VENCZEL x Kelly Konings
SOFT VESSELS is a collaborative project between leather goods designer Matilda Venczel and textile designer Kelly Konings, challenging the boundaries between jacquard woven textiles and leather goods design. The collaboration resulted in five highly sculptural vessels.
Hybrid objects that merge the visual language of handbags, basketweave, and soft jacquard woven textiles. These forms, made entirely by hand at the Copenhagen Venczel studio, are constructed from jacquard-woven textiles created by Konings and jacquard-woven at the outstanding Norwegian weaving mill Innvik by VEVFT led by Kristina Austi.
The project underscores the importance of place-based knowledge and cultural heritage, focusing on Nordic materials such as Swedish wool, deadstock linen, and paperyarn. Each piece is shaped with a commitment to local production, sustainability, and craft innovation.
Drawing inspiration from Japanese basketry, where texture and shape hold equal value, SOFT VESSELS proposes new ways of thinking about function and abstraction in design. The vessels are not only functional objects but speculative containers of material knowledge, aesthetic experimentation, and cultural memory.
As such, they blur the line between utility and artistry, encouraging a reconsideration of how contemporary fashion and textile systems operate.
As containers for carrying resources, the vessels are thus gathering experience and knowledge from different fields, insisting on their inseparable amalgamation and importance.
The vessels become a futuristic suggestion in both aesthetic and as an alternative, leaving a trace for both present and future to change processes and supply.
Spiralling curves on soft vessels in abstract forms flow in front of the eye,their functionality almost feels serendipitous, with the quiet mystery of something not meant to be.
Premiered at Copenhagen Fashion Week SS26, SOFT VESSELS contributes to broader discussions about sustainability, female craftsmanship, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
‘Soft Vessels’ celebrates alternative fashion futures through the lens of materiality, locality, and craft. This project has kindly received funding from the Culture and Art Programme ‘Nordic Culture Point’, financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers.
Gommatex x Kelly Konings
Gommatex is an Italian textile company and GOTS-certified weaving mill founded by the Giovannelli family in 1960. Focusing on jacquard woven textiles in indigo cotton in the textile district of Prato, the company has a strong commitment to innovation, research and sustainable developments combined with artisan expertise.
The denim collaboration GOMMATEX X KELLY KONINGS showcases a holistic design approach by placing the craft of sustainable and expressive textile-making at the forefront of denim.
The textile collection is deeply rooted in the female culture of homemade textiles, such as the crochet tablecloths my grandmother used to make.
Female craft practices, particularly in textiles, have long served as a means of
intergenerational transmission of knowledge and identity.
The denim collaboration GOMMATEX X KELLY KONINGS showcases a holistic design approach by placing the craft of sustainable and expressive textile-making at the forefront of denim.
Indigo linen structure woven on a indigo cotton warp, after washing the cotton shrinks more than the linen, creating a textural expression of a unique combination between yarn and weaving construction.
3D woven boots from Enschede Textielstad
3D jacquard woven boots in local linen from The Linen Project and wool. Handcut floats in a fil coupé weaving technique create nicely stubborn fringes due to the contrast between the linen and the wool. Jacquard woven at Enschede Textielstad in the Netherlands with the hyper-modern Smart Creel warping system.
The 3D woven boots were awarded with the P:I:G Award 2025 by Henrik Vibskov and the P:I:G Foundation during a festive celebration at Gammel Strand art center in Copenhagen, Denmark.
WEEEF x Kelly Konings
For this special collaboration, a whole-garment woven football jersey was created. Mimicking a well-known garment archetype that is usually not made in a woven fabric. Resulting in a wearable, whole-garment woven item, whole-garment weaving is a weaving technique where the entire garment is woven into one piece. Meaning the side seams, embroidery details and so on are all woven in one go. After weaving, the garments are carefully washed, cut, and ready to be worn.
Inspired by the symbolic use of graphics and colours in football jerseys, the top and bag show an infinity symbol and a globe, that express how simplified production chains and the local production of textiles and garments can play an important role in regenerative and circular design, beyond generations!
The items are made in 100% cotton with the highest standard of detail and material by weaving mill EE Exclusives, the first OEKO-TEX STeP certified textile company in the Netherlands.
