Camouflage Couture

Nina Levett's patterns and ornaments are based on conceptual, humorous ideas, her work is based on experiments with surfaces and materials. Ornaments and patterns are developed for ceramic tiles, textiles, resin floors, boats, glass walls as well as packaging and (editorial) print.

Camouflage Couture is about repeating images, much like the military look of it's namesake. Nina Levett’s patterns are combined in wallpaper, fashion, plates and accessories, and furniture so that they all blend into one and disappear.

The story of the camouflage couture idea is as follows:
Nina Levett had started a degree in Architecture at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna but never finished because she moved to Italy for several years and had a family. When she separated from the father of her children, she returned to Vienna and wanted to study fashion design. For the entrance exam she had to chose a theme, and do a fashion collection, so she chose 'fashion for the housewife'. The designs worked with the fact that the woman of the house has historically been seen as a sort of household object; looking nice, perfect body, being sexy and speaking rarely. So, she thought the perfect clothing to go with this idea of the 'housewife' could be pieces that make her disappear; they would be the same color and print as the tiles in the bathroom, or as the sheets on the bed, all blending into one.

Moveable wallpapers are modular paintings that can be combined to create a wallpaper effect. Once the hanging system is installed on your wall, you can vary the images in order to create different colour combinations. The colour will change with time because of the sensibilty of epoxy resin to light. This is a wanted effect showing the alteration of synthetic material with time.

Nina Levett's work is about femininity: "When the porno queen Annie Sprinkle showed her most intimate inner self (her cervix) to a world-wide audience in the mid 90s, pink dots were icons of unconditional femininity, touching themes as self determination, exploitation and fertility. In Nina Levett's work phases of women with gigantic breasts and pink dots were followed by organic creeping floral designs and streams of sperm, that cover the modular wallpanels in neat ordered rows and seem to be calm visitors of a shopping mall. Components of a coded graphic expression that create decorative patterns."

This is a decorative pattern showing the superfluous and the useful, plastic toys, papers toys, puzzle pieces creating a misterious mural ensemble. Photos on canvas covered in epoxy resin.