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When I was a child, all it took was a piece of fabric to open up an entire world. Curtains became evening gowns, scarves turned into capes, and my mother’s high heels completed every imagined look. I made my friends play “fashion designer”: I was the designer, they were the husbands I divorced. Films like One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Devil Wears Prada, and the story of Coco Chanel shaped my imagination with a very specific idea: fashion designers were always tyrannical, sharp-tongued, and divorced. By the age of ten, the number of my imaginary divorces grew in step with my imagination.
At the same time, I was learning quieter things. My grandmother taught me to sew on buttons, I learned to knit, and through ballet I began very early stitching my own pointe shoes and tutus. When at the age of ten I discovered that Coco Chanel had started with hats, no headpiece in my grandmother's house was safe anymore. Old straw hats, forgotten in wardrobes for generations, were taken apart, reinvented, adorned with ribbons and flowers. I glued, unpicked, started again. With a friend, I even founded a small imaginary fashion house, name "Coco Duyen". We turned scraps of fabric into evening dresses. They were not beautiful, but they were full of enthusiasm.
Then I grew up, and sewing faded into the background.
Only years later, almost without noticing, I began sewing again. During the pandemic, I bought a sewing machine.
And I started creating pieces without thinking too much about it. I would go to Porta Palazzo market, the 18th arrondissement in Paris, or Camden in London to pick out inexpensive fabrics, without any clear idea in mind. I cut them, unpicked them, reimagined them. Sewing became a quiet, essential space. Sometimes I began with the fabric, letting it guide me. Sometimes I tried to recreate a dress glimpsed on a mannequin. Other times, I simply followed instinct.
Today, my life is made of many things. I study literature, I write, I work in international cooperation. I photograph, I wander. But somewhere in between, I imagine, design and create dresses.
This space is just that. A fleeting glance at what has always been there.
I kept my dresses secret for years, now, it is time to open my wardrobe.
The names of the garments, all drawn from the Greek world, are a quiet homage to my studies.
The choice of colors and the attention to textile detail come from my love of flânerie, from which the project takes its name.
The lines, shapes, and designs are inspired by my enduring fascination with dance, with movement, and with a certain idea of lightness.
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