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Beautiful? Or a lie?
Concept Statement
“Beautiful? Or a Lie?” reflects this contradiction. Like cocoons that both shelter and suffocate, the project visualizes how industry expectations tightly wrap around creative workers. It questions what is concealed within fashion’s polished surface—and what emotional cost lies beneath.
Design Goal
To translate emotional compression into a physical form.
The work aims to:
The work aims to:
Visualize psychological pressure as a bodily experience
Reveal the tension between beauty and suffering
Draw attention to the mental health of fashion workers
Create a sculptural wearable that embodies both fragility and restraint
Reveal the tension between beauty and suffering
Draw attention to the mental health of fashion workers
Create a sculptural wearable that embodies both fragility and restraint
Inspiration
Inspired by Alexander McQueen’s fragile–ferocious headpieces and Iris van Herpen’s transformative material language, this project explores how beauty emerges under pressure—and what it costs the body to create it.
© Image from internet.
Material Research
In testing wool and fishing line as carriers for crystal growth, I found two very different expressions of pressure. Wool produced dense, grounded formations, while fishing line grew fragile, translucent crystals that felt suspended between strength and collapse.I chose the fishing line—the one that shimmered while almost breaking—because it mirrored the delicate beauty born from strain at the heart of this project.
PROCESS DEVELOPMENT
Constructing the wearable revealed its own kind of pressure. The structure resisted being held together, refusing adhesives and demanding a tense choreography between wire, fabric, and weight. Each attempt collapsed or warped, reminding me how easily pressure reshapes a body. I strengthened the wire frame again and again, trying to hold a form that wanted to shift. The piece continues to grow—part experiment, part negotiation.
This project made me look closely at the emotional cost behind beauty—both in the industry and within myself.
Translating pressure into structure forced me to acknowledge how easily creation can become burden, and how often strength is mistaken for endurance. The repeated failures, adjustments, and reconstructions mirrored the very exhaustion I was trying to express.
Through the process, I realized that vulnerability is not opposed to creativity; it is part of it. And beauty, when shaped under pressure, always carries a story beneath its surface.
Translating pressure into structure forced me to acknowledge how easily creation can become burden, and how often strength is mistaken for endurance. The repeated failures, adjustments, and reconstructions mirrored the very exhaustion I was trying to express.
Through the process, I realized that vulnerability is not opposed to creativity; it is part of it. And beauty, when shaped under pressure, always carries a story beneath its surface.
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