Claudia Hill

Claudia Hill
Residence	Berlin, New York[1]
Nationality	German
Education	FIT, Parsons[2]
Occupation	costume and fashion designer
Website	http://claudiahill.com/
Labels	Claudia Hill

Claudia Hill is a German costume and fashion designer, based in Berlin and New York.

Style

Critics have described her designs as having a “captivating clarity”^[3] and as being “not meant for only one season”.^[4]

She “effectively bridges the art/fashion world divide without sacrificing wearability”,^[5] her own view of this being that she is “a fashion designer who finds fashion too commercial and an artist who finds art too intellectual”.^[6]

Her New York Fashion Week shows are deemed unconventional and take the form of performances or installations^[1] (e.g., instead of a Fall/Winter 2000 runway show, she screened a film in the Bryant Park tents that featured her new collection^[7][8]). She places a strong emphasis on the body's motion and prefers dancers over runway models for her shows.^[9]

Biography

Claudia learned to sew from her mother, a tailor from Prague, at age 11.^[4] She moved to New York in 1993 to study dance.^[9]

The catalyst for Claudia Hill's move from costume to fashion design was Miguel Adrover, who would later receive the CFDA's Emerging Talent Award for Ready-to-wear, but in 1997 was running his small boutique Horn on 9th Street: “She used to live near Horn and closely knew the owners Miguel and Duglas, as well as Pierrot, who was a sales person there. When she was wearing a self-made dress, Miguel asked her if she could sell her garments at the shop. That’s how she started production.”^[10]

Works

Lines

• 1998 to 2005: Claudia Hill (Ready-to-wear)
• 1998 to 2002: The Number After 10
• 2005 to present: Claudia Hill (Limited Editions)

Ready-to-wear pieces have sold at her own store,^[11] and in high-end boutiques, such as Barneys New York,^[12][13] Louis Boston,^[12] Fred Segal,^[12][13] Seven New York,^[14] Horn,^[10] Desperado^[3] and POV Beams.^[3]

Notable Costume Designs

• Assistant Costume Designer for the musical RENT^[3] (one of the costumes designed by Claudia Hill is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution^[14]).
• Costume Designer for William Forsythe's Decreation.^[9][15] The only other fashion designer that William Forsythe has worked with before is Issey Miyake.^[16]
• Costume Designer for The Wooster Group's production of Hamlet.^[17][18]

Collaborations

Claudia Hill has been a frequent collaborator with a diverse set of artists:

• Japanese Photographer Ariko
  • Co-Designer of the The Number After 10 Line^[19]
  • Ariko has been filming^[7][8] and photographing the Claudia Hill line from the inception to the present.
• Icelandic musician Skuli Sverrisson
  • Music for her Spring/Summer 2000 show
  • Music for her Spring/Summer 2001 show^[7]
  • Music for the opening of her Berlin store in 2004
• Architects Hani Rashid, Lise Anne Couture and Ruth Berktold of Asymptote Architecture
  • Art direction for the Spring/Summer 2001 show^[7][20]
• Israeli Artist Nelly Agassi
  • Collaborative Designs^[3][21]
  • Performance “Schlafsahne”
  • Performance “Wasserwünsche” with Israeli musician Ori Drumer
• Japanese Artist Daisuke Nakayama (official homepage in English)
  • Art Director For the Fall/Winter 2001 Show^[7][22][23]
  • Director of the Fall/Winter 2000 Movie^[8]

Notes

1. Quinn, Bradley (2009), Textile Designers at the Cutting Edge, London: Laurence King Publishing, pp. 68 to 73, ISBN 978-1-85669-581-7
2. sal (November 2001), "Claudia Hill:Konzeptmode aus N.Y.", Bolero
3. Wesley, Jay (2005), "High on the Hill", Zoo, no. 8
4. Schipp, Anke (June 27, 2004), "Auf Tuchfühlung", Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung
5. Jesella, Kara (April 2000), "Cut to the Chase", Nylon, pp. Page 52
6. Feigelfeld, Paul (May 2003), "Hill Top für das pro-fashional Ballett", Style and the Family Tunes, pp. Page 36
7. Giordano, Kevin (Fall 2000), "Collector Items", *Surface
8. Composite, April 2000 Missing or empty |title= (help)
9. Magel, Eva-Maria (April 26, 2003), "Kleidung, nicht Kostüm", Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
10. Sanada, Yoko (August 2001), "Claudia Hill", gli, pp. Pages 36 & 37
11. "Glanzpunkte, Mixen Sie Perlen, Duft, & Haute Couture", Elle Decoration Germany, January–February 2005, pp. Page 46
12. "Eiskalt für die Avantgarde", Deutsch, August 2004
13. Storey, John (September 2004), Madame Figaro, Taiwan Missing or empty |title= (help)
14. "Not All Black and White", Wallpaper, April 2001
15. Associated Artists of The Forsythe Company, retrieved 2009-04-06
16. Siegmund, Gerald (2004), William Forsythe: Denken in Bewegung, Berlin: Henschel Verlag, pp. 78, 114, ISBN 3-89487-472-4
17. Brantley, Ben (November 1, 2007), "Looks it not like the King? Well, More Like Burton", The New York Times, pp. Pages E1 & E12
18. Associated Artists of The Wooster Group, retrieved 2009-04-06
19. Chen, Aric (Summer 2001), "Claudia Hill", Black Book
20. Rashid, Hani; Couture, Lise Anne; Katsanos, NA; Karaiskakis, G (2002), "Flux", Journal of Chromatography A (London: Phaidon Press) 934 (1–2): 31–49, doi:10.1016/S0021-9673(01)01277-8, ISBN 0-7148-4172-2, PMID 11762762
21. TimeOut Tel Aviv, 2007, pp. Pages 54–56 Missing or empty |title= (help)
22. gap, Fall–Winter 2001, pp. Page 167 Missing or empty |title= (help)
23. Yomiuri Shimbun, February 19, 2001 Missing or empty |title= (help)

External links

• http://claudiahill.com/