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Neckties, Frösche, 1990
Cornelia Hesse-Honegger
Neckties, Frösche,
Cornelia Hesse-Honegger,
*1078

Neckties, Frösche,
1990

Cornelia Hesse-Honegger
*1078
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Museum für Gestaltung Zürich
Ausstellungsstrasse 60
8031 Zurich
Museum map
Museum für Gestaltung Zürich
Toni-Areal, Pfingstweidstrasse 94
8031 Zurich
Pavillon Le Corbusier
Höschgasse 8
8008 Zürich
Museum map
  • Frösche Cornelia Hesse-Honegger Neckties
  • Frösche Cornelia Hesse-Honegger Neckties
  • Frösche Cornelia Hesse-Honegger Neckties
  • Frösche Cornelia Hesse-Honegger Neckties
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Listen to the text
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Who isn’t familiar with the naturalistically depicted frogs, bugs, and plants on a colored background? In the 1990s, the garishly colored neckties from Fabric Frontline adorned many a fashionable and self-confident gent.

By the 1960s, Zurich’s prominence in the global silk industry had dwindled. Swiss textile exports found themselves needing to keep up with the transformation of the international fashion industry. The triumph of synthetic fabrics and growing Asian competition necessitated a fundamental structural rethinking. Many businesses were forced to close, and investments were made in new technologies. In the field of clothing textiles, a young generation of entrepreneurs came to the fore in the 1980s who put their faith in independent designs that did not slavishly follow the latest fashions. Outstanding examples of this approach are the Zurich silk brands En Soie and Fabric Frontline. Both embrace an independent attitude to style, image, and promotion, and base their strategy on integrating each individual design into a programmatically developed label. At the silk company Fabric Frontline, founded in 1980 by Andi, Elsa, and Maya Stutz, the house style features figurative motifs on a colored background. The scientific illustrator Cornelia Hesse-Honegger (b. 1944) started working for the company as a freelance designer in 1987, creating silk fabrics with the detail of scientific illustrations. These textiles with their precision drawings and high-quality printing document her ecological concerns about endangered species and animal and plant mutations in the vicinity of Swiss nuclear power plants. The fabrics make a bold statement—for example when made into ties and worn every day by newscaster Charles Clerc on Switzerland’s nightly news broadcast. (Renate Menzi)

Krawatten, Frösche, 1990
Entwurf: Cornelia Hesse-Honegger
Produktion: Fabric Frontline AG, Zürich, CH
Material/Technik: Seide, Satin, Aetzdruck
143 × 9 cm
Donation: Charles Clerc
Eigentum: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich / ZHdK
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Literature

Museum für Gestaltung Zürich (Hg.), 100 Jahre Schweizer Design, Zürich 2014, S. 318.

Lotte Schilder Bär / Norbert Wild (Hg.), Designland Schweiz. Gebrauchsgüterkultur im 20. Jahrhundert, Pro Helvetia, Schweizer Kulturstiftung, Zürich 2001.

www.fabricfrontline.ch

Image credits

Krawatten, Fabric Frontline, Frösche, 1990, Entwurf: Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, Donation: Charles Clerc
Abbildung: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich / ZHdK

Stoffcoupon, Fabric Frontline, Augen, 1992, Entwurf: Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, Dauerleihgabe: Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft, Bundesamt für Kultur Bern
Abbildung: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich / ZHdK

Stoffcoupon, Fabric Frontline, Blumen gross, 1989, Entwurf: Jeannine Stricker, Dauerleihgabe: Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft, Bundesamt für Kultur Bern
Abbildung: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich / ZHdK

Stoffcoupon, Fabric Frontline, Ravenna-160 Quasten Motiv, 1986-1987, Entwurf: Ursula Rodel, Dauerleihgabe: Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft, Bundesamt für Kultur Bern
Abbildung: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich / ZHdK

Fotografie, Werbeprospekt, Fabric Frontline Zurich
Abbildung: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich / ZHdK

Exhibition text
Fabric Frontline AG

Ornament is not always harmless. For example, Cornelia Hesse-Honegger uses her fabrics to document a threatened species of poisonous frogs or mutant ladybugs, all scientifically based. The ties in the collection of SRF news anchor Charles Clerc showcase the complete spectrum of Fabric Frontline’s typical color contrasts, motifs, and designs. And these ties testify to a fashion statement: the aesthetic-ironic flair with which the man of the world circa 1990 adorned himself.