'CLEWS' by HERESY and MIDDLE DISTANCE

Clews is a collaborative project that finds a shared language in Heresy’s folklore research and Middle Distance’s material exploration. Building on our collective interest in the motif of the foliate head - or, The Green Man - and past projects The Marches (2019) and Edale Country Day (2019), this collection considers transfiguration: a toolkit for becoming tree.

Taking its name from the bundles of braided, live heather rope used in a thatching technique unique to the Orkney Islands, Clews looks to the transformative potential enfolded into this ball of raw natural material, perfectly adapted to its local surroundings, waiting to be unfurled as protection and shelter, becoming something else entirely. The collections’ liner jackets, Zeltbahn, bags and t-shirts similarly hold this potential for transformation - appropriating ultra-pragmatic, functional, military-referenced design for transcendental purposes.

The outerwear and bags employ a newly-developed composite textile which is laser-cut and basket-woven through with silicone-coated elastic, allowing the wearer to adorn the pieces with whatever material suits their own local and seasonal requirements. The Zeltbahn - a historic military-issue cape with a modular design that builds in adaptation - offers further possibilities for conversion: a moss stretcher; or a tent flocked with hay.

Eyeball graphics reference the horror of the metamorphosing body in folklore and our own internal forests - the capillaries, the neurons and the flux of the iris.

Clews is photographed on Rivington Moor - itself a place known for its spectres, druid cairns and UFO sightings - haunted by its abandoned military roads and television broadcast masts. This landscape speaks to our joint approach to folk and material research which looks for something that is generative rather than historical-facing; something simultaneously both contemporary and ancient.