Legacy on my shoulders
What I love about fashion and photography is the fact that it totally transcends its clothing design and its specific context, it freezes a moment that will never come back.
I am obsessed with the identity that it can give to someone, and the fact it can reinvent one’s life. Coming from Paris, I am studying fashion and photography in the UK and have discovered a way to combine both specialisms. My concept was to create something personal, a memory, an artefact to convey the legacy of my family history through the languages of fashion, textiles, and photography.
Taking that idea, I created a calf-length black dress in Bouclé woven fabric, looped and knotted and woven together, designed initially to incorporate names of my family – my mother and father and my siblings, embroidered in gold. I tend to have a specific idea which I present in a mood board and then make physically. I really enjoy learning how to read a pattern and how to design a dress, to touch the fabric physically with my hands, to slide it on the sewing machine. The dress is displayed on a mannequin to see and feel and touch.
All along my life I have been strongly inspired and amazed by well-known photographers including the compelling portraiture of Annie Leibovitz and Tom Walker, and fashion designers such as Gareth Pugh and mostly Donatella Versace. I loved taking photographs of my model in a studio, using, and testing the different lights to my advantage, and being the director of my ideas, which brings me into the production life of the work.
