‘New York, February 2010. in a house on greene street, which accommodates helmut lang’s fashion archive, among other things, a fire breaks out and spreads to the archive. Much is destroyed – a shock for the fashion world. But not for Helmut lang, the master in forward thinking. He destroys the remains – still 6000 individual pieces, nonetheless-having them shred with machines in order to create something new; sculptures. He reconceives his own 20 year fashion history as art, in keeping with the motto ‘materials are just materials, and they are here to serve me’, a statement by Louise bourgeois.

before, however, the photographer Elfie Semotan and creative director Albert Handler are given exclusive access to the burned archive. The result was a unique photographic and film documentation, which already anticipated the transformation and deconstruction in its own way.’

text is from the documentation as you can see above. the sculptures helmut lang made of the shredded archive you can find at next blog post. 

information and photographs found at behance.