A fashion-industry 
alchemist

Lambskin with nylon. Orthopaedic high-tech fabrics with chiffon and satin – Kostas Murkudis certainly does not shy away from unconventional combinations. The clothes 
the fashion designer creates can just as easily be considered art as they can fashion. Born in Dresden in 
1959 to Greek parents, he feels the dividing lines are in flux. Hardly surprisingly that for a few years Murkudis has exclusively made one-off collections. The creations don’t get sold but are acquired by museums for their collections.

In 2013, the haute couturier bequeathed part of his archive, along with original designs and prototypes, to Frankfurt’s Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK). In its current Murkudis exhibition entitled “Tuchfühlung”, the renowned Frankfurt exhibition gallery traces the way the oeuvre treads the blurred line between art and 
design. Murkudis has juxtaposed his pieces to works from the MMK collection, such as paintings by Blinky Palermo or installations by Franz 
Erhard Walther. The exhibition architecture is the brainchild of sound and video artist Carsten Nicolai. Both artistic pos­itions tackle textiles in different ways as they do concepts of performance, the ready-made or the aesthetics of materials – and await the visitor in Frankfurt.

The exhibition reveals Murkudis’ great zest for experimentation. His is a refined feeling for materials, his knowledge has academic roots. Before plunging into the world of fashion he studied Chemistry, without really liking the subject. So he started training in graphic design in Berlin, where he then graduated as best-of-year in fashion design. Much in his 
approach indicates that he would have made just as good a scientist: Murkudis has no fear of highly explosive mixtures.

He may not have become a chemist, but he has certainly become an alchemist of fashion. As if frantically searching for gold, he explores the hitherto unknown properties of textiles. He subjects industrial fabrics to incredibly elaborate needlework, while precious textiles get treated almost roughshod, tempting a new quality out of them in 
the process. Murkudis thrives on experimenting with materials, recontextualising things, studying textures, almost like a research scientist. Or an artist? In Germany, traditionally a rigid concept of art prevails that tends to exclude fashion from its ambit. Yet Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in Frankfurt has dared with the current Murkudis “Tuchfühlung” exhibition to bring the two back closer together. The designer feels that his work was emphatically shaped by 
the first 13 years of his life – spent in then East Germany. His imagination as a lad was fired by the Dresden’s Baroque art treasures, the Japanisches Palais, Grünes Gewölbe, the china, tapestry and coin collections of August the Strong. His visits to museums and galleries inspired him, as did the architecture. Murkudis compares his output today to that of a restorer and feels just as at home in archives as he does in the sewing studio.

Murkudis, who himself says he did not become an artist out 
of respect for art, now sees his clothes sculptures standing in 
a White Cube. His experiments are worth their weight in gold for a new angle on the interaction between art and fashion. ▪