Elise Gettliffe’s Dripping Delights at RA

The Antwerp Academy has a long-standing history of weird and wonderful alumni, each carving out their own signature in the local and international worlds of fashion design. One of the latest movers and shakers to graduate with flying colours is Elise Gettliffe, a French designer with a rather ‘un-Parisian’ take on menswear.

On Saturday Elise showcased her entire graduate collection as the first installation in RA, Antwerp’s new fashion and art space, with the walls covered in Elise’s own surrealist paintings and the racks heavy with her bold streetwear. The earth-toned collection melds western detailing and industrial workwear influences for a silhouette at home on the railroad (though the fabrics surely not).

Entitled ‘C02’, Elise’s final year project centres on the idea of fluidity and melting – with the colours, textures, shapes and traditional garments all melting into new forms. As such we saw woven shirting fused with trousers, knit overalls connected to baseball jackets, thick shirt collars dripping asymmetrically and sleeveless tufted-woolen capes trawled along the floor. The overall effect is entirely modern but with an Americana influence of basketball, workers’ overalls and an inherent ‘gangland’ feel – Elise’s men don’t mess around.

The fabrics Elise used were an artwork in themselves, with over half being woven by Elise herself in Tilburg in the Netherlands, achieving a unique richness with her Dali-esque melting wools, thatched tweeds and patterned fluffy angora. These textiles took shape in a new form for RA, as Elise created limited edition bags with the fabrics to complement her bespoke pieces, as well as baggy, oversized tee shirts featuring her intricate illustrations. These tee shirts further encapsulated the hip-hop gang feel to the collection, as did her chosen soundtrack for the presentation (think Wu-Tang Clan).

The drawings that accompany her collection are contained within an artists’ book also on display (with plans for an exclusive zine in the works), offering a monochromatic, 2-D rendering of Elise’s inspirations and characters. Sketches of dripping wax, organic branch-like shapes and dotted patterns explore negative space in a ying-yang style and echo block printing, showing a direct translation to the intricate fabric constructions of the garments. For a culinary compliment to Elise’s all-encompassing feast for the senses, RA’s kitchen served up a colossal millefeuille cake in rich chocolate and meringue, interlaced with layers of pink and blue sponge – the final layer in this sumptuous presentation that is surely a precursor of great things to come from Elise, who has just revealed plans to continue under her own name, launching her own label by early 2010.