The project takes the cyclical design element of ORIENS and its own logo, and expands upon its constructive nature as the core of its design. 

 

Knit and its cyclical life cycle played the role of a pillar for creativity and possibility for my grandmothers on both sides of the family, the process of knitting and unraveling becoming a yearly process of familial bonding. Thinking of knit and its cyclical possibilities from the stories my mother told me, and how it has cycled to me in a new age of knitwear— how can that cyclical element of sustainability be pushed to its material boundaries to be all encompassing in design and construction?

 

Playing with the idea of knit as a cyclical and sustainable method of design, knit's ability to be woven, unwoven, dyed in various ways, and stretched into shapes from a set shape, converses directly with the experimental, anatomical, and transformative core of ORIENS.

 

Taking notes from zero waste cutting, tubular shapes and rectangular panels— the basis of fabric construction across woven and knits— make up the foundational structure of all the garments. A static basic shape, tubular or its 2D counterpart of rectangles, carries dynamic possibilities with the materiality element of knit— it can be stretched, shrunken and ruched, draped, and built up structurally into a wide range of dynamic shapes.

 

All of this comes into synthesis with the essence of Oriens, and its recurring O logo symbol as a motif. Knit interacts with circular cutouts from tension, structural hoops, and rounded connections to push the very basic panel knit basis to a new age, dynamic vision of sustainable knitwear.