Mathis Ekkebus — Parsons Festival 2022

Collection

Thesis

The act of preservation is centered around the development of the future, enabling us to care for items, people and ourselves with the hopes to improve and evolve into seemingly more perfect entities.‘EKKE’ prides itself on riding the wave of sex-positivity while retaining it’s focus on dressing for the future; and possibly for the anthropocene. The collection will root itself through unpacking personal self-preservation whilst referencing Hong Kong’s unique scaffolding methods as a metaphor for the ways we envision protection. Relaxed, draped silhouettes, in conjunction with fortified structures will explore our relation between bone and skin, just like an embryonic building and its developing outer shell. In totality, the pieces from the collection will seem to build relationship with the wearer to further emphasize a narrative unpacking what it means to live within the qualms of humanity in relation to the manufactured existence projected onto our society to keep improving and re-building for the future.

Preface

Metal bones, and human flesh merge into an acclimation to humanity, what does it mean to live within the realms of a manufactured body? Cold stainless steel lines the walls of the housing chamber for a soul - laying asleep still delicately encrusted into the welding table developed to rapidly re-produce more prototypes. Formatted memories and implanted understandings connect the hard-drive to the motor by a long, unwinding coaxial cable. Two blinks, a lick of the lips, a soft inaudible movement shifts the shape of the fingers, releasing the hands from the bounding hinges of the wrist, elbow, shoulder and upper diaphragm. Whilst still remaining semi-developed, a seeming wetness spews from the seams of the body following lines familiar to the connectivity of epithelial tissue. The fluid flows out of the metal frame like tears, flowing across the cold landscape of shiny silver plaques wrapped In gauze - the tears eventually become streams flooding what was once a room full of machinery and computers. Water soon engulfs the room completely lifting the soon to be born body up detaching itself from the coaxial cable. Stillness. radiation. re-programming.

The manufactured body acts as a symbol for the way we can envision protection through the lens of consciousness; how do we begin to understand that we need to continue to exist - Is it the first intuitive thought in life and would this become something we need to program? The floating body registers the thought, sweltering the shards away from the body, creating a blossoming motif with the patches of peeling gauze, cracking like the outer shell of a urodidae cocoon. Silence continues as the body lands magnetically centered to the room’s cold floor - prototype manufacturing process complete.

Image: Emilio wears EKKE F/W ’23 “Preservation” S-Class Buckle Mecha Puffer Jacket, matching Channeled Skirt with Rib/Elastic Details in Mesh-Engulfed Quilt and “Coaxial-Cable” Spandex Bodysuit.

Image: Bean wears EKKE F/W ’23 “Preservation” Scaffold Wing Backpiece, Scaffold Draped Top with Elastic Detail in Iroko/Chocolate, Hybrid Garter Heel-Panties in Slate/Gray, Strapless Mesh Bodysuit and Gloves in Orchid.

Image: Emilio wears EKKE F/W ’23 “Preservation” Channeled Skirt with Rib/Elastic Details in Mesh-Engulfed Quilt and “Coaxial-Cable” Spandex Bodysuit

Video: EKKE F/W '23 'Preservation' Footage

Bio

EKKE was established in 2020 by Mathis Ekkebus, a Dutch-English fashion designer based between New York and Hong Kong. He is a senior student at Parsons, The New School for Design with a focus in womenswear. The brand is focused on delivering a subversive perspective on protection and armor through a future-centric lens; thus entails explorations in cyber comfort, celebration of the female form, and technological sanctuary. His approach to design is focused around blending his personal and heavily juxtaposed backgrounds and embedding them into his collections through researching his nostalgia and dreamscapes all while retaining a relation to the explorations he had through his upbringing in Hong Kong. The designs both play on the notion of human touch whilst embedding a cultivation of hyper-stylized worlds in film and video-games; often inspired by the stillness of films by Yorgos Lathimos in contrast to the eccentricity of Satoshi Kon. With the fashion industry posing many threats to the planet, EKKE moves towards dressing for the anthropocene - utilizing pushing sustainability, dead stock and re-purposed fabrics to create development in new production methods and pushing size inclusivity into the process.

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