This past week has been nothing short of a crucible.
Between visa battles, fabrication failures, exhaustion that crept into my bones, & relentless deadlines, I found myself standing inside the metaphor I’ve been designing for months:
Transformation Through Fire.
The aluminum wings fought me from the start.
Bad advice, ruined surfaces, sanding that stripped away more than material – it stripped away time.
Glue that corroded edges.
Hours spent undoing what “experts” had assured me would work.
In the end the wings emerged not polished, not perfect, but true.
Weathered.
Marked.
Honest.
Carrying the scars of their own becoming.
Just like me.
In the midst of this, I was averaging two hours of sleep a night.
I stopped being able to feel warm – exhaustion hollowed out all my reserves.
I kept moving because momentum was the only thing that would keep me upright.
Every day felt like stepping into the workshop with only fumes left in my lungs.
And still…
the garments came.
One by one.
The Joker, the Inner Child, the Warrior, the Higher Power, the Phoenix.
Each pulled from the chaos into form, each carrying a piece of me – my humour, my grief, my resilience, my surrender.
I rebuilt shoes into armour.
I turned balloon ropes into laces, pulleys into jewellery, nylon into mythology.
Nothing stayed what it originally was.
Everything – including me – changed state.
I have walked through a fire of my own making this week.
And I didn’t come out polished.
I came out real.
My brand, my philosophy – Ordered Kaos – has never felt more embodied than it does right now.
I didn’t avoid the chaos.
I moved through it, shaped it, turned it into something I could wear, stitch, stand inside of.
My capsule isn’t just a collection.
It’s a record of survival.
Now, with the submission days away, I’m standing at the edge between exhaustion & completion.
Still cold.
Still tired.
But I can see the finish line glowing.
And when I finally sleep – really sleep – it will be with the knowledge that I didn’t just make garments.
I made beings.
I made rituals.
I made resurrection.
And I made it through the fire.
Larissa Sarina BAGLIERI 