Lisa Konno
Lisa Konno is a fashion designer of Dutch and Japanese descent. As a designer she does not limit herself to designing clothes, but also experiments with fashion in combination with documentary, ceramics and performance. The common thread in her projects is that she uses fashion to tell social stories.
NOBU and BABA in relation to the theme ‘good citizenship’
In the collections NOBU and BABA, Lisa Konno explores how she can use fashion to express both the up- and downsides of being a ‘strange bird’ in a different culture.
NOBU is a collection inspired by her own Japanese father, in which she uses Dutch and Japanese cliches and visual symbolism, while at the same time drawing an intimate portrait of her father as an immigrant. In 2018, she won the Dutch Design Award for this collection.
BABA shows the story of the Turkish immigrant Ceylan Utlu and his bi-cultural daughter. Visual references to migration, such as checkered bags, are used in combination with Dutch and Turkish symbolism. A story on culture, citizenship, loneliness and childhood aspirations.
The collections are part of a series of documentary portraits about fathers that Lisa makes with director Sarah Blok. The films explore what being bicultural and a ‘good’ citizen means and how this affects the relationship between father and daughter.