Marlou Breuls / House of Rubber 

The Rooom Divider 

Designer Marlou Breuls was invited to take part in the R&D programme that pushes the boundaries of fully fashioned knitting. She worked with knitting expert Damien Semerdjian on the new Stoll 830S flat knitting machine, which was specially purchased to take 3D knitting to the next level. Their experiments resulted in The Room Divider, a semi-transparent curtain in which the contours of a woman appear and disappear. The dynamic movement represents social pressure regarding gender roles as well as the adaptability that is expected of us.

To produce the desired transparency and shine, the curtain was made entirely of recycled polyester: a combination of locally recycled monofilament and multifilament. The challenge was to develop a flexible but structurally stable knit from which three-dimensional shapes emerge. The curtain consists of panels that were knitted on the full 210-cm width of the machine but contract to a width of about 50 cm. Small motors on the curtain rails bring the woman to life. The Rooom Divider can be seen in the TextielMuseum until 30 March in the exhibition ‘SHAPE – body, fashion, identity’.

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Photos by Josefina Eikenaar and Patty van den Elshout commissioned by TextielMuseum