Meet Amber De Goude
The Amsterdam-born designer on collage as a design method, keeping craft alive, and the bride who literally ran away.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Amber de Goede, a recent graduate from the Swedish School of Textiles in Boras, who was just recognized by VOGUE Scandanavia as one of the top 5 student designers to keep an eye out for. Before Sweden, she spent three years at AMI in Amsterdam learning the technical foundations of pattern construction. Her graduate collection, Paper Dolls, is the result of a process that started somewhere else entirely and ended as a full exploration of collage as a design method, translated from paper to body.
We talked for over an hour about craft, collage, heritage, and the very specific kind of patience it takes to bead an entire sleeve by hand. She introduced me to the term Monk-Work a term used in Amsterdam used to describe the tedious and precise labor often times assimilated with that of work monks do at a monestary .
This is Amber de Goede.
What inspires you most? Does it come from inside you, or from the world around you?
"Mostly from outside, and then I process it within. I really admire things like mold, or rain and what it does to a surface. A lot of people think that is gross. But I like to make something pretty out of it."
For Paper Dolls, the entry point was collage. Something she has done since childhood, cutting and pasting with her mother, then vision boards, then mood boards, and now the organizing principle of an entire graduate collection.
"With collage I can really let go. With a pencil I just draw what I already know. With collage I can arrive somewhere I would not have found otherwise."
How do silhouettes shape the story you're telling?
"For Paper Dolls, scale, layering, and contrast were my three principles, taken straight from two-dimensional collage. I really wanted this naive, childlike narrative. Big sculptural shapes with very intricate details like beading and embroidery. The clash between those two things was the whole point. Taking that traditional, delicate craft into a more modern and abstract context."
Her studies also gave her two distinct lenses: AMI in Amsterdam for technical pattern construction, and the Swedish School of Textiles for experimental, lab-based textile work. This allowed for her to have a dual faceted learning experience that transaltes in the technical work behind her garments
"Seeing it on a model. That is the moment. You spend so long in the lab, the piece lives in your hands and your head. Then it gets on a body and becomes something real. That transition is a crazy moment."
She noted that she enjoyed her ideation and creation project but seeing it flow on a body really solidified her piece into reality and allows for her to see the hours of labor spent into the
What's a material or technique you keep going back to that most people overlook?
"Beading. It is so intricate and takes so much time that most people would never put it on an everyday piece. But I am always drawn back to it. This is the Monk Work of my practice"
For the fabric itself, she went unconventional. Stiff materials originally made for furniture. A sheer crinoline with a translucency that only revealed itself when layered. She laser-cut circles from it and spent time pinning them to a mannequin, trying configurations, looking for what worked.
"The circles attach on one side so they still have movement on the other. A stiff jacket, a skirt that moves. I thought that combination was right."
In the printing lab she went further. Reactive dye, acids, salts, different ratios, different fabrics. She kept detailed notes on every test.
"I was feeling like such a scientist. Lab coat, goggles, measuring milliliters. Some results looked like a four-year-old did it. Others were beautiful. "
Ten years from now, what do you want people to say you changed?
"Keeping crafts alive. Traditional embroidery, beading, lace-making, these are disappearing not because something better replaced them but because the conditions for passing them down no longer exist. Every country has its own craftsmanship that took generations to develop. Our grandparents had a relationship with their clothes. They wore pieces for decades."
With an ever evolving scope of fashion and cycles changing faster than we can scroll she hopes to be part of the conversation and generation that changes this relationship with fashion. With her tedious craftsmanship and attention to detail she aims not only keep craft alive but to pass down the techniques preventing them from going extinct in todays world of automation.
It started as a runaway bride. Amber had the concept sitting in her notes app for a while. Bridal wear merged with running wear. The smocking techniques, the intricate construction of a wedding gown pushed into something athletic and contemporary. She loved the tension of it. And then, the bride literally ran away.
"The more I collaged, the more the collaging took over the whole project. The bridal references faded. The sportswear direction was not really me. I realized the collage itself was the collection. That is how I got from the runaway bride to Paper Dolls."
"It depends on the piece. For the jacket I had the shape and needed a material heavy enough to hold it. For the skirt it was the opposite. I found the fabric first and let it show me what it could do." The crinoline skirt came from layering. The translucency of two pieces of the same fabric stacked. She laser-cut circles, tried them on a mannequin in every configuration she could think of, and landed on an attachment method that gave a rigid garment something it had no business having. Movement. "I just try different things. Cut up the textile, combine it with other materials, try a contrasting stitch, see what happens. F*** around and find out, basically."