Accessory Taffeta – an upcycled tote bag created from salvaged fabric strips sewn, turned & hand woven into structure. Developed for Textile Products & Sustainability in Barcelona. A slow, repetitive process that became unexpectedly meditative amongst the chaos of deadlines, technical sheets & endless Adobe battles.
This semester has been a strange balancing act between digital precision & tactile instinct. Most of this weekend will be spent buried in technical sheets for my Ready-to-Wear collection – hours translating garments from sculptural ideas into flat 2D Adobe documents. Necessary? Yes. Enjoyable? Not particularly.
The Adobe suite & I continue our ongoing blood feud. There are moments where I genuinely question why something as simple as moving a line, resizing a brush, or setting up an artboard feels like a psychological endurance test. I know the technical side matters, but I also know myself well enough now to admit that I am not naturally a flat designer. I am a sculptor, a handmaker, someone who understands materials through touch, repetition, construction & experimentation.
That is why finishing my latest project for Textile Products & Sustainability tonight felt so grounding.
Accessory Taffeta began as another upcycling concept using salvaged fabrics cut into long strips approximately 3–5 cm wide. Each strip had to be sewn, turned inside out, then woven together to create structure. I originally considered making either a laptop sleeve or a tote bag & eventually chose the tote.
The process itself is repetitive & time consuming, but strangely meditative. Cutting, sewing, turning ties through one after another, weaving colour & texture together – it quietened my brain in a way screens rarely do. Then suddenly I would get a sharp spike from the carpal tunnel & realise I had been pain free for a considerable amount of time. Funny how pain can disappear into the background when flow state takes over.
What I love most about university is not only the making itself, but the shared creative environment around it. Being able to work independently in the design hub, or outside in the sun, then come together to speak honestly about the workload, share discoveries, ask for help with techniques, or witness someone present their concept & process. Those moments matter.
My favourite part is presentations – hearing people explain their inspirations, the research behind their ideas, the techniques they learned, adapted or completely reinvented, & how they pushed through problems during the making process to arrive at a final outcome. You get to witness people thinking themselves into becoming artists & designers in real time.
The next month is intense. Countless projects. Endless technical sheets. Long nights. More coffee than any human should probably consume. But then it will be done.
Three months here has flown by at an unbelievable speed. I still have another seven weeks left in Barcelona. There are many things I have not yet had the chance to experience or explore, but right now the priority is simple: finish the work, keep creating, keep learning, & trust that the rest will come afterwards.
Larissa Sarina BAGLIERI 