Trapped and restricted, bound and restrained – held hostage to thoughts and feelings, unable to free one’s self from self conscience or the bandages that hold us. The thought of restriction that only an asylum can trigger, thoughts of which Berthold’s Autumn Winter 17 collection explored.
playing witness to a scene of haunted empty vessels bandaged in clothing that acted as barriers, the Berthold character ushered upon the given scene in a pallet of polar white, heavy black and bruise – a pallet of enforced connotations, of the photographs of scratches, scars and stitches that surround the walls of Raimund Berthold’s studio. One could not escape the significance of restriction, the idea of dimensions meeting and divulging, proportions pushing and pulling. Through textures of felted wools, technical fabrication, mohair and cotton suiting, Berthold created a scene of dynamic contrasts, deriving materialization from torn soft leathers and papers folded and aged over time. The asylum of Berthold flowed coherently through minimal clean lines and slicing, bandages and corseting – an expression of the inner escapism felt by those trapped. Wide desolate hallways and angular shadows influenced longer free-flowing tunics that juxtaposed heavily with structuralism and constraining opponents – an exquisite play on the thoughts and physicality of those within the Berthold Autumn Winter asylum.
words by Jasmine Banbury
images by Alexis Negrin
With thanks to –
