Profile: Anna Filzmoser – Only Natural Design Competitions

Anna Filzmoser

Central Saint Martins

I am an Austrian artist, textile and fashion designer whose practice is rooted in the cultural heritage of Tyrol, exploring the relationship between craft, memory and contemporary identity through a feminist and queer lens. Through felt, knitwear, crochet, and material experimentation with techniques typically connected to female practices, I investigate how traditional knowledge and local narratives can be preserved, transformed, and reinterpreted for the present. My archival research of Austrian craft explores traditional garments of identity and heritage and includes oral histories, female narratives, descriptions and drawings of garments passed down through generations that could be lost if not documented. Working across the fields of textile art, design, and fashion, my process is shaped by close engagement with local communities through workshops, collaborations with craftspeople. Drawing inspiration from Art Brut, folk culture, and everyday forms of making, I create sculptural works that celebrate imperfection, individuality, and togetherness, combined with the emotional qualities of handmade processes. My work seeks to foster dialogue between generations and disciplines through a practice grounded in material research and collective knowledge, aiming to develop new narratives that connect heritage with contemporary culture. Experimental, playful workshops inspired by tyrolese traditions are in collaboration with local communities and craftspeople who become part of the design process to create an outlet for a collection of many voices, combining a multitude of different skill levels and perspectives. Engaging in dialogue and resources creates abstract visual imagery that enhances my research and material outcomes into new contemporary concepts. In an age of hyper individualism, I consider what it means to be part of a community, particularly those not in the mainstream, and as a queer female artist and designer question how I can exist within conservative structures, where everybody wants a village but not to be a villager. I parallel this with the work, care and attention needed in craft and how art carries culture.

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Falling Apart

Category: Apparel

Competitions: Fashion Competition 2026

The collection ‚Vagiss Mein Nit‘ - ‚Forget Me Not‘ opens a dialogue with my heritage from Tyrol, Austria, where I renegotiate identity within conservative structures through a queer lens. The process explores themes of forgetting and remembering, visualized through working local materials sheep’s wool and Loden, reclaimed textiles and materials, community based workshops, as well as art-brut collaborations. In workshops participants were invited to redraw elements of my visual research from memory, generating altered symbols of Tyrolean culture and forms that became the foundation of the work. Wooden accessories extend into material collaborations. Created through close exchange with friends and collaborators and sourced and created in Tyrol, these pieces are shaped through raw, intuitive making, translating shared ideas into physical form. Garments are constructed from second-hand traditional Tyrolean garments and reworked completely by hand, carrying traces of their previous narrative while shifting their meaning into a different context. Triangular skirts introduce an experimentally resist-felted textile, reclaiming this traditional fabric as part of a material inheritance. Their form derives from abstracted shapes of traditional Tyrolean costumes, abstracted in community workshops. The garments of ‘Vagiss Mein Nit’ explore the “Tyrolean body,” questioning conservative views of particularly the female body and showing resistance through abstraction of traditional femininity. The process and project celebrate human connection, questioning whether we still understand what it means to be part of a community, and acting as a counterpoint to hyper-individualism, allowing for a platform of many voices.