DESIGN AND FASHION
The Faroese towns and villages lie like dots of colour in an expanse of green, and when the sun begins to shine, maybe after a long period of mist and rain, it is as if this is a cause of celebration and suddenly there is real festivity in the world. Something similar pertains to clothes: When there are celebrations and parties the colours come out. In recent years it has become more and more usual for the young to acquire the traditional Faroese festival clothes, and graduation photographs are no longer taken without most - especially the girls – being clad in national costume, with their own individual versions. More colours have arrived and the time has long past where you considered the “úlpan”, the grey or green jacket with hood on the head, as being the Faroese national costume. Wool has been restored to favour. As the country’s own name indicates, sheep have been a decisive part of the basis of life on the islands and a couple of hundred years ago wool was of the same importance for the country’s export, percent wise, as fish is today. It was said that wool is Faroes’ gold. But then the world’s many new and cheaper textiles began streaming in, and for many years wool was considered more of a burden than a benefit.
However work was done to preserve the know ledge of the tradi tional handicraft. It is responsible and demanding work to treat wool in the right way, to wash and clean it and to sort our the right nuances and qualities, and to spin by hand or on a spinning wheel. In the normal Faro ese household, there were at least two spinning wheels on the go during the winter, when the men were not out fi shing in distant waters off Iceland and Greenland, and it was generally the work of the man to spin on the spinning wheel. It was considered that men spun more even and stronger thread, whilst women spun more loose and uneven, but on the other hand softer and more supple. Even though it was not unusual for men to be able to knit, the entire production from yarn to clothes was the women’s responsibility, and it is to the women’s credit that a whole new creative activity rooted in old experiences has occurred in recent years, a remarkable development from a preservation effort. Suddenly it was as if the street scene had changed. You began to see people walking in woven clothes on a normal day. The Faroese coat, a jacket of strongly woven wool, was revived, but in a new cut and new colour tones. You could see them on venerable citizens of many different types, but especially on the young. A wealth of combinations has developed with blends of knitted and woven products often full ed and matted, so the cloth is waterproof and windproof, sometimes with insertions of leather or even modern substances and materials. What happened? One thing was that a new selfawareness arose after the economic crisis in the fi rst half of the nineties, more importantly the Faroese wool’s special qualities were discovered anew.
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Manmade textiles with allergy inducing sub stances were becoming a growing affl iction, and here at hand was the genuine article: it walked in the fi elds or up in the mountains and ate grass. The Faroese wool’s special secret in relation to other wool is its natural lanolin content, making it water repellent, and the wool’s mixture of coarser and fi ner fi bres gives it an excellent insulation quality against the cold and heat. But what has been decisive is that a whole generation of welleducated Faroese de signers has come forward and proceeded to experiment in earnest. They know their local conditions and are familiar with the large wealth of old patterns, where you can see that knitting wasn’t just a handicraft, but a work of art, where you exerted yourself to make the material more beautiful than it needed to be. But they are not bound by tradition and closely follow what is happening in the outside world. And as something new, they began to professionally market their creations both in the Faroes, and in other countries. Specialised shops with new designs have appeared both in Tórshavn and in other places in the Faroes, and in the large clothes shops in Copenhagen you can fi nd Faroese creations causing people to stop and marvel at how many things can be made with wool. Faroese clothes designs are included in exhibitions in other countries, and samples have reached as far as the new capital of fashion, New York. Tradition has remained in the festival clothes with all their colours. The exciting thing is that the Faroese design is breaking through on its own free terms, though as a new and living continuation of a very old experience. |
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