THE PATCHWORK
FAMILY MEMBERS
BERBER STRUIKSMA
Berber Struiksma is a designer and autonomous creator whose work is deeply rooted in up-cycling. Berber’s unique collage-like technique allows her to continually deconstruct and reconstruct her work, ensuring that each piece evolves and grows over time. This approach not only highlights the versatility of materials but also challenges the traditional concepts of permanence and value in art.
In her collections and installations, Berber explores the intersection of fashion, body and autonomy. Utilising recycled materials, video projections and a touch of humour, she crafts her own whimsical fairy tale worlds. Each material she uses comes with a history, not thoroughly researched by Berber herself but reimagined in a new context that sparks curiosity about their past lives.By deconstructing these materials and reincarnating them as characters in her installations, Berber breathes new life into objects that once had different functions. Her characters draw inspiration from fairy tales, myths, and sagas found in second-hand books, integrating both the themes and the physical pages into her work.
Berber’s work also serves as a critique of the fashion industry’s pretentiousness. She questions the necessity of chasing a fairy tale often sold by the competitive nature of the industry, where young designers strive for recognition through expensive materials and professional branding. Through her do-it-yourself ethos, Berber offers a playful yet sharp critique of this narrative, suggesting that true creativity and expression can emerge from alternative paths.
Daniel Bosco is a Canadian designer whose work celebrates camp, glamour and the beauty of not taking fashion too seriously. Through their label I <3 Shopping by Daniel Bosco, they create worlds inspired by heartbreak, drag, vintage Hollywood, Italian family culture and queer nightlife, always balancing humour with genuine emotion. Whether it's their viral Donatella-dress or a collection inspired by rediscovering your confidence after a breakup, Daniel's work transforms everyday experiences into playful, highly visual fashion narratives.
Daniel developed a practice that combines couture techniques with an unapologetically camp perspective. Their work has been worn by the superstars of our age while remaining deeply rooted in queer community and independent fashion. At the heart of every collection is the belief that fashion should make people feel powerful, confident and a little bit ridiculous in the best possible way.
Daniel joined The Patchwork Family in 2025, bringing their unmistakable visual language to the collective's growing international community. Sharing a belief in collaboration, sustainability and a "make it work" mentality, they are scheduled to present again during the next Amsterdam Fashion Week show.
DANIEL BOSCO
Elle Rusu is a fashion designer, stylist and performance artist whose practice explores the intersection of sustainability, class, storytelling and the body. A graduate of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, she joined The Patchwork Family in 2025 and made her Amsterdam Fashion Week debut as part of the collective with an unforgettable show. Developed entirely from materials she had accumulated over the years, the collection questioned who can afford to become a fashion designer and challenged the financial and ecological realities of creating a fashion collection. Working with a zero budget and a strict zero waste methodology, every garment was shaped by the previous life of its materials, allowing existing cuts, irregular forms and imperfections to dictate the final design rather than concealing them.
Alongside her design practice, Elle has increasingly expanded into performance, using movement as an extension of the narratives embedded within her garments. Over the past year she has further developed her pole dance practice into an integral part of her artistic language, exploring themes of strength, vulnerability, sensuality and transformation. Blurring the boundaries between fashion, choreography and theatre, her performances elevate the garments beyond static objects, turning them into living characters within immersive worlds. During the upcoming Amsterdam Fashion Week, she will present the next chapter of this evolving practice as part of The Patchwork Family's 5 year anniversary show in Paradiso.
Through fashion, performance and immersive storytelling, Elle creates worlds where sustainability, sexuality and social commentary coexist, proving that limitations can become the foundation for radical creativity.
ELLE RUSU
Joris Janssen is a fashion designer whose work explores queer identity through camp, humour and pop culture. A graduate of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Joris joined The Patchwork Family in 2024 and was recently nominated for Lichting with his graduation collection SO OBSESSED. Starting from the question "Why are we so obsessed?", the collection researches the role of diva worship within queer culture. Growing up queer in a dominant heteronormative society, divas became a place of escape, strength and self expression. Through SO OBSESSED, these fantasies are brought back to life while reclaiming and campifying the heteronormative imagery they once offered an escape from.
Rejecting function in favour of fantasy, Joris uses excess, controversy and playfulness to challenge gendered stereotypes and imagine a reality without limits to what you can or should be. Whether through a tiny thong, impossibly high heels or a look that refuses to behave, the work invites people to embrace fashion as a space for freedom rather than conformity. Why say diva like it's a bad thing?
