Farm Parade, test shoot / march 1999

Farm Parade, test shoot, march 1999 - Photo Keupr/van Bentm

Farm Parade, test shoot, march 1999 - Photo Keupr/van Bentm

Test shoot done in our studio. We did the official shoot a couple of days later in the same setting. Make up by Jessica Helbach.

Caught In Colour / summer 1997

Caught in Colour, 1997 - test shot

Caught in Colour was our first collaboration. Initially conceived for a Dutch design competition, that required a 'full range collection', with the restriction to only present 3 outfits. We started off with writing a manifesto. To challenge the jury, and to challenge ourselves.

At the time, 1997, the heyday of 1990s minimalism, we wanted to find a way to break free from preconceived 'good taste'. We wanted to explore what would happen if Concept would take over Function, Design would take over Wearability, and last but not least, what would happen if we would go crazy with Colour.

Caught in Colour - Manifesto, summer 1997

To free one self from one's habits, and convictions of 'good taste' (after all we were trained at ArtEz Arnhem, known at the time for Dutch conceptualism) proved not that easy. One of the tricks we used to invite Risk and Randomness into our design process, was mutual designing. We would sit opposite of each other, set an alarm, and switch our sketches every 5 minutes, and continue drawing. 

Caught in Colour - sketches, summer 1997

One of the competition's restrictions, to present a full range collection of 3 outfits, tempted us to design hybrid outfits; total looks that contained at least 4 different garments in one, and that transmitted a complete different message from every angle. 

Caught in Colour - Final sketches, summer 1997

Caught in Colour #1, 1997,  studio shot, 2 sides

Caught in Colour #3, 1997,  studio shot, 2 sides

We made it to the competition's semi final in the World Fashion Center in Amsterdam. Not a gathering place for the avant garde, as we were to find out. Our participation was not a succes. When our outfits paraded the catwalk, the audience literally went silent and was dumbfounded. The jury not any less. We were dismissed. 

Teachers from our school who had come to support us, were shocked. We might have killed minimalism, but the world, or at least the Netherlands, was not yet ready for it...

It took us a week to recover and to realize that it maybe wasn't so much about our work, but about the context. Our designs were a statement against mainstream, so probably a mainstream competition was not the best place to present it. We decided to create our own context by extending our concept to a photo shoot. We built a setting in our studio, and we spend a week with our friend Jessica Helbach on Art Direction (and indeed our model for the shoot).

Caught in Colour #1, official shoot, fall 1997

Caught in Colour #2, official shoot, fall 1997

Caught in Colour #3, official shoot, fall 1997

These photo's then appeared in DUTCH Magazine, accompanying an article by Nico Velthuis in februari 1998. As this was the magazines first international edition, it brought first recognition from abroad. Notably from a Japanese founded shop for avant garde fashion in London; The Pineal Eye. At the time run by Yuko Yabiku and Nicola Formichetti (click here for an article from The Indepent from june 1998). Later that year they invited us for a solo shop window installation, that took place in december 1998.

Caught in Colour 1997, Dutch Magazine, februari 1998

Portrait for the 'Droog & Dutch Design' catalogue / spring 2000

Keupr/van Bentm, portrait for the catalogue 'Droog & Dutch Design', accompanying the eponymous exhibition held at the Living design Center OZONE in Tokyo in the fall of 2000 - photo: Maartje Geels

The photo was taken in our studio in Arnhem. See below how it was used on the back of the cover of the catalogue (click to enlarge).

Back cover catalogue 'Droog & Dutch Design' -  graphic design by Thonik

The Palm and the Girl / Les Dix Parfums, 2005 - In collaboration with the Dutch Fashion Foundation

A video made in collaboration with the Dutch Fashion Foundation (DFF) as part of a series of 10 short videos called 'Les Dix Parfums', featuring 10 Dutch fashion designers.
Concept video: Keupr/van Bentm / Concept series & artistic direction: Angelique Westerhof / Director & director of photography: Paul Staartjes / Hair: Taco Stuiver

For the setting of the video we were inspired by the portraits of Coco Chanel in her famous mirrored staircase at her studio on Rue Cambon.

Mark Shaw - Coco Chanel, Paris, 1957

Mark Shaw - Coco Chanel, Paris, 1957

The featured outfit came from a special Prêt-á-Porter DeLuxe-series we did in september 2004 for a gala event celebrating 15 years of Dutch ELLE. 

On the set of 'Les Dix Parfums', january 2005- photo: Keupr/van Bentm

On the set of 'Les Dix Parfums', january 2005 - photo: Keupr/van Bentm

On the set of 'Les Dix Parfums', january 2005 - photo: Keupr/van Bentm

On the set of 'Les Dix Parfums', january 2005 - photo: Keupr/van Bentm

The palm tree was a reference to our iconic palm-print from our collection 'Farm/ Parade 1999', presented in Paris in march 1999.

Farm/ Parade 1999, photo © Keupr/van Bentm

Farm/ Parade 1999, photo © Keupr/van Bentm

Friction / Parade 1999 - in collaboration with The Experimental Jetset, January 1999

This collection, the one that Alix Browne is referring to in her text on Keupr/van Bentm in 'Visionaire's FASHION 2001' (see post below and on the 'texts'-page) was never executed. The show intentionally never took place. Friction/Parade 1999 only existed as a little booklet and in imagination. And exactly that was the point.