VITRA x Levi’s x Kelly Konings
Recomposed VITRA Eames Lounge Chair, from several pre-used chairs re-outfitted with a jacquard woven denim textile from deadstock Levi’s® yarns. Shown at “Icons re/outfitted” by the Visionary Lab during Dutch Design Week Inspired by jeans archetype elements such as a worn out, faded look with destroy and bleach elements all woven simultaneously in a layered weaving construction. Creating the illusion of holes using an innovative 2D weaving technique with a 3D effect, resulting in a distressed look in an organic gradient twill structure from blue to almost white without the need for bleaching – a testament to the transformative power of modern weaving.
Mirage of dress.
The process of weaving is an entangled combination of emotion and reason, as textiles are one of the first tactile memories we have. Holding the power to reconnect with times long gone and memories forgotten. Memories of washed-out flower dresses, the soft fraying of a shirt’s collar, the pilling of the knitted sweater my grandmother made, the worn-out elbows on the tweed coat stuffed away in the attic. All these touches of the hand, lost in time.
Whole-garment woven cowboy boots in deadstock linen from damask weaving mill ‘Klässbols Linneväveri’, homegrown linen from ‘The Linen Project’ and a soft wool on a cotton warp. Inspired by a peony patterned dress my grandmother used to wear.
Whole-garment woven blazer-blanket in deadstock linen from damask weaving mill ‘Klässbols Linneväveri’, homegrown linen from ‘The Linen Project’ and a soft wool on a cotton warp.
Jacquard woven textiles drawing from personal sentimental memorabilia of garments, blankets and curtains that ones were, holding the power to transgress into a collective questioning of the current relationship we have with the textiles and clothing that surround us. Opening up a discussion on how to care for our memories embedded in the fibres and yarns instead of discarding them lovelessly.
Whole-garment woven doily lace sweater, jacquard woven with local Swedish wool from ‘Ullkontoret’.
Textiles jacquard woven with local yarns such as wool that has been carefully collected at different farms around Sweden, washed and processed on the island of Gotland by ‘Ullkontoret’. Proposing a new and holistic way of designing and producing textiles and garments locally.
Jacquard woven brocade textile in wool with linen and a digital weaving sketch.
Jacquard woven structure in wool with cotton and linen floats on a cotton warp.
Hybrid forms of dressing.
In the current state of the textile and fashion industry, these two are mostly designed and produced in completely separate systems. Only meeting in the final outcome of a garment. Leaving many sustainable and aesthetic textile design possibilities unused, but also increasing textile waste by underutilising material characteristics and by producing unwanted textiles.
In this collection, 2D jacquard woven textiles were crafted that hold the possibility to be worn as 3D garments. Draped and folded onto the body, these whole-garment woven textiles urge the viewer to rethink the interdependent relationship between a textile and a garment.
The structure of the weave, the jacquard patterns, the yarns and colours have the ability to link the textile to the garment, materialising the interdependency of the two. The woven textiles can be transformed from a 2D
textile into a 3D garment and vice versa.
For example, colour gradients that look like a worn-out effect have been woven into the textile, but also the labelling, stitch details, side seams, collars, sleeves and pockets have been woven directly into the textile.
Textiles that are expressing garment archetypes such as jeans, the knitted sweater or a blazer in hybrid forms of dressing.
Jacquard woven structure in local Swedish wool on a cotton warp, mimicking a cable knitted sweater and socks.
The yarns used in this collection are mostly linen and wool and a mix of deadstock yarns from the Swedish textile industry. Such as linen from the damast weaving mill Klässbols and tufting wool that is normally used for rugs from Kasthall. Besides that, textiles were made with local wool that has been carefully collected at farms around Sweden and washed and processed in Gotland by Ullkontoret. Proposing a new and holistic way of designing and producing textiles and garments locally.
Moiré type of effects and multiple layered compound weaves in cotton
Jacquard woven twill structures in deadstock linen and indigo cotton on a cotton warp.
Deadstock linen in different hues of blue mimicking a worn out denim jacket and jeans, jacquard woven in a multi-layering system to create destroy details such as holes and worn out edges.
The woven textiles can be transformed from a 2D textile into a 3D garment and vice versa. Weaving in pocket, stitch lines and button holes to create the illusion of a denim jacket.
The structure of the weave, the jacquard patterns, the yarns and colours have the ability to link the textile to the garment.
For more information, collabs or freelance projects, please contact [email protected]