Following the success of SO OBSESSED, Joris continues to develop this world as part of The Patchwork Family. The next chapter of the collection will be presented during the Patchwork Family Amsterdam Fashion Week 2026 show in Paradiso.
JORIS JANSSEN
Being a queer person, with both a migration and working-class background have shaped Marcos practice in up-cycling and initiating communities. It has made them sensible to inequalities in society, forcing them to learn how to claim space as an individual. It has taught them to be resourceful and creative with limited ingredients making up-cycling their main methodology naturally. To them, up-cycling is more than a mode of production but can serve as holistic strategy to up-cycle the fashion system itself. All this trickles into striving for and implementing more inclusive, democratic, and resourceful ways of making fashion.
Marcos upbringing has made them humble and forced to hustle, which inspired their streetwear brand The Humble Hustle. With its rough and messy design language it emphasises the struggle and „mud“ working class people are facing.
Through their background they value community and family as the most valuable resource of all. That is why they initiated a collective of young queer makers to claim space in the industry: The Patchwork Family.
With their BA graduation in Fashion Design they won the first shared price at Lichting 2021. Since then they produced performative shows at Fashion Weeks in Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris and London while also showing their work as a designer. As a party producer and curator of performances they organise events at Club Church and Paradiso.
MARCO BLAZEVIC
Meike's own work is driven by an ongoing fascination with the ways women shape themselves in response to societal pressure, often blending dry humor, visual discomfort, and domestic familiarity. Whether referencing bridalwear, furniture or the farcical expectations placed on women, her collections take a sharp yet accessible approach to themes like internalised misogyny, the male gaze, and the performance of etiquette. Up-cycling is her way of rewriting the rules, reshaping existing garments into pieces that challenge expectation with subtle wit. Much of her work begins not only with clothing, but with household textiles and fragments of furniture, objects that carry the intimacy of domestic life and the weight of cultural expectation. These materials arrive with a past, their wear, structure, and symbolism already loaded. Rather than stripping that away, she leans into it. Her collections twist the familiar to expose the tension between memory and reinvention, tradition and self-determination.
As co founder of The Patchwork Family, Meike van Lelyveld is responsible for shaping the collective's long term vision and translating its values into sustainable creative practice. Working across artistic direction, strategy, production and organisational development, she builds the structures that enable the collective to grow while preserving its collaborative spirit and radical creative freedom. Her work focuses on creating meaningful opportunities for emerging creatives through interdisciplinary projects, cultural partnerships and community driven initiatives.
Alongside her role within The Patchwork Family, Meike works across fashion, business and cultural strategy. She holds an MSc in International Fashion and Luxury Management from the Institut Français de la Mode (IFM) in Paris, where she specialised in digital storytelling and researched the role of upcycling within the luxury fashion industry. She is also co founder of Family Business International, a creative agency that develops creative strategies, brand identities and cultural concepts, and works in Business Development for No Limits! Art Castle, where she focuses on organisational growth, partnerships and long term strategic development.
MEIKE VAN LELYVELD
RACHEL KLOK
Rachel has a complicated relationship to glamour, being obsessed with it, but hating it at the same time. She loves its dreamy exterior, but dislikes the ladylike behavior that in her eyes exists alongside it. She does not like it when somebody tries to draw within the lines, it is way more fun if one doesn’t. Perfection is a bit boring right? By aiming to adopt the constructions of classical couture and adding the right amount of conceptual friction, Rachel creates what she calls „NON-CONFORMIST COUTURE“
This friction is also shown in Rachels use of material; only using fabrics made from a 100% natural fiber or natural fiber/polyester blend, they can dissolve naturally over time. This on one hand is sustainable, but in her eyes also a shame, for an ugly polyester fabric will exist forever. Her love for certain materials originate from their archetypical character: The association of satin with for example; luxury, a cool wool with a suit or Jersey with a T-shirt.
Salomé is a multidisciplinary queer designer, who founded NNAEJ. Drawing inspiration from different cities, their culture and nightlife, they strive to create playful and unconventional fashion. Experimentation and playfulness are core values of the brand. NNAEJ dresses queer and creative individuals, familiar with underground culture and nightlife, who express themselves in a joyful and bold way. Mixing textures, colours, fun prints, and knits is what creates unexpected and unique outcomes. Salomé crafts garments around personal storytelling and shared queer experiences. Being mindful regarding materials is very important for Salomé; they source almost all of their textiles and yarn second hand or deadstock, and believe being thrifty and resourceful is key to creativity.
SALOME JEANNE