Design Map · Eindhoven
Every Fold A Rehearsal
Graduation project by Cleo Dölling at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
Domestic textiles operate quietly as spatial codes in kitchens. Their patterns – stripes, grids, stitches, folds, stains – act as subtle instructions and carry routines of control: how to care, how to keep things in line.
This project focuses on these codes and how they are re-performed through the soft repetition of forms that feel familiar. Using draping, staging, bleaching, and disruption, it examines how domestic aesthetics organise not only physical spaces, but also femininity and domesticity as rehearsed ideals. Referencing the recent resurgence of tradwife culture, the work explores how nostalgic forms of womanhood are re-circulated as aspirational ideals. These aesthetics often echoing reactionary values wrapped in domestic virtue and self-control are used here as critical devices. The textile becomes a scenographic body, scaled and situated – a surface that stages and aims to unsettles. Friction appears where patterns glitch, where softness stretches beyond its script.