Kirsten Elfe's Projects

BFA Student

Major: Textile & Fashion Design

Graduation Year: 2019

Artist Statement:

Euro Kind is a reconstruction of my family’s history so that I may find my place within it. It is the realization of my own personal cinematic daydream. This collection is a coming-of-age story told through the framework of costuming. It is a practice in garment design for film; defining the world of my character and designing my garments for the setting of a narrative. My inspiration was family photo albums dating back to the early 1970’s when my father’s family lived in Germany. I have recreated the narrative of my family history by superimposing a hyper-fantastical version of myself as the protagonist in the story. I do this by mixing textiles from the time period with my own cheeky, contemporary aesthetic and custom knitwear. Character traits manifest as material choices such as corduroy and mohair while silhouette dictates newfound maturity as the collection appears.

Biography:

Kirsten Elfe is a textiles + fashion designer based on the seacoast of New England with special interest in machine knitting and film costuming. Her practice takes a cinematic approach to clothing design. Elfe is a graduate from Maine College of Art in Portland with a BFA in Textiles + Fashion Design. She competed in the inaugural 2018 Project Upcycle design competition held at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and is lead instructor for their upcoming Summer workshop: Fashion ReWerked. Most recently, her work was shown in MECA’s annual runway show, exhibiting her thesis collection, Euro Kind, which explored the veil between runway and stage.