The NIGHTMARE DISORDER

Grey Sheep

@thenightmaredisorder

Location

arnhem / The Netherlands

University

ArtEZ university of art and design arnhem

Graduation year

2020

Contact

We are Nemo Cheminée and Benji Nijenhuis. We both graduated with honours from ArtEZ Fashion Design in September of 2020. This October we decided to join forces and form a fashion brand called “The Nightmare Disorder”. A nightmare disorder is a parasomnia characterized by frequent nightmares. Often resulting in sleep deprivation and anxiety. Functioning in the ‘real’ world becomes more and more difficult and puts the subject in an almost permanent dreamstate.

In this day and age we feel that getting a grasp on reality is nearly impossible. With the Nightmare Disorder we want to explore our dreams and realities but also our fears and anxieties. With our brand we want to look the monster under the bed in the eyes and pose questions like “Why are we here?”, “Why do we create?” and “Why do we need fashion?”

Latest Collection

the nightmare disorder

During graduation last year we applied for FASHIONCLASH Festival first ever The Clash House, a project meant to experiment with performative and new ways to present fashion. We wanted an opportunity to discover what the Nightmare Disorder was in its purest form, an experiment. For this presentation we decided to investigate what result would come out of merging and blending our work. We used our graduation collections, and styled these together to create a new story and explore where our aesthetics meet. We wanted to start with the Nightmare Disorder in it’s purest form. For this first collection we wanted to visualize the core of a nightmare disorder. A child having a dream about eight symptoms as guests on a 80s gameshow.

Because most of the collection was already finished it gave us the opportunity to really focus on a new way of presenting a collection. We worked together with theater performer Giovanni Brand as our performance coach and had the time to really work out the concept we had in mind. This was an eye opening experience for us, we absolutely loved working with performers and noticed that working with theatre performers really helped us to create a narrative for our project.