Elena Voss doesn’t do interviews. She told us this three times before agreeing to sit down in the austere white space of her Antwerp studio — a former industrial laundry that she’s transformed into something that feels simultaneously like a laboratory and a chapel.
“I agreed because you’re not going to ask me about my ‘journey,’” she says, settling into a chair that she designed herself. “Everyone wants the narrative. I’m interested in the gaps between the narrative.”
On Starting From Nothing
FOLIO: Your first collection was shown in a parking garage to an audience of twelve people. What did you learn from that experience?
Elena Voss: That the context is part of the work. Those concrete pillars, the fluorescent lighting, the smell of motor oil — those things weren’t incidental. They were the reason the clothes made sense.