traces
graduation collection
2019
The question that concerns me is about clothes and time. More precisely, about clothes and memory - as the time I want to reflect upon has already passed. Fashion is the language I speak and understand the best. In my opinion it is also the language of time. It is a materialisation of change and the proof of transience.
In the context of changing fashions, clothes exist in cycles of forgetting and remembering.
We can describe fashion as a dynamics with an interchangeable content. Constant dynamics in a cyclic form embodies continual change which exploits its own rhythm.
I started designing the collection by exploring recurring combinations of garments that are considered examples of timeless chic. The ability to construct new meanings with basic elements is one of the things that excite me the most about fashion. Classic looks which exemplify good taste serve as a basis for deformative design. I use an associative color language to support a deconstruction of archetypical outfits.
I like the idea of fashion having an intermediate position between the body and the world. But it is also connecting today and yesterday, the individual and the social. According to Baudrillard, fashion means an immediate sociality in form of a collective participation in signs. At the same time aesthetic choice of fashions can be seen as an act of a narcissistic self-assertion. Fashioned commodities promise to satisfy a hubristic desire of expansion by becoming part of your own body.
The playful use of transparent materials reflects on the importance of the concrete clothed body in the context of fashion practice. Foucault refers to the body as a “merciless topia” and at once as the starting point of all utopias.
The own body is the safest material reference point and invisible at the same time.
Fashion as a medium maintains a clear reference to the physical body. This reference creates a connection between the concrete physical body and a fictional fashioned body as an incorporation of abstract beauty.
I coat materials with vinyl to give them a glossy, almost mirroring look. This transparent shiny layer makes the structures of fabrics, traces of coloration and distress visible yet unattainable to touch. The flower of narcissus fades into a camouflage pattern which shows more than it attempts to cover. Very simple, sometimes exaggerated silhouettes do not aim to create unknown shapes, but emphasise the known ones incorporating more meaning with each cycle.
