MARIJE SEIJN

Polina Beyssen

NEXT GENERATION

Marije Seijn is a rising Amsterdam-based designer and artist who found her special fashion-meets-art market niche. Having grown disaffected with the traditional fashion system’s rigid rules, Marije dropped out of fashion school after one year and enrolled in a fine arts course at Gerrit Rietveld Art Academy. After multiple experiments with sculpture and painting she grew to realize that she could apply her artistic methods to garments, treating the human body as her canvas. This was the beginning of her explorations into wearable art.

Each of Seijn’s garments is one-of-a-kind and fully made from recycled fabrics, reflecting the designer’s very intuitive, non-linear and spontaneous creative process. Her graduation collection of cocoon-like, oversized womenswear was inspired by the 1975 documentary ‘Grey Gardens’ and constructed from repurposed found materials, in an homage to the film’s ideas of the complex relationship between the past and the present. As part of a sustainable project commissioned by the City of Amsterdam, her latest collection was made from leather pieces Seijn cut from discarded old furniture she found in the street. She cleaned and repainted the thick leather strips and arranged them into colorful patchwork patterns, creating bold and unique leather garments as a result. Thinking far outside the fashion box, this designer is an emerging talent to keep an eye on.