This collection was created for the «Winter Forest Tales» 2025 runway performance. The imagery of the main characters is based on the shape of a shattered mirror—a key symbol of the fairy tale. It serves as a metaphor for evil, apathy, and cynicism. The core concept is that the mirror distorts perception: beauty becomes grotesque, while ugliness becomes vivid and appealing. Its shards have scattered across the world, and any person who receives a piece in their heart loses the ability to see good or feel love.
The entrants brought a diverse range of materials: from chiffon and sequins to plastic bottles, broken glass, and PET sheets.
Indifference, in this sense, acts as one of humanity’s principal vices. Emotions can cause a person pain, but logic, calculation, and detachment create an illusion of safety and serenity. The truth is that without a balance between the two, there is no life, and the heart turns to ice.
A shard as an accent on every costume piece of the hero. The Snow Queen’s appearance features the most repeated pointed elements, underscoring this sense of detachment, inaccessibility, coldness, and haughtiness.
Everyone finally realized that it is far more pleasant and far more convenient to live with cold feelings and a cold heart.
In Kai’s image, the shards are located in the center of his chest and on his belt. This element is narrative-driving, adding drama to the story itself. It also serves as a transition to a new self—Kai undergoes a transformation, just as Gerda does. They both grow up, but on different paths.
Gerda’s double from the mirror embodies the new, cold, and unfeeling world that Kai should have remained in. Her look is inspired by the futuristic collections of Pierre Cardin and André Courrèges: metallic fabrics, a trapezoidal skirt shape, and a headpiece reminiscent of 1960s short, graphic hairstyles. Fragments on her corset slice through space, as if she stepped out of a mirror or is an extension of it. Her legs are encased in ice cubes; she is static and composed. Unlike Kai, who has not yet crossed the line—as suggested by his costume (light chiffon, blowing in the wind)—Gerda’s clone is initially merely a distorted projection of her: her legs are trapped in blocks of ice; she is static, calm, cold, yet artificial.
This collection explores the themes of alienation, indifference, and detachment among the people of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, making it relevant even today.