"Womenswear designer expressing her own sense of beauty through intricate hybrid pieces whilst paying tribute to everyday women around the world hand-knitting for their loved ones"
" Pauline Dujancourt is a London-based womenswear brand that focuses on the appreciation and continuation of female craftsmanship and a sensual approach to modern knitwear. The poet writes the poems, the sculptor sculpts art, and the knitter knits with their hands, creating a garment from scratch. Known for singular hybrid pieces, collaged together from deconstructed knit panels, all the pieces are hand-made by a team of female knitters across Europe and South America, and from all walks of life. The brand represents everyday women, who knit clothing for themselves, their children, and their loved ones. There is something deeply caring in a piece of knitwear. It is almost like a declaration of love. This pure act of caring is what the brand pays tribute to.
Pauline Dujancourt’s collections are made by women, for women. By redefining traditional craftsmanship techniques into a modern context, she wants to empower the women who are making the clothes. Usually, women who are making clothing by hand don’t get the recognition they deserve, but by creating, they are reclaiming their own independence. Through the medium of knitwear, Pauline wants to highlight female beauty and vulnerability. Her debut collection, “Dysfunctional Beauty”, which was her Master’s collection at Central Saint Martins encompassed a subtle balance between the worlds of beauty, desire, delicacy with a touch of the fragility and distress that comes with womanhood.
It is about the sensuality that Pauline finds when she drapes. Falling into her own world, she sculpts around the female body like only a woman can. By wearing her creations, she wants the wearer to feel seen and empowered – her clothing speaks for itself, and it has the ability to voice the conversations that sometimes we are too shy to have. The pieces live off the constant play of contrasts between precious materials, romance and awkwardness, rough finishings and distressed textiles.
It is about the preservation of craft and the freedom that lies within it. The magic lies within our palms, obsessively. By unravelling trims, open and slashed panels, distressed crochet and woven bits of fabric in the knitted panels, she creates a poetic expression by using her hands.
Because when we knit, we do it all over again. And again. We bleed until the story is told."
words by Nina Maria Schaarschmidt