RECLAIMED FORM – the completed Mirror look & its final transformation into a permanent mark on the body. Barcelona, 2026.
RECLAIMED FORM: The Mirror Collection was developed during my Fashion & Costume Design studies at LCI Barcelona in 2026. What began as an investigation into reflection & identity gradually became a much broader exploration of transformation: how we construct ourselves, how we see ourselves, & how identity can be dismantled, reversed & reconstructed.
The project began in the sketchbook. Research, drawing & visual mapping allowed me to explore fragmented forms, reflective surfaces, the body, movement & the tension between structure & softness. From there, I moved into material research – investigating fabrics, colour, texture & different methods of textile manipulation.
Experimentation became central to the collection. I worked through pleating, folding, sampling & sublimation printing, allowing the materials themselves to influence the direction of the garments. Rather than treating the initial drawings as fixed outcomes, I used the process of making to continually question & reshape the design.
Alongside this tactile experimentation, I developed technical drawings & specification sheets, translating conceptual ideas into garments that could actually be constructed. Toile after toile allowed the silhouette, proportions & construction to evolve. Some ideas disappeared completely; others transformed into something I could not have anticipated at the beginning.
The central garment eventually became a pleated reversible jacket. Its exterior is structured through repeated pleated forms, while the interior reveals sublimation prints developed through a collaboration with my sister. Reversibility became important not simply as a functional feature, but as part of the concept: there is no single definitive exterior or interior, just as identity cannot always be reduced to a single fixed version of ourselves.
From the jacket, the project expanded into a complete look: pleated trousers, a bra, upcycled sneakers, a bag & a hand-woven mirror. Shapes moved between the individual pieces so that the collection developed its own visual language rather than existing as a series of unrelated objects.
The mirror became particularly significant. I wove it by hand, creating an object that sat somewhere between accessory, sculpture, prop & symbol. Its silhouette influenced other elements of the collection, including the bag, while reflection became embedded throughout the project as both a physical act & a psychological one.
When I left Barcelona, I left the woven mirror with my roommate, Edu. I like that the central object of a collection concerned with transformation did not simply return home with me. It remains part of the place & period in which the work was created.
But the mirror travelled with me in another form.
Its shape became the inspiration for a tattoo developed in collaboration with tattoo artist Christina. In that sense, the project moved beyond sketchbook, textile & garment. A form that began as a design investigation became an object, was woven by hand, influenced the collection, & finally became permanently inscribed on my body.
The completed collection was documented through a self-directed shoot at The Shoot Room in Barcelona. Photographing & modelling the work myself became another extension of the concept. Rather than separating designer, maker, model & subject, I occupied each position. The body that had developed the work became the body through which it was finally communicated.
The resulting photographs formed the collection’s lookbook & final presentation, bringing together months of research, experimentation, technical development, construction, styling & image-making.
Looking back at RECLAIMED FORM now, I see it as more than a collection completed for university. It became an important stage in defining my transdisciplinary practice. Fashion, textile manipulation, print, sculpture, photography, performance, collaboration & the body were no longer separate disciplines – they became different ways of telling the same story.
The collection began with a mirror, but ultimately it became a record of change.
A reflection does not stay still. Neither do we.
