Interview with GRDXKN® developer Bastian Mueller

What does good design mean to you?

Bastian: To merge functionality, rationality, and intelligence in products. Outright, without any construed unique features. To make things intrinsically vivid and appealing. With regard to mimicri this means: A widespread technique, textile printing, is newly interpreted by means of an added innovative factor. We alter the properties of fabrics without any construed elements such as steel stays or plastic parts. It is an attempt to leave things as purist and comprehensible as possible. That is why the print on the inside is freely visible without any added lining.

What should a good bag offer?

Bastian: To put it rationally, it has to function as a means of transportation without getting in the way. However, it does have an aesthetic value and becomes a carrier of fashion and lifestyle in itself. This symbiosis makes it really interesting and fine.

What does fashion mean to you?

Bastian: Fashion is a very particular field. I perceive it from the outside as a cosmos of its own, which I only partially penetrate. Fashion is highly decorative, but also conceptional. mimicri manages the balancing act between fashion affinity and industrial design because Structure Printing, which I developed with GRDXKN®, serves a purpose but at the same time is visually very unique and appealing.

From a fashion perspective, what is so special about GRDXKN®?

Bastian: I give a familiar material, the fabric, an intelligent function, thus enhancing it, but I refrain from any construed details. I use screen-printing – which I have modified in certain respects. Fabrics of any type can be partially reinforced and modelled, however they remain light and flexible in a certain way. As in origami, we can influence the fall of the textiles’ folds. In addition, GRDXKN® can be washed at 90 degrees, which most textiles can’t take.

What is GRDXKN® made of?

Bastian: GRDXKN® is a type of technical ink for screen-printing that is composed of various components. The formula is water-based, solvent-free and therefore certified according to ÖKOTEX.

What is good style?

Bastian: When things harmonise well in their own way. Be it clothes, bicycles, living environment: when everything fits in, the style is also right, for oneself and others.

How did mimicri originate?

Bastian: Sandy Karstädt and I met several years ago at the Milan furniture fair. We have known each other for quite a while! Since 2014, I have been actively working on GRDXKN® again and in the summer of 2017, I developed and launched the brand mimicri as a small PR project, which Sandy was immediately enthusiastic about. She picked up on this and, together with her husband Stefan, took over the brand. Together we have redesigned and developed mimicri.

What does the cooperation between mimicri and you look like?

Bastian: I am the designer for the brand and I develop patterns and applications together with mimicri. In addition, I am now a consultant to the brand – simply because I know the GRDXKN® procedure and its possibilities better than anyone else. Of course, I am also there for the technical support (laughs).

Interview and illustration by Anuschka Rattunde