Sonni Svenningsens

Back story

My grandmother’s sister was just a few years older than herself so she was taken to become a young German soldier where she wore a tea-stained colored blazer, black cargo pants, and an off-white shirt but her duties were to be domestic; feed animals on a farm, learn how to sew and support the German Army. When the war was over just after 1945 Sonni and my grandmother were in front of the Gutshause cleaning when a soldier approached Sonni and held a gun to her temple and told her to sing. She was not able to sing so my grandmother sang instead and the soldier left them be. “Strong-Particular-Dependence articulates a necessary condition on intuition. The claim is that without the current existence and presence of some particular physical object, there can be no intuition. “ (Stephenson, 2015:5).

Garment construction

The blazer was inspired by the young German female uniform, the movie ‘Downfall’, and to add a contemporary style to the blazer I was inspired by: Balmain - 2014/ Look 1 - Fall: Ready- to-wear with the layered front panels that separate just before the lower pocket.

Prints

The print motif was inspired by the domestic side and visual contrast to the construction of the garment using a sewing motif and collection: Hand sewing needles, embroidery hoops, knitting needles, buttons, clasps and fastenings, rulers, scissors, crochet hooks, pins, thread, snippers, etc used my pre-cut fabric and coated it with cyanotype mixture and exposed the sewing motif on it and left it for 24hrs. I bleached all the fabric pieces using Ammonia and then stained the pieces with tea that I boiled in a pot to give them a deep rich brown color.