Memories are forever, but everything is temporary before it becomes a memory. This idea is the core of my final collection as I drew the inspiration from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film “Solaris”, based on Stanisław Lem’s novel of the same title. The science-fiction philosophical piece discusses the matters of the Other, the Self, and the horrors of our memories that shape our identities. The concept of “Solaris”, as well as my project, deals with what it means to feel real and multi-dimensional. It alludes to the mirror room in the film and to laser-cut mirrors that were stitched on top of some of the garments in my work. Solaris is a planet, and its only inhabitant is the mega-mind, living organism Ocean (the Other) which symbolises the flow of emotions, instability, and change. I used mesh and domette fabrics to convey the flow of water, and specifically with the latter, to show the transience of the fabric itself, and how its out-of-the-box use as a garment, not as interlining, shows the time passing with each wear as it marks easily. The shapes in the film – wadded walls of the spaceship and round windows – led me to Ernesto Neto’s futuristic installations made from styrofoam pellets and stretch fabrics that hold the shape of the whole work. These were translated into the statement pieces of my collection – the “blobs” with holes and filled in with cushion filling covered in Lycra. Since Neto’s work is multi-sensory, all the fabrics I used have a pleasant texture, the textiles with filling are meant to be squished, and technical fabrics make a swooshing sound while walking. I also looked at socialist modernism architecture in Poland which ties a knot with the Eastern European coldness of the book/film, and my own experience of living in a country where people usually find it hard to express their emotions.
In the end, I want to show how our own thought processes, either about ourselves or the world surrounding us (or the world and realities we create ourselves) can be translated into layered clothing and multipurpose of garments. Different ways to wear the pieces, upside-down, tied in a different way or pulled to create a new, maybe unintentional effect, make the collection more organic and it’s up to the wearer what story they want to tell.
Mimi Wright | Fashion