The show location was picked out of a Paris telephone directory, the show date was set to coincide with the Paris Haute Couture Week in january 1999. It was made sure however that guests only got their invitation (= the booklet) a day after this date so nobody would be tempted to actually show up, because it was by no means a practical joke. It was a conceptual collection in the most literally sense; it allowed us to do the impossible.

The booklet was the invitation and the show in one. The text can be read as a surreal poem, using clichés  from the fashion world in general and fashion shows in particular. The basic story consists of 2 time lines, both starting at 5.00pm/17.00h, the official starting time of the show as given on the invitation.

The story line printed in black, follows the hour of the (imaginary) show in chronologic intervals. The story line printed in grey however, counts backwards and gives impressions of the preparations on the day leading up to the show. On the last page are the titles and descriptions of the 13 runway looks.  

From the press release: " 'FRICTION/parade 1999' concentrates on experiment in form, technique and colour and is rather a statement about fashion than appearing to be fashion; (...) 'FRICTION/parade 1999' is about deconstructing the general opinion about design and introducing new ways of looking at fashion. "

For this project Keupr/van Bentm collaborated with graphic designers The Experimental Jetset from Amsterdam who took care of the lay out and design. Also the final texts were written in close collaboration with the Experimental Jetset. In nightly sessions, drafts were being faxed and emailed back and forth between the K/vB studio in Arnhem and the Jetset's office in Amsterdam.

Keupr/van Bentm in collaboration with the Experimental Jetset - 'Friction/ Parade 1999',  cover, pages 2, 3

Keupr/van Bentm in collaboration with the Experimental Jetset - 'Friction/ Parade 1999',  pages 4-7

Keupr/van Bentm in collaboration with the Experimental Jetset - 'Friction/ Parade 1999',  pages 8-11

Keupr/van Bentm in collaboration with the Experimental Jetset - 'Friction/ Parade 1999',  pages 12-15

Keupr/van Bentm in collaboration with the Experimental Jetset - 'Friction/ Parade 1999',  pages 16-19

Keupr/van Bentm in collaboration with the Experimental Jetset - 'Friction/ Parade 1999',  pages 20-23

Keupr/van Bentm in collaboration with the Experimental Jetset - 'Friction/ Parade 1999',  pages 24-27

Keupr/van Bentm in collaboration with the Experimental Jetset - 'Friction/ Parade 1999',  page 26 close up

Visionaire's FASHION 2001 / by Alix Browne

KEUPR/van BENTM

In January of 1999, during the Paris Haute Couture, Michiel Keuper and Francisco Van Benthum, the designers behind Keupr/van Bentm, put on a fashion show. The program notes describe the runway looks. Black Hole (3 1/2 meters squared of black polyestertrippleslash, cut and folded on the backseam which is to be worn over a double-breasted twisterpantyhose); Chemical Insult (One-piece doublesided slap of grasshoppergreen polymorph-lush); Tribute to Leigh Bowery (Green on blue polka-dotted 2/3 pantalonium, attached to a paper-folded skeleton, standing about 1.90 meters measured from the shoulder. Light, multi-colored foam-stuffed back-piece completed with eleven meters of rhinestone trimminqs.). If all of this sounds incredible, that was the point. Invitations were sent out the day after the show was to take place. The show never happened. “It enabled us to do the impossible," they explain. Keuper and Van Benthum both graduated from the fashion department of the Arnhem Institute for the Arts, Keuper in 1993 and Van Benthum in 1995. They shared a studio space and soon discovered that they also shared a sense of the absurd. They made their debut as Keupr/van Bentm in 1997. In their work, wearable elements are broken down into bits and then thrown together again seemingly at random, a sartorial puzzle whose pieces don't quite fit. Keuper and Van Benthum refer to their presentations—the ones they actually produce as well as the imaginary ones—quite accurately as "Parades”: shoulders sprout spheres and explode out of holes in the backs of jackets; pants change their minds midstream and become skirts; corsets have collisions with coats; a ludicrously baroque man’s suit is composed from shards of a kilt, trousers, a scarf and a house plant. Then there are the accessories: opera-length kitchen mits, donkey masks, capes, top hats, tulle tutus, and a "pressing-egg" covered in rhinestones.They use their system of fragmentation and montage to turn garments on their ear and, they say, to do the same to our comprehension. "The viewer is confronted with what he or she already knows or can refer to, but this image is only the first layer. As soon as the model turns, garments are not what they seem to be," they wrote in the notes to their 1998 collection “Evil Wrapped in Beauty." "It's very hard to do something new these days," they say. "We never want to take things for granted.”

Alix Browne

From: Visionaire’s FASHION 2001, designers of the new avant-garde,

  published by Universe Publishing, USA, 1999

Keupr/van Bentm - 'TWIST / parade 2000'

Recording of the Keupr/van Bentm presentation at Paris Couture Week 2000. The show played with cliché's of couture as well as fashion shows. Sunday july 9th 2000, 1.30 pm, at Galerie Nikki Diana Marquardt, 9 Place des Vosges. Video: Guido Sikkink, Carien Poissonnier @ Pangea Film / Soundtrack: Michel Gaubert / Art Direction & Set Design: Jessica Helbach / Hair: Philippe Baligan @ Calliste / Make-up: Max Delorme @ Calliste / Casting: Chantal Hoogvliet.
Supported by: Foundation for Fine Arts, Design and Architecture, Amsterdam / Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam / Province of Gelderland.