'Trapped Inside A Softly Decaying House' is dedicated to my grandmothers and great-grandmother. Its narrative draws inspiration from the stories my grandmother shared about her mother, a woman with little freedom, whose life was bound to the house that she lived in after marriage. A house that stood not as a sanctuary, but as a quiet monument to the life she was confined to live. In response, the garments are intentionally constricting: they bind, abstractly shape, and confine the wearer, merging her form with the structure of the home. Household silverware, tables, chairs, windows, cupboards and overall domestic silhouettes are exaggerated and sculpted around the body to create an unsettling, surreal world where body and object merge.

The collection unfolds across eleven looks, each design is inspired by the architectural structures of my grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s houses in rural Bulgaria. Many of the textiles used carry their own history. Handwoven wool and cotton fabrics, made by women in my family between 1950 and 1990, are woven from raw, organic fibers and preserved as living memory. The prints emerge from collaged photographs I took of the interiors and exteriors of their homes.