Kelly Konings Textiles: Telling Stories with Weaving, Designing, 2D, 3D

The process of weaving, for Kelly, is “an entangled combination of emotion and reason, as textiles are one of the first tactile memories we have—holding the power to reconnect with times long gone and memories forgotten. Memories of washed-out flower dresses, the soft fraying of a shirt’s collar, the pilling of the knitted sweater my grandmother made, the worn-out elbows on the tweed coat stuffed away in the attic.” All these touches of the hand have been lost in time. But, not anymore.

One of Kelly’s textile projects include jacquard woven textiles drawing from personal sentimental memorabilia of garments, blankets and curtains that once were, “holding the power to transgress into a collective questioning of the current relationship we have with the textiles and clothing that surround us.” What she seeks to do is opening up a discussion on how to care for our memories embedded in the fibres and yarns instead of discarding them lovelessly.

Her work showcases textiles jacquard woven with local yarns such as wool diligently collected at different farms around Sweden, washed and processed on the island of Gotland by Ullkontoret. The latter is a wool scouring mill situated on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. With this, Kelly proposes “a new and holistic way of designing and producing textiles and garments locally.”

The repertoire on her website shows the structure of the weave, the jacquard patterns, the yarns and colours have the ability to link the textile to the garment, materialising the interdependency of the two. And here’s the thing: the woven textiles can be transformed from a 2D textile into a 3D garment and vice versa. Kelly make it work both ways.

This is the ‘hybrid form of dressing’ based on a series of experiments related to the components of jacquard weaving, local yarns and weaving constructions in a layering system.

Currently, Kelly is working with different weaving mills in Europe. “I try to find deadstock yarns together with these mills from suppliers or spinning mills they are already working with. Besides that, I try to find local yarns, such as wool that is collected at different farms in Sweden and then industrially washed and spun on the island of Gotland here.

“Recently, they had a batch of wool that was dyed black for a client. However, the dye didn't set properly and turned out more like a dark grey colour. For their client, it was unusable—so they reached out to me, and I took it instead. So, it’s all about collaboration when it comes to the sourcing of left-overs, waste and deadstock yarns.”

Last summer, Kelly did a residency at the textile lab Lottozero in Prato (Italy), looking into the supply chain of deadstock yarns and learning about the heritage tradition in Prato of recycling yarn and using deadstock yarn before it was even called deadstock—nothing is wasted!

“There is a lot of unused yarn out there in the industry; so, upscaling is not a problem. The problem is the design process because when you work with deadstock material, you have to design from the material as a starting point and accept the predetermined conditions of a yarn, such as the colour and design within the frames of these conditions, instead of designing a silhouette or a pattern and then finding the materials to fit with this.

“Besides that, it is a more time-consuming production process to source and transport all these yarns to the weaving mill. However, it is an attractive way for brands and production facilities to be able to create something valuable with their own waste streams.”

The finishing of the textiles and garments is done at her own atelier, and “I’ve just started a small-scale production of a straight-leg jeans and a wrap jeans with XV production, which is a sewing atelier that does production for high-end Scandinavian brands, such as Hodakova, in my hometown of Borås.“

The denim industry has its own problems with the oft-discussed issues like water, chemicals, and all. So, how does the future look like for denim?

Says Kelly: “I see the future of denim as a highly collaborative field, developing textiles together with weaving and spinning mills and even including the farmers who grow the raw material together with the fashion designer creating the final garment. I see a huge potential for the weaving mill to become a creative space for experimental development, a place where fashion and textile designers can meet and develop new ideas together.

“For my own label, I also see more collaborative and freelance projects as a textile designer with other brands and designers. For the garments I produce, this is a new concept that I’ve just started up where the collection is based on a few well-made favourite archetypical garments such as a relaxed straight-leg jeans that will be available in updated jacquard woven denims, depending on the deadstock yarns that I will find. So perhaps some types of designs are only available at some retailers, like a mini-local supply chain!”

Kelly’s garments have that air of romance, coupled with the stories they narrate. There’s also that air of unacceptability about second-hand clothing. So, will it make a difference if a story can be traced and told of the old textiles used to create that "something new”?

Concludes Kelly: “To me storytelling is really important, as the types of garments I like are the most recognisable types of everyday garments almost everyone has at home, deconstructing and redesigning these everyday garments in a new way.

“I also think storytelling about the making process of garments and textiles will be more and more important, pushing for an equal division between the textile-making process and the fashion design process, as very often, the textile maker is rather invisible compared to the fashion designer.”