By Cassandra Pizzey / 14-06-2012

Clothing designer Selina Parr and production designer Lara Tolman are the driving force behind NOMAN, a collective – or “fashion phenomenon” as they prefer to call it – which alters our preconceptions about what fashion is.

Parr and Tolman create not only garments and fashion collections but also a number of installations, such as the one on show at Depot Basel. This satellite event of Design Miami/Basel is an initiative of ‘Association For Demanding Everyday Culture’, six creatives including Laura Pregger, Moritz Walther and Matylda Krzykowski who aim to bring various kinds of international contemporary design together.

“We were asked to participate by the designer Michael Schoner, also part of the show”, says Selina Parr. “It’s our first time exhibiting in Basel so we don’t really know what to expect but it would be great to find a gallery.”

To aid their search NOMAN is presenting NOCOM, an installation featuring various coloured ropes, hanging down from white boxes and forming different shapes and colour combinations. The five objects feature 4000 ropes in eight different colours which have been cut into shape.

Parr: “From far away the image seems sharp but when you look up close you can see its all handmade. We tend to do a lot of research and for this project we were inspired by stalagmites, stalactites and super organisms. It’s actually part of three works, NOCOM, NOSHO and the third has yet to come.”

As part of the fashion world, NOMAN has participated in events such as last year’s Arnhem Mode Biennale, where OMAN was on show, and the winter Salon/ where NOCOM was presented together with Conny Groenewegen. But the design world also seems enamoured with the duo as they were part of Droog design’s expo at Salon/2 recently and now at Depot Basel.

So what is their strength? “Our main goal is to express the sense of our time through intuitive rather than rational decisions. We want to represent the colours and forms of our generation. For us NOMAN is a utopia where we enjoy total freedom. We therefore don’t need to give our work a function, work seasonally or reproduce.”

NOMAN’s one-off designs are tapping into the taste of today through form and colour, creating what the they themselves see as representative for their generation. Whether that be muted shades or vibrant pastels, hanging ropes or stacked ceramics, as the times and tastes evolve, so will the work of NOMAN.

Main image: NOCOM
Other images: 1. - 4. NOCOM 5. YEAH MAN 6. OMAN 7. Setting up NOCOM at Depot Basel


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