MAREUNROL’S

03.09.2022

Established in 2006, MAREUNROL’S is the most internationally recognised Latvian fashion brand. They have participated in numerous competitions, festivals, biennials and group exhibitions abroad, including: the 12th Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space; the travelling exhibition ARRRGH! Monsters in Fashion at the Benaki Museum in Athens; and at La Gaîté Lyrique in Paris. In 2009, the duo won two Grands Prix at the 24th International Hyères Fashion and Photography Festival in France. In 2016 MAREUNROL’S was among ten European nominees for the prestigious International Woolmark Prize in the category of men’s fashion.

The designers have designed costumes for many theatre and opera productions in Latvia and abroad. In 2013, MAREUNROL’S was included on the list of 100 most creative fashion designers who have recently emerged internationally, as published in the Phaidon Press almanac Pattern. Works by MAREUNROL’S are included in the Design Collection of the LNMA / Museum of Decorative Arts and Design as an outstanding example of contemporary Latvian fashion art, and are part of the permanent exhibition.

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Clothing is the outer shell of the largest organ of the human body – we even call it our "second skin". It protects, warms, aesthetically enhances or, on the contrary, deliberately highlights that which we usually hide. Clothing is an all-encompassing language, one that is more powerful than words. And clothes have their own “underskin” as well. Seams, stiching, tucks, linings, pleats, quilting, batting, stiffeners, padding, threads, fibres – all of the many layers that make up the whole – the outside, or body, of the garment.

Although deconstruction and attempts to, through design, bring this “underskin” of clothing to the outside is common practice, it has, so far, been somewhat analogous to going to a few sessions with a psychotherapist. It’s a step deeper into the inner “world of shadows”, but still keeping a relatively comfortable distance. We don’t dress up to be naked, after all. Clothing is our public skin.

Blurring the boundaries between fashion and art – between clothing and the body – MAREUNROL’S use fabric relief sculpture as an instrument of inward conversation, a form of artistic communication that spatially connects the facade and the lining, simultaneously exposing the interaction between the two, and thus, through observation and presence, encouraging the viewer to confront the mirror of their own “underskin” – one’s own inner self.

The fabric relief sculpture on show is one of the three that were exhibited at the MAREUNROL’S solo show at Alma Gallery in the spring of 2022, symbolically embodying the relationship we build with ourselves, other people, and the world around us. In the exhibition Silence.Sound.Horizon, MAREUNROL’S address the theme of clothing as an inward- and outward-facing mirror by using the seemingly classical languages of fashion and art, deftly merging them and inviting us to become aware of the interconnectedness of everything.

A Silk Lining with a Seam Undone. 2022. Fabric sculpture