INGRID KRAFTCHENKO

The Ingrid Kraftchenko label is founded by British radical Creative; Artist, Architect, Activist and Fashion Designer Ingrid Kraftchenko. She has gained critical acclaim for challenging modern luxury.  

Kraftchenko’s new collection embodies a futuristic nomadic cultural bodily uniform of dynamic and sustainable urban protection; embracing radial chaos. Kraftchenko continues to work with pre-existing and sustainable technical materials in innovative construction processes. Challenging the notions of functionality of deconstructive continuous skins in architecture and fashion in industrial collapse. The collection plays on the idea of the garment as a tool of self survival by critically examining the relationship between technology, economy and health and the design language of fetishished objects of desire and the flesh of the human body as an architectural probe. 

By re-appropriating fetish, military and medical aesthetics, she draws links between control, submission, resistance and community. The collection is emotionally and practically a self survival bodysuit; embodying the direct action and attitudes of exclusive militant activism towards her around her gender, race, mental health and environment that is blossoming amongst the decay and oppression. Embodying an avant garde philosophy of the futurists' manifesto of a rejection of the past and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence, youth and industry. The radical armour has been

developed to defend the self, and fight hazard and risk. 

Ingrid Kraftchenko (IK), is a British Artist, born in Dungeness, Kent. Previously a performance artist for Marina Abramovic and trained in Architecture and Engineering, she graduated from London College of Fashion Womenswear in 2017. She gained design experience for Margiela, Helmut Lang (Shayne Oliver), AF Vandervorst and Barbara Gongini in London, Paris and Antwerp, before launching her own brand label and multidisciplinary studio in London 2020. She frequently collaborates with her brother, James Alder, Architect RIBA (James Alder Architects) amongst many other contemporary visionaries and performance artists. 

With Design experience at Margiela, Helmut Lang, AF Vandevorst, Barbara Gongini and having worked closely with Shayne Oliver on work for Hood by Air and Helmut Lang, she launched her own label. She is currently part of the Centre of Fashion Enterprise and supported by the UKFT and showcases at London Fashion Week and showroom at Paris Fashion Week. 

“My work is a subversive utilitarian uniform exploring androgynous tailoring, reusing deadstock and focuses on the body as a site of social and political contestation, and subverting social conventions.” THE FACE 

"Previously working as a performance artist for Marina Abramović, Ingrid Kraftchenko started to design her collection by performing each of the characters she wanted to create. Titled Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (after the 1989 Pedro Almodóvar film) the collection explored gender power play, and archetypes of women... Cue the leather clad models their ensembles often with 80s power shoulders." DAZED

 

"Ingrid draws on the current climate and feelings around her. Her collection focuses on those dynamics by referencing femininity along with emotions of anger, despair, euphoria, mania and desire. TV: What inspired you to channel your political frustration into art? IK: It was a very personal project inspired by my own experiences and women around me. It reflects our political struggles in the current youth culture." TEEN VOGUE

Curated by Ingrid Krafchenko

Image: © Ingrid Kraftchenko