Dear Shaded Viewers,
Dutch designer Ronald van der Kemp delivered a positive and hopeful message for the future with a performance piece with 29 masked models appearing in the windows of the Hotel Europe and one model arrived by boat. All of them were wearing archive pieces as well as pieces from the latest collection accompanied by a couture mask designed especially for this performance.
Ronald wants to help refugees and decided to auction the masks and donate the profits to the Refugee company, which will open the first factory in Holland to produce surgical masks made by refugees.
Choreography Nathalie Haelermans
Zoom meeting on set, instructing the models
Photos by Marijke Aerden
Film by Kitty Kooring for the soon to be released RVDK Documentary…coming in the fall
and a short 30 sec film by a 3 man camera crew and a drone operator.
Music -fragments of intro ‘Der Rosenkavalier’ Richard Strauss
Selected couture masks, sketches and images of the event will be exhibited in Amsterdam in September 2020 and auctioned to benefit Refugee Company.
https://abeautifulmess.nl/en/home/
For weeks now we are confined in our homes
We are told to wear masks when we go outside
An outside threat
An eerie new reality
The only thing we can do is surrender
A WHITE FLAG:
SURRENDER
We put globalization on hold
Bringing back a deep appreciation for our local heroes, front line workers, neighbors
A chance for societal change
The world on halt
We see that the skies are clearer, nature blooms and even wild animals come out
NEGOTIATE
The constraints of these times fuel our imagination, forcing us to reimagine the future
Making us all aware of our destructive relationship with the planet
A time to reconsider our industry and how it is participating to a world that is facing a tremendous crisis
A BLANK SHEET
It’s up to us how we move forward, how we preserve this state of mindfulness
and appreciativeness of the things we need to miss out now
It’s up to all of us to what extent we are willing to listen to all the signals we are given
Moving away from quantity back to quality
Appreciating local craftsmanship, substance and soul
This is our chance to reset
MASK
It’s up to us to reveal ourselves
To stop hiding behind filters
Stop hiding an inconvenient truth
Who are we as humans and as companies and what do we stand for?
Let’s make the world beautiful and healthy
Let’s make history and start a true sustainable era!
“New ethics in luxury fashion’
Ronald van der Kemp, April 23 2020
