CGD23

The word which best describes the works of Miroslava Kohutiarová and Antonín Soukup is most certainly ‘consistent’ – taken to mean the relative stability and coherency of mental characteristics and formal functions, volumes and shapes, their artistic language. Since 2010, their joint fashion project LAFORMELA has been providing such a coherent and stable position. These modern, subtly refined graphic garments are easy to combine with one another, whatever the season. Over the course of their career, the duo (formerly a trio) have been offering their clients sensible, opinionated outfits based in a modern anonymity. But although being coherent can sometimes harbor connotations of boredom, Mirka and Antonín keep playing around with a certain trendiness, ephemerality, superficiality and evanescence, and this gentle tension (at some times more literal) keeps their work from becoming predictable. In this way, LAFORMELA consciously balances on the threshold of surprise and confirmation.

This is most visible in the nominated LAFORMELA x KB collection, a special collaboration which provided the opportunity to use innovative materials made of recycled carbon. The LanzaTech technology is able to transform the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into ethanol which is then used to produce other materials. In this case, it served to produce a fiber which has a similar look, characteristics and functionality to polyester. The material is innovative, but so is the way LAFORMELA worked with this unusual and sometimes difficult fiber. They adapted the basic codes of their aesthetic codex and created silhouettes (for the first time also men’s) which remain modern and topical – quite an unusual feat in the category of ecologically responsible garments. And they used their futurist vibe in their main line which was also nominated this year. Its strongest features are found in stylistic variability, its ability to strike a balance between prints and textures, and the extreme contrast between transparency and density.

Jan Králíček