CGD

The OffCuts collection completed Maria Nina's magisterial studies in the K.O.V. studio at the Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design. The strikingly self-confident author's collection does not only cope with the individual items' looks and function, but also the ethical aspects of designing and producing new things. It ponders the role of a designer in the world of today, flooded with things of infinitesimal value but of heavy and long-term impact on the environment of our Earth. Specifically the industry in the fields of fashion and accessories is typical of environmentally and ethically problematic overproduction, linked with the loss of the value of things and the consumerist lifestyle. Maria Nina departs from the ideas of Buckminster Fuller and Victor Papanek. She not only pursues using materials, which are recyclable and their production and liquidation alike are environment-friendly.

She also professes the concept Cradle to Cradle. Things can be easily dismantled – they do not seam biological and technical materials into an inseparable whole – and their form follows evolution instead of mere function. Maria refers to the consumers' increasing interest in non- things and sharing and emphasizes the approach to design as a (public) service. People in this sense solely rent a product, while the material still belongs to the producer who recycles it into a new product as soon as the rental terminates.

The Offcuts design is pure, authentic and timeless, evoking the past, the present as well as the future. It confronts a seeming roughness and coarseness with a strict geometry of clean-cut lines and right angles. The brutal and minimalist angular, elegant soles are crowned with soft and pleasant-to-touch architecture of the top parts. Everything is perfectly elaborated even from the aspect of technology. The shoes do not contain glues and other materials, which would rule out the subsequent recycling. They are deliberate and coherent mechanical compositions of renewable sources and residual materials.

Maria Nina attended the Jan Neruda Grammar School in Prague and then graduated from the bachelor's studies in the Studio of Shoe Design and Fashion Accessories at the Faculty of Design and Art of Ladislav Sutnar in Plzeň. During her studies, she gathered experience at a scholarship in the Paris studio Atelier du Sartel. Her works repeatedly received the award Good Student's Design and, in 2013, she won the Design Talent competition for her Rectangle shoes, which the Metropolitan Museum in New York later requested for its permanent collections. The design of the Mule shoes earned Maria a nomination in the Munich competition Talente 2018. In addition, Maria Nina presented herself at the FashionClash festival in Maastricht as a member of the designer's collective, dry milk of virgin mary.

Veronika Ruppert