Bless Shop Projekt

The BLESS-SHOP PROJECT developed due to a number of invitations to participate in exhibitions. It represents a round trip through an international network of shared interests. Within the Werkleitz Biennale BLESS contacted several local shops in Werkleitz, Tornitz, Calbe and Barby. An agreement to sell BLESS-products was made with 15 local shops. During the Biennale, the Werkleitz local supermarket Duphorn & Franke, the Tornitz Bernau’s Minimarkt and several specialized dealers in Calbe and in Barby presented BLESS-products in their window-displays, at subventioned and locally acceptable prices. Additional marketing measures were a flashy advertisement in the monthly Calbenser Blatt and a poster-sized flyer in the Schonebecker Volksstimme. On top of that, the BLESS-scarves were presented at a fashion show in "Gotzes Gartenland", a gardening supply store, by the Barby fashion boutique "Mode und Mehr".

BLESS-products represent detail solutions to a multitude of real-life situations and thereby widen the scope of functions of every day articles of use, such as Chairwears (No. 07), clothing for chairs; the Set (No. 03), a full-body accessoire, uniting any and all functions required of an accessoire; the shoes (Customizable Footwear, Nr. 06), with instructions for individual designs; a water-repellent table-cloth, with fixed embroidery-frames to be eaten from directly or the scarves (Scarf No. 11), fashioned from segments of complete - sponsored - outfits.

Wearing and using a BLESS-product demands a conscious decision and a willingness to confrontation. In their restriction to accessoires as the purest form of fashionable disfunctionality,
they refuse to go along with the production of pret-a-porter identity: a very serious look at their customers is necessary possibly more serious even than these care for. The necessity for communication when wearing a fur wig, a ‘bootsock’ or one of the scarves, possibly liberates the wearer from bashful uniformity and supports an active, self-confident BLESS fucks up every style-attitude wherever questions of good taste are concerned. Their products, marketed by advertisements and postcards, are available in different numbers, ranging all the way from small numbers to unlimited production world-wide. Exemplifying the mechanisms of the fashion market, they represent its symptoms as well as its analysis.