Tribal Hotel does design through research, processing and combining often incompatible ideas. The Twisted Crystal collection is a digital manipulation of memory, inspired by the travels of the Latvian Cubist painter Niklāvs Strunke in the 1920s.
Crystals form an important part of our contemporary lives, substances useful or harmful: crystals of LCD screens and sugar come to mind, both essential for the digital designer. Crystallic shapes and planes can also be called the paradigm of Cubism.
In his voyages, Strunke was awestruck by the small towns in mountainous Italian countryside, seeing them as a ‘Cubist paradise’, and this scenery became a constant source of inspiration for his paintings, theater sets, and costumes. On his visits to Paris, the fashion sense of its residents made a lasting impression upon Strunke, who dreamt of opening his own fashion boutique.
The collection gleans aesthetics from the colour schemes and forms found in Strunke’s paintings, digitally manipulating his memories with 3D software. The digital constructs are transformed into fashion pieces made of manually manipulated layers of fabrics, knitted and crocheted yarns, creating a new story in a landscape of memories.
