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The Studio: Scabal’s Artist in Residence Programme
Scabal Opens Its House to Artists
Scabal introduces The Studio, a dedicated space for ongoing creative exchange through its Artist in Residence programme.
Launched in September 2025, The Studio welcomes Léa Belooussovitch, Céline Vahsen, and Benoît Jacquemin, three artists invited to engage with the House, its materials, its processes, and its heritage.
Art has long held a meaningful place within Scabal. In 1971, the House commissioned Salvador Dalí to imagine menswear for the year 2000 through a series of 12 paintings. In 2020, John Armleder created a sculptural work marking the symbolic passage into a new millennium. These moments reflect Scabal’s continued dialogue with art, culture, and creative expression.
With The Studio, this dialogue enters a new chapter.
The Artist in Residence programme began in September 2025 and is curated by art historian Pascale van Zuylen. Through the programme, artists are invited to work from within the House, drawing inspiration from Scabal’s people, fabrics, archives, craftsmanship, and its British Mill, while remaining fully independent in their approach.
The Studio embraces a broad range of mediums, from drawing and painting to ceramics, photography, sculpture, and textile-based practices. Each artist is free to explore without constraint, allowing new ideas to take shape through direct contact with Scabal’s world.
For the artists, Scabal becomes a field of experimentation grounded in material, craftsmanship, and heritage expertise. For the House, this exchange brings renewed perspective and sustains a culture of curiosity.
Conceived as an evolving platform, The Studio will continue to welcome new artists over time, extending this creative exchange and allowing new perspectives to emerge.
Step inside The Studio and discover how Scabal’s Artist in Residence programme brings together contemporary art, fabric, craftsmanship, and creative exchange.
The Artists
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Léa Belooussovitch
French artist Léa Belooussovitch, based in Brussels, works with coloured pencil on wool felt. For The Studio, she draws from archival images of the flooding that affected Scabal’s Huddersfield mill around twenty years ago, transforming these traces into blurred, tactile works across fabric and format.
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Céline Vahsen
Brussels-based artist Céline Vahsen works with textile as her primary medium, using ancestral techniques such as weaving and natural dyeing. For The Studio, she works with leftover threads from Scabal’s British mills, constructing images directly within the fabric, where colour emerges through thread, rhythm, and gesture.
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Benoît Jacquemin
Belgian artist Benoît Jacquemin, born in Liège and trained in photography at La Cambre, explores material, form, and transformation across mediums including wood, glass, metal, sculpture, and image. For The Studio, his work opens a reflection on history, objects, and the way material can carry memory.
