++++ Bless have always understood how to turn an unfavourable situation into a favourable one. When the two fashion students met each other, they found it very strenuous, for instance, that there was so much competition in their chosen course of study. Ines Kaag and Desiree Heiß therefore joined forces and from then on invented things in common which had not existed before. A wig made of fur, for example. They sent their idea to the British lifestyle magazine iD where they were discovered by the fashion designer, Martin Margiela, who immediately ordered some for his show. Ines and Desiree soon noticed that they had to establish a company so that people could also order their things.
This is how the Bless label came about, and the two women no longer had to worry about how they could find work in their sector. They simply made it for themselves.
In a meantime, the two designers who work in Paris and Berlin have issued almost twenty editions starting with once only T-shirts through self-designed shoes to clothes for furniture. Their works are characterized above all by their unspectacular appearance. The materials frequently come from contexts of use which do not have anything to do with questions of style. Thus, the T-shirts arose from ironing-board cloth, the oversized chair cushions came from old jeans, and an equally chic and practical purse is simply a ready-made small leather bag with four rings sewn on for holding it in the palm of your hand. Nevertheless, all the objects have a certain understatement chic.
For Manifesta, Bless, who move in the border areas between fashion, design and art, have worked on a new thematic area, household appliances and their aesthetic qualities which are, if you look closely at a vacuum cleaner, a juicer or an iron, quite minimal. But Bless looks for solutions and in the case of the vacuum cleaner the solution is a hiding place in a chair. Bless built an attractive wooden chair on rollers around the ugly suction device which no longer had to be taken out, and in spite of this, both utensils can fulfil their respective functions almost completely without interfering with each other. hoh
Frankensteiner Hof, Große Rittergasse 103