Streamlined and extremely wearable, this season’s Rundholz Dip focuses on silky essentials made for layering.
Carsten and Lenka Rundholz’s approach to design is similar to that of the ancient alchemical arts, transforming the seemingly mundane into something entirely different and enchanting. The duo will stitch together thin fabric panels into a sculptural dress, lace a jersey neckline with silk to create a hint of elegance or nick a hem to forge drama and drape. Just as ancestral alchemists mixed silver and gold to create platinum, Carsten and Lenka combine skirt cuts with the seaming of harem pants, creating a beautiful combination of the two. This is a studio focused on innovating fashion at its core – influencing the way we wear things and why we wear them.
One of the most fascinating presentations in Rundholz DIP’s spring is the creamy, mid-weight knits. What reads first as a subtly shiny cotton fiber is actually a 100% raw silk yarn. In addition to being incredibly soft, breathable and moisture-wicking, raw silk is a particularly strong fabric and highly resistant to pilling. Despite the intentional distressing in the design, this is a clever choice of material to use in these pieces – ensuring each will maintain their shape and finish for decades to come.
In another experimentation with silk, Carsten and Lenka have also sent along several tops, pants, skirts and dresses in stretch silk, a light-as-air material with a light sheen that conforms to the contours of the body. DIP’s special hand-dye methods work a bit of magic across this textile, modeling the grays a bit like concrete and steeping the blacks to a perfect midnight hue. The dyeing is what separates this line from Carsten and Lenka’s main Rundholz label. The entirety of Rundholz DIP, including the works in Nessel white, have been colored and finished through specialized dip-dyeing, creating a unique patina across garment’s magic.
