Trend-knitters
Even Hollywood stars are enthusiastically knitting socks, while needle workers run the risk of earning again the cliché of housewives – Nonetheless, a few wool activists attempt to do away with this stigma.Old patterns are continued. No women’s magazine that has recently published reports about knitting, failed to note the following trend: Even Hollywood stars like Julia Roberts do it! As if teaming up with the rich and beautiful through balls of wool wouldn't be enough, magazines have topped it off. They associate needlework with traditional feminine values and rejoice about the fact that Madonna has transformed from a sinful pop siren into a knitting super-mom.
Knitting celebrities are assigned back to the home, from where knitting originates as a pre-industrial female task: because it formed the perfect marriage with household chores and childcare, and later it was embellished as a female quality.
Knitted graffiti
It is just about time to do away with the cosy image of wool. A number of movements have dragged the knitting basket out of the home into the public. In the US urban district of Montrose, Texas, colourful wool covers are wrapped around window handles, finger-wide knitted covers around car antennas, while striped shirts warm tree trunks: Knitted graffiti. The project is spearheaded by two mothers in their thirties that became bored sitting at home with their half-finished baby jumpers and socks and rather opted to place wool decorations outside. "There is no message behind it", quotes the Houston Press both ladies, "it is simply fun. We don’t just want to sit at a café and count stitches."
Particularly in the USA many young women see knitting as a political or artistic statement. Be it crafting groups such as "stich\n\bitch" that come together to discuss, while working their needles. Or organizations such as Microrevolt and their project knitPro that received an award at the Ars Electronica 2005 in Linz: a web application that allows to generate knitting patterns of sweatshop logos. Here, needlework becomes a vehicle for demonstrating work conditions in large global corporations.
Subversive knitting
Sabrina Gschwandtner is well-worsed in pulling the strings, when it comes to placing knitting into a new context: The New York native with Austrian roots – her father is Austrian and some family members still live in Salzburg and Vienna – has dedicated herself to the art of knitting. The thirties something organizes public knitting events or exhibits; the theme of her latest exhibition at the New York Museum of Arts & Design was subversive knitting.
She has been publishing the magazine knitknit for five years, an art magazine with a focus on knitting and crochet – not a conflict in the USA. "When you place knitting into an extreme context, such as David Cole, who had two diggers equipped with giant needles knit the American flag, you lend an entirely new meaning to knitting. An aspect that counters the conservative image of needlework, makes people think", explains Gschwandtner the fascination with the art of knitting. In September this year her book titled "Profiles and Projects from Knitting\s New Wave" was published, featuring 25 profiles of luminaries in the knitting scene, essays about knitting culture and yes, even knitting stitches.
The knitting fun guerrilla that tours the public space in Great Britain can’t identify with such seriousness and theories: But "Cast off" seek to rebel too. Members of the club show up in subways, nightclubs or museums. They are generally in their twenties or thirties, who create non-functional items such as lipsticks and sandwiches made from knits. Once they even outfitted an entire wedding party with knitwear. The public knitters always keep an eye on the audience – they encourage them to grab the needles too. After all, "Cast off" wants you to convert: Needlework? "It's fun!".
Rock music and a knitted background
While women’s magazines continue to feature celebrities who knit sock after sock, young Berlin-based labels have been knitting a new wool image. This is only possible by maintaining an ironical distance, explains Maike Dietrich from Maiami: "No one needs a knitted angora bikini, but this is exactly what I play with."
Leyla Piedayesh, founder of Lala Berlin, experimented last year with accessories in the shape of knitted dogs. They were worn around the arm accessorised with braces and Swarovski stones, and seem to laughingly allude to Berlin’s image as a dog capital. Or to the pet dog mania of Paris Hilton and Co.
Piedayesh’s latest fashion trend for 2007 is the long forgotten Keffiyeh in a stylish version made from 100 per cent cashmere. Claudia Schiffer has helped Lala Berlin’s fame, when a photograph taken by a paparazzo showed her wearing an oversized jumper by the label.
However, the most humorous proof for knitting’s new facelift was given by Björk on her new album cover "Volta" and by Michel Gondry. For a video shoot the famous director placed the Australian band Steriogram into an imaginary world made of wool. Noisy rock music in midst of a softly knitted world: That rocks indeed!
Mareike Müller
further information:
www.myspace.com/knittaplease
www.knitknit.net
www.castoff.info
www.maiami.de
www.lalaberlin.com
www.steriogram.com
