STERN MAGAZINE – PROFESSIONE: REPORTER
FASHION EDITORIAL – Sewn Illustrations for “Stern Magazine” Germany
„Here a lace border, there a bit of organza and to top it off, a little bow. Nora Gres will sew for days and often nights on end to finish a dress. She also sews shoes or bags. But when things are finished, you cannot put them on or hang them around your neck or over a shoulder. Nor should you. They are to look at, like a painting, a collage by Robert Rauschenberg or a photograph. Except that she needs neither brush nor camera for her work, but needle, thread and lots of fabric. Nora Gres sews pictures.“
TEXTILE ARTWORKS / fashion illustration series / textile media / Munich 2008
Icons of the front row
Prêt-à-porter, Paris, Dior Fashion Show, first row with Anna, Anna and André.
Professione: Reporter
Olympic Games, Beijing, Cocktail reception… New York, Interview with Cate Blanchett.
NORA GRES first draws her motifs on transparent paper. This can be a single figure or, as in the production for the German magazine Stern, a scene of a model luxuriating in the sand at a beach in Rio de Janeiro. She transfers every single bit of the original – a palm, a strand of hair – onto a piece of cloth, cuts it out and sews it on base materials of different sizes. Sometimes Nora Gres only pins the cloth down, lays it in folds or drapes it loosely. This is very fiddly handiwork requiring an unconditional love of detail, right down to fingernails made of tiny pieces of patent leather individually glued on. Various fabrics and other materials, such as pearls, sequins or curtain rings are used in the pictures. She gets these from textile wholesalers, flea markets, Turkish bazaars and sometimes even from the street: she once took the keys from a defective Blackberry someone had left lying in the underground and used them for the windows of a skyscraper.
Christine Mortag/STERN MAGAZINE
“Nora once took keys from a defective Blackberry someone had left lying in the Underground and used them for the window of a skyscraper!”