I carry myself
Category: Apparel
Competitions: Fashion Competition 2025
We are Tamar Jacoby and Amit Yanai, third-year fashion design students at Shenkar College in Israel. This project was born out of a conscious decision to collaborate – not only as designers, but as individuals who believe that sustainability begins with connection. For us, working together is an environmental choice: to share resources, challenge each other with meaningful questions, and create something bigger than ourselves. We see collaboration as an act of care, both for one another and for the world. Our project, i carry myself, emerged from a central question: how can we restore balance in a fashion world that has lost its equilibrium? As designers, we often feel the weight of overproduction, overconsumption, and overdesign. Through this project, we wanted to explore how fashion might slow down, breathe, and reconnect to purpose. We began by researching systems and cultures that revolve around balance – from Japanese aesthetics and minimalist design to the physical and emotional discipline of weightlifting. We found ourselves drawn to the quiet, focused moment before the lift – a moment that requires complete presence and internal alignment. That tension between restraint and power, between softness and strength, became our emotional compass. This duality also informed the aesthetic and material choices in the garment. The entire piece was made using only natural fibres sourced from existing materials. We worked exclusively with textile waste: cotton shirts, worn denim, lace, linen, and luxurious remnants of wedding dresses that would have otherwise gone unused. These leftover fabrics were gifted to us by a well-known Israeli designer. Since bridal gowns are often cut on the bias, the production process generates large quantities of textile waste. We took those delicate and valuable scraps and gave them new life, reconstructing them into a single, unified surface. The top part of the garment is built from white cotton and denim remnants, forming strong shoulders that express structure and presence. As the garment flows downward, the materials become softer and lighter – silks, lace, linen – creating a textural transition that mirrors emotional movement: from grounded strength to gentle release. The garment is one-size, with internal mechanisms for adjustment, encouraging a longer lifespan and flexible use across bodies and time. We also incorporated discarded bras donated by women in our community. These pieces – often seen as too intimate to reuse – became central to our concept. A bra supports the body. It stabilizes. It holds weight with a tiny clasp. For us, it was a symbol of both vulnerability and strength. Like a spine. Like a woman. Like design. One of the most important gestures in this piece was the inclusion of original fabric care labels – the kind found inside every garment, often ignored. We placed them visibly and intentionally, as a reminder: to know what we wear. To read what it’s made of. To understand that materials matter. That nothing is neutral. That design has consequences. i carry myself is not about spectacle. It’s about attention. It’s made entirely of what was already there – repurposed, reimagined, and rebalanced. It carries within it memory, collaboration, and care. It asks whether fashion can still hold us – not only as wearers, but as people – and whether we, in return, can carry ourselves and our choices more consciously, more gently, and more powerfully
