We missed Asger Juel Larsen in Dazed early this summer, but here’s what he has to say about creating these spectacular handknit rubber pieces for his AW09 menswear collection.  This sounds a little like knitting at Chez Yarneteria. 

I wanted to knit a futuristic armour piece, so I considered different materials such as videotape, bicycle wheel, rubber cord, rope, wire, shoelaces and leather. I found both the rubber and the leather/ PVC cord exciting. Maybe It wasn’t the smartest and easiest choice, since I had many endless nights listening to Joy Division while using approximately 1.750 meter of rubber cord, two bottles of baby powder and many broken knitting sticks to make the rubber armour piece.

I first saw this item in Fashion156’s Black & White Issue a couple of weeks ago, and assumed it was hanknit leather cording (click for bigger):

This is the kind of materials sourcing I’d like to see more of.  Michaela has been talking about knitting with leather for years.  The only barrier is expense — cording and pre-cut lacing are prohibitively expensive in the quantities needed for a garment of this size.  I admire Larsen’s ingenuity in working in with PVC and rubber together with leather and metal, though I can’t imagine the expense to create the items in this collection.   Nor can I imagine what he put his hands through to knit with rubber…  The awesome news is that Larsen is still in school at London College of Fashion working on an AW10 collection and his MA collection, which means there’s definitely more to come. 

Get an eyeful of the collection via Coûte que Coûte and Dazed.  Different styling, different models, different impact.