FASHION touches on themes such as the role of clothing in shaping the wearer’s (desired) identity, the pressure of the fashion system that dictates contemporary aesthetic taste, fashion bulimia in general, and the question of how clothing can best be repurposed rather than discarded.

For this work, Bartels used garments she parted with in 2024 for various reasons. By cutting the clothes into pieces, photographing them, and rearranging them, she reversed the design process.

The book consists of posters featuring photographs of the cut-up garments, alongside cards containing fragments of the original fabrics. In this way, Fashion becomes an ode to the clothing pieces that did not find a place in Bartels’ wardrobe in the spring of 2024.