Vienna Design Week 2013: Passionswege – chmara.rosinke @ Wäscheflott

We must admit to having had our problems with Vienna based design studio chmara.rosinke

Not in a physical, fisticuffs sort of way you understand, and certainly not in a screaming insults across a crowded bar way, but in a pure critical styleee.

With their project “Mobile Gastfreundschaft” chmara.rosinke, as far as we understand the whole madness, helped convince the t**** researchers and their lazy media morlocks that “nomadicity” would be a good horse to back. That’s obviously not chmara.rosinke’s fault, they can’t be held responsible for that, they didn’t set out to do that…… But guilt by association is in many ways stronger than guilt by action.

However, during Vienna Design Week 2012 they presented an exhibition of selected projects, a truly fantastic exhibition that for us explained the pair, their work and their design philosophy in a whole new light and allowed us to better understand what chmara.rosinke are really about.

And that was a real joy to experience and even allowed us to forgive the fact that we once saw them growing vegetables in boxes in a public space.

For Passionswege 2013 Ania Rosinke and Maciej Chmara were paired with the bespoke shirt and underwear tailor Wäscheflott.

In a project that is and was much more comprehensive and wide-ranging than the norm, chmara.rosinke developed new corporate identity material for Wäscheflott, redesigned the interior of the shop, but principally developed an object that aims to transform the metaphysical experience of having a shirt made for you into a physical object.

And have, in our opinion, achieved that in an object that is as poetic as it is practical.

Back at DMY Berlin 2010 we were introduced to Herrendiener by the Zürich based designer Moritz Schmid, a delightfully simple object designed with the aim of helping the gentleman dress.

And although the unnamed object created by chmara.rosinke for Wäscheflott bears no formal, practical or stylistic resemblance to Herrendiener. In spirit it is very much a continuation and intensifying of the idea.

Borrowing elements and form language from their back catalogue Ania Rosinke and Maciej Chmara have created a wonderfully reduced standing mirror with additional features that allows one to hang and temporarily store the required clothing and objects. Dressing is transformed from a mundane act, invariably undertaken in great haste, into an event. Something to saviour and which allows time for reflection. The clothes might not be bespoke. The moment is.

Just delightful.

And because it can all be folded flat it can also be easily transported…….