This publication is sold via this webshop without any crochet attached to it.

The second issue of Booklook can be unfolded and worn as a shirt, which again can be refolded into a magazine.

Booklook is a research project initiated 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.

Booklook Shirt carries the essay Fragments of DIY stories, about do-it-yourself practices in fashion, by researcher Alessandra Varisco.

DIY activities in fashion include various types of craft techniques such as knitting, embroidery, pattern making, sewing, quilting, etc. Often considered as a frivolous practice, DIY fashion is rarely researched. However, in this text, the subject is explored from several perspectives which are divided in a set of short chapters that fit the fluidity of the shape of the hybrid garment-magazine. In one chapter, Alessandra compares DIY to purchasing clothes and explores DIY as a practice of privilege. Another chapter showcases DIY activities from an historical perspective and its function in defining women’s role and garment workers’ rights. DIY periodicals for sewing, knitting and pattern making and their effect on consumption behaviour as well as the relationship between home dressmaking and garment industrial production are explored. It also shares some specific cases where home dressmaking and DIY practices were seen as illegal tools to subvert predominant narratives and generate change. To give an overview of all these perspectives, the issue includes a glossary about DIY fashion.

To merge reading with doing, this publication includes crochet patterns, developed and designed by SKHSS: Mika Perlmutter & Lejla Vala Verheus. You are invited to use the patterns to modify the design of this garment-magazine through crocheting yourself.

This publication also carries the prologue Booklook – Wearing is Publishing is Reading, written by Femke de Vries. This text is published in Arabic, Chinese, English and Spanish.

Limited edition of 170 copies. This publication is made from a washable paper: Cuturon X-treme 480.170. This is a synthetic paper that doesn’t contain the OEKO TEX label.

Type: softcover\ Dimensions magazine (folded): 165 x 240 mm \ Dimensions sheet (unfolded): 660 x 950 mm \ Pages: 32\ Art Direction & Design: Anouk Beckers\ Graphic design: She Keeps Her Shears Sharp by Lejla Vala Verheus \ Crochet design: She Keeps Her Shears Sharp by Mika Perlmutter \ Text: Alessandra Varisco & Femke de Vries \ Editors: Femke de Vries & Hanka van der Voet \ English Copy Editor: Kat Addis\ Translators: Nassima Nejjari, Dakota Guo & Guadalupe Castillo Vizuete\ Release date: March 2023\ Binding: folding\ Language text Alessandra: English \ Language text Femke: Spanish, English, Chinese, Arabic\ Printing at robstolk Amsterdam.