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German designer uses traditional Chinese crafts
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WHILE many local designers look for further study or career development in foreign countries, German designer Nicole Goymann chose to stay in the countryside of Yuhang, Hangzhou, and, inspired by Chinese traditional material, pushed her job to a new level.
Goymann, who freelances as an apparel designer, has worked with big brands like Puma. She came to Hangzhou in 2010 with her boyfriend, Christoph John, also a designer. The couple, with two others, cofounded a design team called PINWU.
PINWU invites a bevy of designers to participate in Milan Design Week every year with projects themed on Chinese traditional materials. Once it was paper, once bamboo, and once silk.
PINWU’s projects have won the Red Point Award, the top prize of Milan Design Week.
“There is so much that can be found in the research about Chinese handicrafts,” Goymann says.
She says she learned from scratch about fashion in China by working with Wu Haiyan, the country’s fabric master, in her Hangzhou studio. Goymann established her own Juli Hara Studio in the city in 2013.
Combining fashion and tradition, Goymann and her boyfriend earlier this year issued their latest joint work: Leizu Shoes, named after the Chinese empress credited with inventing the silk reel, are made of threads of silk so fine they could be mistaken for strands of blond hair.
Goymann and John wound wet silk threads around a shoe and used natural silk glue to hold them together as they dried, creating different styles of upper for ladies’ footwear.
They sourced silkworm cocoons from Hangzhou, and they reeled the silk on their own in the traditional manner with the silk reel — a tool invented in China around 2000 BC and still used today.
The high-heeled shoes have soles made from the bark of a mulberry tree — the plant that provides the main food source for silkworms. The heels are moulded in transparent acrylic plastic. The shoes are currently only decorative pieces, but the pair hopes to turn them into wearable shoes, resistant to stains and dirt, by the end of next year.
The designers came up with the idea after silk threads kept sticking to Goymann’s bobbin while she tried to weave them into a textile.
Goymann likes to creatively make her own fabrics. By exploring Chinese materials, she twists bamboo paper to yarn and then weaves yarns into carpets and pillows. She has also mingled paper and silk and invented the fiber CloudSilk, which looks like a cloud after it is woven.
“They are both results of research into traditional Chinese paper-making techniques,” she explains.
Among all the experiences of studying Chinese materials, the most impressive story for Goymann is learning to make raw ramie yarn, which is demanding and endangered. The duo went to Yichun in northeastern China to find one of the last women to create the finest yarn by hand.
The couple also likes to be close to nature, so they chose to live in Wuchang Town, Yuhang, close to the PINWU office yet a suburban locale an hour’s drive from downtown.
Goymann describes it as “perfect for designers to quickly develop ideas and recharge batteries.”
Now Goymann’s Juli Hara Studio in Yuhang is like a workshop of handicrafts. Loom, reeling silk tools, spinning wheels, wood and bamboo made containers and tools — so original that it does not look like a German’s studio.
“I used to work with computer a lot, but now I realize the best way to have fast results for me is to create with my hands — it is also more satisfying,” she says.
Next year their project will be about porcelain, she says.
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