Words by Jessica Hartley
‘Nothing New. Everything New.’ showcase brings together Italian knitwear house Oscalito and Amsterdam design studio multiple identities
Amsterdam group show is open to the public until 20 September
As the new season gets under way, Amsterdam Fashion Week opened with A Space For Time, a new group exhibition from Amsterdam-based platform Arcatype, bringing together a heady mix of fashion, furniture and design at The Gent on the historic Herengracht.
Running up until 20th September, the exhibition is a highly sensorial affair that brings a collective of emerging and established makers together under one roof – a curated gathering of materials, craftsmanship, innovation, and new ways of thinking. Arcatype describes its approach through three principles: Craft, Character and Care, with a focus on pieces made with purpose and made to last.
It makes for a refreshingly tactile start to Fashion Week. Clothes sit alongside furniture, lighting and design objects, with visitors encouraged to get close to the work and meet some of the people who made it, creating a temporary design world to be experienced hands-on. The setting plays its part too, with installations of crystals, rocks, moss and sand bringing a serene and otherworldly quality to the airy space. The opening event featured an intricate, meditative live musical performance by Global Gongs.
Among the stand-out work within the group exhibition is Nothing New. Everything New., a collaboration between Turin knitwear house Oscalito and Amsterdam design studio multiple identities. On paper, the two come from very different worlds, but in actuality share the same core belief: made to last should mean exactly that.
Nothing new. Everything new.
Oscalito has been producing knits in Turin since 1936, today run by the third generation of the Casalini family. Natural fibres are at the heart of the house: silk, wool and cotton, made in its Turin workshop using a slow-production model and machinery, some of which dates back to the mid-20th century, kept alive not behind glass, but through daily use.
The company has deliberately chosen what it calls the “slow path”, keeping its production in Italy and working exclusively with natural fibres. In 2022, CEO Dario Casalini also co-founded the Slow Fiber network, built around a model of ethical and responsible textile production.
multiple identities approaches longevity from a different place: never from scratch. Founded in Amsterdam by J. Haeberle in 2000, the studio has spent more than two decades designing behind the scenes for global fashion and sportswear brands. Its own mi_kit System takes existing garments and materials and turns them into a modular wardrobe: compatible sleeves, bodies, holsters, haramakis and other components that can be combined, removed and reconfigured, like this modular holster. Think Lego for your wardrobe.
The collaboration brings two very different design languages together. Oscalito’s classic Italian knitwear and decades of textile expertise with the more avant-garde, streetwear-inflected approach of multiple identities.
multiple identities has built new work onto a selection of Oscalito men’s and women’s pieces, adding modular components that allow what is already there to be transformed. Alongside them, discards, damaged goods and unfinished items gain a second new life, with pre-consumer waste reappropriated into considered, modular products. Nothing wasted. Everything played.
It makes for a meaningful conversation between heritage and future. Between a Turin factory that has never stopped, and an Amsterdam studio that never started from scratch. Both work against the assumption that newer is automatically better.
As the collaboration puts it: Nothing new. Everything new.
A Space For Time
That meeting of craft and fresh thinking carries into the wider exhibition, where fashion is deliberately shown alongside furniture and design objects rather than kept in its own lane. More than simply a trade show, A Space For Time brings different creative disciplines together, with materials, craftsmanship, innovation and new ways of thinking taking centre stage.
Also worth seeking out is Antwerp-based designer Marie Bernadette Woehrl, whose sculptural leather pieces begin with the material rather than a predetermined shape, often featuring extreme fringing. Stand-outs from her new collection include the Hourglass Apron, Nest Bag and Aster Fringe Arm Piece, designed to sit above the elbow. Working predominantly with vegetable-tanned vachetta leather, Woehrl cuts and weaves it into intricate fringed forms that move and change with the wearer. Her first collection emerged in 2023 after she stepped away from the commercial fashion system to return to hands-on making in her Antwerp atelier.
Then there is Trefoil, the furniture and object project of Luuk van de Grift, bringing another material language into the mix. Its Tension range spans lighting and furniture, including a series of lamps alongside a chair, table and sofa.
Together, the different practices make A Space For Time more than a Fashion Week presentation. Craftsmanship sits alongside experimentation, established techniques alongside new ideas, with one common thread running through it all. Making things with care, purpose and, crucially, to last.
A Space For Time runs from 1–20 September 2026 at The Gent, Herengracht 206, Amsterdam. The exhibition is open to the public from 10:00–18:00 by reservation.
