Photography, art, and DIY fashion combine in an unusual Budapest label 

Kata Oltai runs a non-for-profit feminist space in Budapest. For years, she’s been working on exhibitions, magazine editorials, and art projects with her long-standing friend, photographer Andi Gáldi Vinkó. But with increasing government control over cultural life in Budapest, Oltai and Gáldi Vinkó have gone in search of new avenues to express themselves. And they’ve found one: DIY fashion.

“There’s a powerful ideological control and a shrinking institutional space for our generation, so we seek to find new ways to work together, produce, communicate,” Oltai told The Calvert Journal.

For their KONFEKCIÓ/ANDIGV label, Oltai and Gáldi Vinkó select a broad range of photographs – a portrait of an old headscarved woman smiling confidently, an image of two, shabby, matching red cars, a close-up of body fat, a photo of shoe shelves in a shop, constructivist architecture – then match the photographs to vintage clothes, like striped, oversized shirts, military-style T-shirts and flower patterned tops or dresses, before Oltai sews the prints onto the clothing. The result is an unusual, fresh, and multi-faceted collection.

“Making this collection was a playful way to spend time together and work, but it can also be read as a soft social critique,” Oltai explained.

The clothes are on sale in Oltai’s vintage shop, KONFEKCIÓ, with profits helping to fund her gallery.