In Her Dreams

For her graduation show from the Royal Academy of Art in Antwerp in 2005, the Dutch designer Marga Weimans presented a collection called The Power of My Dreams, a stunning, multi-media examination of her Surinamese-Creole heritage and the preconceptions that she faced as a black woman. It established her as a talent to be reckoned with, winning both the first i-D Styling Award and the notice of the Groninger Museum in her native Holland. Nine years later, Groninger curator Sue-an van der Zijpp has organized Weimans’s first major solo exhibit. Arranged in chronological order, the show examines the sui generis territory Weimans has carved out for herself at the nexus of fashion, art and architecture. Some dresses are as spiky as the mountain peaks they’re meant to evoke, while others are made up of thickly applied fabric petals that serve as a metaphor for the layers of meaning Weimans weaves into her creations. The show includes one of the most recent additions to Weimans oeuvre, a collaboration with OMA/AMO, the research arm of Rem Koolhaas’s architecture firm. “It’s called the Ultimate Dress,” says van der Zijpp of the installation, which turns one of Weimans’ frocks into an inhabitable space. “It tells the story of the quest for the perfect dress.”