IN DETAIL
HORIZONTAL STRIPES: A LIFELONG OBSESSION
You’ll no doubt have spotted that Baue designs often include horizontal bands, layers of fabric in different, seemingly random widths. It’s partly practical: a way of using the smaller pieces of fabric I’ve collected. But it’s also something I’ve instinctively added again and again, without fully questioning why.
FOLK COSTUMES
As some of you know, I’m half Serbian and grew up learning Serbian folk dancing, which meant wearing a lot of traditional costumes. In those garments, you often find horizontal bands of print or texture layered one above the other. Sometimes decorative, sometimes structural, a way of showing off a handmade piece of lace, or of disguising the fact that a skirt or apron has been lengthened, shortened, handed up or down.
A LAYERED COMPOSITION
IBut once I started thinking about this horizontal-stripe fixation, I realised it wasn’t just about clothing. At school, whenever I had free reign to draw, I’d layer the elements of a scene: sea and fish at the bottom, then vegetation, then meadows, hills, sky. All contained in the frame, all laid out in neat, stacked rows.
I hadn’t invented this layout, so where had it come from?
ORTHODOX ICONOGRAPHY
And then I realised: this is exactly how Orthodox iconography and Byzantine art is composed. A flat, symbolic world, arranged in bands. I spent many long hours in Orthodox churches as a child (those services are very long), staring at floor-to-ceiling murals painted in this style. It clearly sunk in.
PERSIAN AND MUGHAL MINIATURES
A more recent dicovery for me. These use a similar kind of tiered composition, the sea, the ground, the hills, the sky, stacked like storybook layers. Perfection.
A CURVEBALL
Why am I telling you this?
Just look at the set! The trees! The scenery; built in simple, layered strips. I never thought my love for this Ivor Wood masterpiece would find its way into my work, but here we are.
AND BACK TO DRESSES
Each patchwork stripe I make is hand-cut and arranged by instinct. I use leftover fabric from earlier makes, or pieces I’ve found that are too small to be made into a full garment. They’re not just about using up offcuts. They’re a quiet, familiar order. A way of piecing things together, literally and visually.
You’ll see more of it soon, something new is in the making.
Yours, bestriped and many layered,
Anna x