Originally intended as a suit for a specific lawyer of a health insurance company, this suit turned into a suit meant for everyone.

This suit questions masculinity as a form of harshness, and through it I wonder if people could feel softer if the armor they wear (their suits) would be soft, knitted, fragile.

What we wear is what we become while we wear it. This is a hypothesis I brought into my art practice many times.

I perceived the man’s suit as armor that made him harden, not on the outside, but on the inside. I wondered what an opposite armor could do, something that would look the same to him, but that through knitted stitches feels caring and warm, like home. Could it soften him?

As I was making this suit, my thoughts kept wandering to myself. I wasn’t out yet as a man. I felt uncomfortable with the idea of manhood because of my perception of masculinity. In the fabric cut-outs, the left-overs of the suit, I started seeing myself. A man without a body, through the cut-outs I could see the sky. But all the makings of a man are right there, nice and soft.

These works used to be called ‘(een pak voor) Meneer … van de …’ and ‘The Aspirational Myth of Man’, in 2023 the works were combined into ‘Armor (the makings of a gentler man)’

2021, ongoing