Letters To The Grave

My senior thesis titled "Letters to the Grave" explores the feelings of loss and love.

This collection embodies the emotions of a woman as she navigates the murky waters of her lost love. The story begins with her dealing with regret over not telling him how she felt while they were together. As she unravels what could have been, she starts to imagine a life with him and begins to write detailed letters of her undying love. The more she writes, the more she feeds her delusion, keeping herself in a dream-like state, forever waiting for his return. When she's done writing, she heads to the post but is given the terrible news that he has passed not long ago. Driven mad by the fact that she never got to say how she truly felt, she goes back home and collects everything he left behind and rips it to shreds. Not yet satisfied, she takes the remnants of what he once wore and hand stitches new items to wear, giving herself one last time to feel his embrace. Knowing she can never live with anyone else but him, she takes all the letters she wrote and wears them to his grave, finally reading them before joining him forever.

This process took many turns and changes, as you will see below; ultimately, I decided in the last five weeks that it wasn't making sense with the collection and the things the character would've done for me to create garments from scratch, buy fabrics, etc. I really wanted people to be able to "feel" the collection and understand the love, regret, anger, and passion physically through the clothing. Instead, I focused on what a man would leave behind and thrifted all those garments like suits, jackets, ties, trousers, jewelry, hats, etc., and reworked them to appear more feminine and sexy. 

thrifted jackets were torn up and re-stitched back together with mending stitches, ties were sewn together to create a strapless gown, and men's trousers turned into asymmetrical skirts. Fabric manipulations like patchworked button packets into a "straitjacket" top, screen-printing love letters on hyma chest canvas for skirts instead of jackets, and rust-dyeing silk taffeta to look weathered and rotten.