How You Make It explores artisanal fashion design practices that draw on traditional tailoring techniques to form contemporary collections. The designers in How You Make It create not only new garment forms and new ways of wearing clothes, they develop new design systems. Existing garments are deconstructed: unpicked, reconfigured and reworked, using fine tailoring and conceptual templates in order to create a new style of clothes. These conceptual Australian fashion designers open a dialogue between craft and design that places the focus back on how and why objects are made.

Exhibition dates 6 March – 12 April 2008
Opening night Friday 14 March 2008, 6-8pm

How You Make It is accompanied by an exhibition catalogue and includes works from the following designers: Simon Cooper, Paula Dunlop, Ess.Laboratory (Hoshika Oshimi and Tatsuyoshi Kawabata), FORMALLYKNOWNAS (Toby Whittington), Anthea van Kopplen, MATERIALBYPRODUCT (Susan Dimasi and Chantal McDonald), Project (Kara Baker and Shelley Lasica) and S!X (Denise Sprynskyj and Peter Boyd). 

Presented as part of the 2008 L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival Cultural Program, How You Make It was a touring exhibition, initiated by Craft Victoria and toured by NETS Victoria to Object Gallery in Sydney, and a number of Victorian regional galleries throughout 2008 and 2009. How You Make It was a collaborative project between Craft Victoria and Object Gallery, toured by NETS Victoria and funded by Object’s National Exhibitions Strategy and NETS Victoria's Exhibition Development Fund.

This exhibition was assisted through NETS Victoria's Exhibition Development Fund (EDF), devolved from the Community Support Fund on behalf of the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria, a division of the Department of Premier and Cabinet.

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