Throughout my university career I have been able to explore different concepts, inspirations, and techniques. And through my years of trial and error, I was able to find my own way of fashion designing, knowing that I needed to tell a story with my work, my projects couldn’t be just about some meaningless inspirations, they had to come from my heart. And that is exactly what my final collection does. I wanted to celebrate my Grandpa, the kindest man I’ve ever known, a man who taught me how to paint and to love nature, a man who never got to see my work before he passed away, so I decided to turn my final collection into his memorial.
‘If Only the Walls Could Talk’, is a story celebrating my Grandpa’s Scottish heritage, by following my clan’s history I was able to find a link to the oldest datable castle in Scotland, Castle Sween. Part of this castle was built my ancestors and stands to this day, abandoned, and overgrown with vines and thistles. Which is where my project starts, taking inspiration from the castle but mainly the shrubbery encasing its walls, I was able to create a project following the question, what would Castle Sween’s walls say, if only they could talk? The answer. It would speak my project, in its lonely technicoloured beauty.
In memorial to my Grandpa, the man who taught me watercolours and how to grow plants. He is the man that showed me the beauties of the natural world, he showed me the circle of life and the beauty behind its most brutal of moments. In a world where all the forests I played in as a child are being turned into concrete houses and motorways, I am trying to keep alive their memory through my fashion. Promoting sustainable fashion, that demonstrates the small things that are being lost every day, from the trees and fauna to the mushrooms and mountains. I celebrate how nature evolves, interacts, and remedies, in all its wonder and danger. This, I wish to continue this in the future, telling meaningful stories about celebrating people and demonstrating natures true wonders though the media of fashion.
Erinda Preshtreshi | Fashion
