Abstract Depleted Terrain

Category: Apparel

Abstract Depleted Terrain is my graduation project, developed as a collection of five womenswear looks during my studies at the Fashion Design Department at Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art. The project explores the distance that has emerged between nature and the objects that surround us. Every material carries the memory of its origin. Before becoming a textile, garment, or accessory, it was part of a natural landscape shaped by extraction, processing, and human intervention. Through this collection, I seek to reconnect the products we consume with their origins and to raise awareness of the environmental cost embedded in their transformation into resources. Rather than portraying environmental destruction directly, I chose to use beauty, materiality, and craftsmanship to draw the viewer in, only then revealing the complexity behind them. Through a restrained and minimal visual language, I create a dialogue between sculptural forms and softness, strength and fragility, and desirability and destruction. The project draws inspiration from the work of Edward Burtynsky and Richard Serra, whose practices reveal the relationship between industry, material, and landscape, transforming the traces of human intervention into powerful visual experiences. Their work influenced the collection’s sculptural silhouettes, textured surfaces, and material language. Leather plays a central role in this exploration. I’m drawn to it for its durability, unique qualities, and the way it evolves with wear. I see value in thoughtfully transforming an existing by-product into pieces designed to last. Through handcrafted surface treatments, the leather was developed to merge its natural rawness with an industrial, rust like texture, expressing the tension between nature and human intervention. The featured look is inspired by compressed waste bales, symbolising the endless accumulation of discarded materials. Its sculptural silhouette, textured leather surface, and sense of weight reference landscapes marked by extraction, erosion, and waste, transforming symbols of environmental degradation into objects of beauty that invite closer reflection. The collection proposes a quieter understanding of luxury, rooted in longevity, craftsmanship, and intention. By creating garments designed to endure both physically and emotionally, I hope to suggest that beauty and responsibility are not opposing ideas, but ideas that can exist together. I believe the most sustainable garment is the one people choose to keep.

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