
DD: Were you interested in fashion while growing up?
Thomas Van Der Jeught: I was always interested in how you can express yourself true clothes and how you can touch the borders of different social levels by the way you look. I was not really aware about the fashion world at that time.
 
DD: What are the difficulties faced being a designer today?
Thomas Van Der Jeught: One of the difficulties is the prevailing recession. It pushes people to think differently. You have to find new ways to survive, this can create space for new things and ways of designing but it also can have a precipitate on the design which people start to design save.
 
DD: If you weren't designing, what would you be doing?
Thomas Van Der Jeught: Maybe I was a traveller, I like to discover and explore things. Fashion design is a medium to express yourself but there are also thousand other ways to do that.
 
DD: What are your plans for the future?
Thomas Van Der Jeught: So far, I've done an internship at Fabrics Interseason in Vienna, I would like to do one more internship. In the meanwhile i'm still working on new work, art and fashion. One day I would like to have my own collection and presentations of my work.
 
DD: Can we buy your collection?
Thomas Van Der Jeught: At the moment I have no stockists but people can always contact me at
E-mail: thomasvanderjeaught@hotmail.com or
Tel: 0032 (0)484760000