Tell us about your collection and what has inspired you?
My final year collection focused on understanding the construct of masculinity and exploring male vulnerability.
This collection is entitled ‘Kouneli’, the Greek word for rabbit, which is from my heritage.
In the animal kingdom, the rabbit is a vulnerable animal.
The choice of a rabbit as my collection mascot was a way of trying to reposition the idea of vulnerability in manhood, by portraying the mascot in a new light, and representing vulnerability as an empowering quality.
I wanted to make clothes that reflect a positive and hopeful future. There’s a fair bit of self-reflection in my work.
As I have grown to comprehend the idea of masculinity within my own life, these ideas have informed and expanded my design practice today.
I’ve had a very strong interest in tailoring and my collection is heavily grounded in classic menswear archetypes including suiting and tailoring.
I wanted to decode those archetypes by creating subtle gestures such as detachable components through juxtaposing different archetypes in one garment.
For example, the college jacket that I designed is based on the suit that in the history of menswear has quite a classic silhouette.
But at the back of the jacket, I’ve incorporated pleating and in western codes of dress, this is quite a feminine expression of womenswear.
However, pleats have also been evident in many different areas of the world, including the fustanella, a Greek skirt worn by military men.
It was important to me to take archetypes from two different worlds and put them together as a way of indicating this idea of ‘masculinities’ as opposed to the singular ‘masculinity’.
There’s not just one outlook for what it means to be a man.
I also designed an overcoat which has the ability to be broken apart from the back, to create a handbag or waistcoat.
The jacket was designed as a way of symbolising the multiplicities that can exist within the wearer, by giving them the choice to control the way they wish to be seen.
