Children of the Golden Heart
Category: Apparel
Competitions: Fashion Competition 2025
This collection explores memory as a physical and emotional imprint, using textile as a medium to preserve and reinterpret personal history. Inspired by the story of Agnes Richter, who embroidered her life onto a jacket in the 1800s, the work views clothing as a vessel for storytelling and control in uncertain circumstances. Each piece seeks to create order from fragmented memory, drawing on familiar domestic symbols such as patchworked objects, hanging jewelry, and the layered colors of interior walls. A key theme is the tension between nostalgia and the need to honor lived experiences. The collection also reflects on girlhood, where memory is often shaped or distorted by societal perception, especially regarding femininity and judgment. Framing devices like postcards and picture frames serve as visual motifs, chosen for their ability to contain both curated presentation and personal memory. Craftsmanship is central to the collection. Techniques such as embroidery, beading, devoré velvet, knitting, felting, crocheting, and hand dyeing are employed to embed narrative into fabric. Inspired by other mediums, particularly painting and personal objects, design motifs were translated into crochet lace and quilted detailing. The result is a body of work that captures the delicate act of remembering through the tactile, layered language of textile. As this is a textile design involved piece, it is created personal to the consumer and uses a slow fashion process done by hand, as the best method to sustainable practice is to avoid overconsumption and overproduction. With sustainable practices as a creative, a big source for materials can be the material that already exists, whether it is secondhand bought from someone who never ended using it, surplus and dead stock donated by companies, reusing leftovers from previous projects, revising old garments, or unused material straight from the production source of the fabric. I try to utilize this ability to decorate fabric through craft, giving a piece a new life or a deeper purpose than when it is not being used.
