Museum Arnhem and Hul le Kes have joined forces. The result is a unisex T-shirt dyed with natural materials (from, among others, Tuin Museum Arnhem). The T-shirt is specially made for the exhibition Consume By and exclusively available in Winkel Museum Arnhem. On Saturday 14 January 2023, the museum is organising a Dyeing Event with Hul le Kes! Together with designer Sjaak Hullekes, visitors will dye a white T-shirt with natural materials. This T-shirt will also be on sale in the museum shop and will automatically give access to the event. 

Saved from the trash heap

Tens of millions of kilos of fabric are thrown away every year in the Netherlands alone. The value of the raw materials needed to make the fabric and the labour involved is massively undervalued. Arnhem-based fashion brand Hul le Kes is trying to salvage as many rejected fabrics back from the mountain of waste as possible. For the museum, Hul le Kes collected white T-shirts discarded by people. These are given a dye bath of natural materials and repaired if necessary at the Hul le Kes Recovery Studio, making them wearable again. Shades of brown you see in the T-shirts were obtained from chestnuts from the garden of Museum Arnhem, yellow colours from onion peels from Zeeland, shades of blue from tree bark and pink from the roots of madder.

Consume By

Climate change, nature conservation and environmental pollution are subjects that concern more and more people in the Netherlands. But in many parts of the world, the effects of Earth’s depletion have been felt for a long time. How long can humans continue to live on the planet? Many artists are asking themselves that question. Consume By shows the different ways in which artists from the 17th century to today depict nature. What stories do the landscapes, still lifes, plants and animals tell about the relationships between people and nature over the centuries? What stories do they not tell… and why not? The exhibition can be seen until 29 January 2023.

Fashion brand Hul le Kes 

Hul le Kes is a social and circular fashion brand from Arnhem and is committed to a more local, social and inclusive fashion system. A system where financial values serve social, cultural and moral values. The brand was founded by Sjaak Hullekes and Sebastiaan Kramer in response to today’s society and fashion system. Hul le Kes wants to show that people and products that do not fit within society’s standards do add value.