A magazine that can be unfolded and worn as an apron, which again can be refolded into a magazine.

Booklook is a research project by Anouk Beckers that fuses the fashion magazine with the garment, resulting in a series of wearable fashion magazines. Each issue can be unfolded into another type of wearable item and carries stories about the role of garments in lives, cultures and practices from various artists, designers, writers, thinkers.

The fabric-like paper carries stories that stem from the situatedness of garments in non-commercial, cultural, and daily realities. Booklook plays with familiar and important agents in the fashion industry: the garment, the fashion magazine, and as the title suggests, the lookbook, a publication in which brands traditionally offer buyers an overview of their collection (their ‘looks’). Booklook instead aims to address this dominant consumerist fashion discourse. Instead of denying and cutting the cords with the reality of production, cultural situatedness, historical references and practices of use, Booklook opens up these narratives and tells exactly these stories.

The first issue – Booklook Apron-Delantal – shares a text (in both English and Spanish) by artist and researcher María Naidich about the Tseltalero dress, a garment created and worn by women from both Tseltal and Tojolabal communities in the Lacandon jungle, in southeastern Mexico. The Tseltalero dress represents an expression of women’s resistance to centuries of control over their clothing since the colonial times. It is a garment that is produced collectively and strengthens relationships between women, allowing them to organize and function autonomously. The Tseltalero dress represents the relationships between the community, its environment and other human and non-human beings. Based on the Tojolabal understanding that endows all beings with a heart, the Tseltalero dress has a hart too, suggesting the dress is alive. María’s research on this dress is developed in conversation with the Tojolabal community of San Gregorio la Esperanza. It explores the complex value of this dress within the Tojolabal and Tseltal worldview, sharing some ideas about beauty, garments and the body from a non-Eurocentric perspective.

Besides the contributors’ text it carries a prologue by researcher Femke de Vries. This text is shared in Arabic, Chinese, English and Spanish.

Limited edition of 195 copies. This publication is made from a washable paper: Neobond.

Type: softcover\ Dimensions: 295 mm x 205 mm portrait\ Pages: 16\ Art Direction & Design: Anouk Beckers\ Design Research: Anouk Beckers & Alessandra Varisco\ Editors: Valentina Sarmiento Cruz & Hanka van der Voet \ Graphic design: Rietlanden Women’s Office\ Text: María Naidich & Femke de Vries\ Spanish Copy Editor: Davo Valdés\ English Copy Editor: Kat Addis\ Translators: Carmelino Méndez Jiménez, Valentina Sarmiento Cruz, Nassima Nejjari, Dakota Guo & Guadalupe Castillo Vizuete\ Release date: May 2022\ Binding: folding\ Colour: full colour\ Language: Spanish, English, Chinese, Arabic\ Printing at robstolk Amsterdam (2022)\