The Aether Collection
Seasons in the fashion industry have all but disappeared, so why not create a line of products to honor the different seasons affecting our personal development?
If I had an unlimited budget, I would create clothing, accessories, and merchandise to commemorate the changes stirring our internal world. It would bring me so much joy to adorn a generation with lifestyle products designed to honor our emotional phases, rather than predictable weather patterns.
I was raised in a part of the world that fails to express broad seasonal variations and, when covid paused humanity, we experienced a year without the typical indicators of seasonal change brought by the holidays.
Festivity permeates every culture across the globe, and is deeply ingrained into our identity. Collectively, humans have always celebrated the shifts and changes apparent in our external world, but why not celebrate the shifts and changes of our internal worlds?
Arguably we share at least one fundamental trait, in that we are designed to grow and evolve. Physical development heavily influences lifestyle products and fashion, as much as the change in weather. However, what if someone were to focus entirely on the growth and development of our internal emotions and experiences?
With this first attempt at designing apparel and lifestyle products, I found myself most interested in the liminal space that occurs between an old and new identity. The uncomfortable, and often lonely, period of transition between who we once were and who we must become.
This period of time can be incredibly confusing and counterintuitive as we trade a familiar past for the hope of a better future. Oftentimes we stumble forward with nothing but sheer will power to guide us through our dark night of the soul.
The Aether Collection addresses the disorientation of transition by cloaking the wearer in organic, ambiguous patterns reflecting the uncertainty of change. The stark black and white color scheme addresses the definitive line between the wearer’s old and new life. My careful selection of apparel and lifestyle products cover the bare necessities of the wearer, thereby acknowledging the fact that we must prioritize ourselves at all cost.
Every transition reminds us of the unavoidable emotional terrors that accompany periods of solitude and uncertainty. However, if we can summon the courage to trust and depend on ourselves until the next safe space becomes available, then we can more easily shed the people, places, and things that withheld us from our full potential.
Celebrate your courage to withstand the emotional perils of transition periods with apparel and lifestyle products from The Aether Collection, because you are a miracle of human will capable of transforming your soul in unimaginably powerful ways.