Profile: Maayan Galilee – Real Leather Design Competitions

Maayan Galilee

Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art

Hi, I'm Maayan Galili, an Israeli fashion designer specializing in sustainable and responsible fashion. My work focuses on environmental consciousness through creative reuse and material transformation. I work extensively with second-hand materials and fabrics, giving discarded pieces new life. Leather is central to my practice, where I deconstruct and reconstruct pieces to create unique contemporary designs. This process of breakdown and rebuilding explores the boundaries between destruction and creation, transforming waste into innovative fashion. Denim plays a major role in my collections. I reimagine jeans through various manipulation, distressing, and reconstruction techniques, with each piece telling a story of transformation and renewal. My aesthetic draws heavily from punk and rock culture, which perfectly aligns with my sustainable philosophy. The rebellious spirit of these movements resonates with my approach to challenging fast fashion norms. The raw, edgy elements of punk influence my design choices, from distressed textures to unconventional silhouettes. Through my work, I prove that sustainable fashion doesn't compromise style or attitude. Instead, it creates opportunities for more meaningful, unique pieces that reflect both environmental responsibility and bold personal expression. Every garment demonstrates the beauty emerging from conscious design choices and creative resourcefulness. My mission is to transform how we think about clothing and consumption, creating fashion that makes a statement both stylistically and environmentally while honoring the rebellious spirit that drives true creative innovation.

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I Love you MAMA- stop crying your heart out

Category: Apparel

Competitions: International

I Love You, Mom" is a memorial project I created in memory of my mother, who passed away three years ago from cancer. The entire collection reflects my personal journey through grief, using fashion as a medium for emotional expression and healing. Most of the pieces were made from my mother’s clothing — garments she left behind that I carefully deconstructed and transformed into something entirely new. Even the leathers I used were second-hand, deliberately chosen to emphasize that nothing truly ends — what seems to have lost its purpose can be reimagined and given new life. By repurposing what remained, I was able to breathe life into loss. The red outfit in the collection symbolizes a broken heart — an emotional void I tried to fill with red wine. The silhouette is built from the shape of tissues, and the garment is designed with openings from which tissues can be pulled, one after another. This piece embodies warmth and pain simultaneously. It reflects moments when the closest “companions” I had were a box of tissues and a bottle of red wine — physical objects that held emotional weight during a time of deep sorrow. Through this project, I sought not only to honor my mother’s memory, but also to explore how absence can become presence, and how grief, when transformed through creation, can lead to quiet resilience.