REIGNITE

Bring things together, and they shall invite newness and conversation that reignites the system. How is it that ideas can create this reignition of a person? Through the colour choices? Through the shape and silhouette?

She feels audacious — even if she hasn’t veered away from her core principles. She is stepping into her own. An ownership of addressing her attitude. How, then, do you take a woman into her next phase of self-expression — with a little more attitude, spunk, boldness, and self-worthiness? I think of this woman all the time. She is a mirror to our world. She is perplexed, wanting newness, considering all her choices, brave in her unwillingness to settle into herself as a memory of who she was.

This season, I decided to bring together elements I had been exploring in recent collections, but to flip them — to surprise myself, the wearer, the follower, and the audience, engaged or otherwise. 

I liken this feeling to a woman who has lived many adventures, explored countless expressions of discovery, worked hard, and enjoyed her reincarnations as a young woman. She may have run a business, worked her way to success, and can hold her own. She can walk into a room with her unique beauty and style, decorative or restrained, exuberant, frivolous, and even a little dominant. These are the women I love to clothe. They like to discover and explore with me. They are multidimensional.

In making these pieces, I think about movement — not only how the wearer moves in them, but how they move around the wearer’s body. How they fold, cascade, envelop, expel, illuminate, control, relax, and ignite magic within.

In this collection, I brought together elements like samurai shoulders, achieved by reducing decoration into architectural expansions around the hips and shoulders. Decorative, reflective beetle-wing organza adds dimension, glistening and acting as an embellishment in itself. Fringe clusters in self-fabric add texture, exaggerating the smaller details and creating beautiful distortions.

The embroidery motifs morph from cowboy to astral—tattoo—like, inspired by vintage sailors, when tattoos were decorative odes to life, love, and loss. They were markings of our stories: daggers, phoenixes, birds, starbursts, scorpions, and the universe. I look at how we are intertwined with so many things around us — even if we don’t associate with or align with them, they exist. They enter our thoughts, our days, our lives — often through others.

We are a collage of these odd messes. Yet, we make them work. We meld them, introduce them, pay homage, and reflect on their inclusion in our lives. They add fuel. They set ablaze this idea — this reignition of why we keep seeking to discover ourselves in a new light.

Creative & Styling / Jolyon Mason
Photography / Tim Ashton
Cast / Muna Mahamed / Riahn Griffiths
Beauty / Sean Brady
Hair / Kyye Reed
Photographer’s Assistant / Daryl Orzilla
Digital Operator / Harry Burmeister
Styling Assistant / Milly Wright
Layout / Michael Semeniuk