For All kind by Saskia Lenaerts

I have a love and hate relationship with fashion and its industry. I believe it is a world of extremes, where beauty and artistic quality are juxtaposed against ethically challenging aspects of our current worldly landscape. Everyday I question the choices and decisions I make, from my designs to what I eat for dinner, and their impact on our world,. This juxtaposition is precisely what keeps me on the edge of my seat. It inspires and motivates me to engage in this discussion about fashion and it leaves me space to influence, impact and possibly change perspectives on fashion and our society.

Trained as a dancer from the age of four has exposed me to the overlap between the human body and art. In my work I aim to discover and test boundaries between fashion design and the body in a fine art context. It is the trans-disciplinary area of fashion that interests me. The combination of my multicultural background and my critical views on what it means to live in an ever-changing cosmopolitan world makes my work an amalgamation of influences and a hybrid in itself. It raises questions about shape and it aims to shape new identities. To create garments at the intersection of art and sculptural form intended for a human being to express oneself in, is where one could place my work.

The body expresses the most personal aspects of ourselves, how we move, what we choose to wear, how we walk and how we compose ourselves triggers a direct and an immediate interpretation of who we are. And how this expression is different for everyone and changes everyday is what I find intriguing.
The appreciation of all the different aesthetics in fashion and art is a main source of inspiration for me and indirectly indicates that everybody and everything can be beautiful in its own right, as it is subject to different opinions and tastes shaped by the personal and societal influences we have been exposed to.

I am not the designer who designs and makes clothes for the hell of making them, to add more merchandise to the world. I aim to work in a more critical, meaningful and unique way.
I am a humanist strongly concerned with, engaged in and intrigued by what occurs on our planet.
To navigate back and forth between the imaginary lines of fashion, art and critical thinking gives me a limitless liberty to express myself.