Profile: Estefania Carrillo-Arevalo – Only Natural Design Competitions

Estefania Carrillo-Arevalo

De Montfort University

I am a recent Fashion Design graduate whose work is rooted in the endemic nature of Colombia and shaped by a lifelong commitment to political activism. My practice treats leather not simply as a material, but as a living archive, a surface onto which myth, surrealism, and latino american can be carved, stitched, and reborn as wearable art. Each collection begins as a story. I draw from Colombian folklore and the strange, shape-shifting logic of magical realism, weaving these narratives together with the biodiversity of my country's threatened ecosystems,, its cloud forests, páramos, and the creatures found nowhere else on Earth. Leather becomes the medium through which these worlds collide: tactile, durable, and capable of holding texture, scar, and symbol in ways that few other materials can. But my garments are never purely aesthetic. They are vessels for political message, confronting themes of environmental destruction, cultural erasure, and social resistance. By transforming myth into silhouette and short story into seam, I aim to make activism wearable: visible on the body, impossible to ignore, and open to interpretation by anyone who encounters it. I see fashion as a form of storytelling that exists at the intersection of craft and conviction. My goal is not just to dress the body, but to provoke thought, spark dialogue, and honor the surreal, endangered beauty of Colombia's natural and cultural landscape, aiming is create long lasting garments that tell stories and become an extession of my view of the world.

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Utopia de reconciliacion

Category: Apparel

Competitions: Fashion Competition 2026

Utopía de Reconciliación explores the hummingbird as a symbol of harmony and reconciliation between people for the Nasa Colombian Indigenous community. With my leather craft, I combine weaving, one of the strongest skills of this community, with leather moulding to create the textures of my collection. At the same time, following the line of harmony, I researched architects who center their creations on humans living in harmony with their surroundings and nature, such as Rogelio Salmona. Understanding their vision of fluidity between the building and the outside, I was inspired to drape leather, something usually considered hard, as something fluid that follows the lines of the body and doesn't conform to straight lines, but rather keeps its original animal shape. Keeping the natural edges of the leather and using full skins is a technique I have developed throughout my projects, not only to reduce material waste, but to refuse seeing leather as just another fabric, contemplating the animal quality of the material as a vital part of the creation and duration of the clothes. The mixture of all of this translates into the texture of the hummingbird, representing an unstoppable force of hope and reconciliation, growing onto the person wearing the clothes, transforming traditional silhouettes into a human/nature conversation.