“They make us feel like ourselves, they experience us, the individual. I want the relationship with these garments to be communicative, cared for, and emotional.”
In lieu of these intentions, Mollberg’s final collection, Constructing Gestures, considers how garments are a reflection of us. “They make us feel like ourselves, they experience us, the individual. I want the relationship with these garments to be communicative, cared for, and emotional,” she shares. Bestowing her clothes with a conscience, Mollberg sought references from Rei Kawakubo’s seminal Spring 1997 collection, Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body – where Kawakubo submerged garment and body into one complete silhouette – alongside the works of Hungarian-born photographer André Kertész, renowned for his distorted compositions of the body.
Fascinated by the nuanced relationship between posture and gesture, Mollberg considers the flexibility of the body, and the contrasting scope of the shapes it conveys. It began as a photo series between herself and friends, documenting various bodily positions which Mollberg later translated in her pattern cutting and draping. “I wanted to turn these shapes into recognisable garments such as pencil skirts, blazers or double-breasted coats.” By doing so, and with such ceremonial garments, she hoped to alter the perspective by which people approach traditional pieces and twist what they already know, speaking to the collection’s overarching discussion around perspective, a waning trait in fashion’s mental health epidemic.