Genia Ashton’s collection “Sound of The Silence” represents avant-garde everyday womenswear with the touch of luxury. The mood of the collection is Loneliness, which is a growing social problem. In this busy world people communicate via social networks leaving no time or necessity to the live conversations. The lack of live contact makes people keep a lot to themselves in fear to be misunderstood or with the fear that no one cares. The amount of the people with depression and anxiety grows, while some find their fix in drugs or alcohol consumption, others live on prescribed medication... There are also a lot of elderly people who never have a visitor. While many souls are sinking to the bottom, society is staying silent, calm and injudicious... But there is still a hope that things can change if one is willing to believe they still matter... There is a similarity in what the mankind is doing to nature. And as a person who cares about the environment she could not ignore the impact. As a strong believer in sustainability Genia developed the collection with the ‘zero waste’ thought in mind.

In the creative process in the search for shape and volume Genia draped fabrics and garments (not the way they meant to be worn..) on mannequin or model. Then used the most successful results as part of the collages. At the same time experimenting with her 1m X 1m fabric manipulation piece for more ideas. The shape of the corset which is repeating itself throughout the collection was achieved by molding.

In the search of the innovative ways in pattern-making Genia discovered Substraction Cutting Method by Julian Roberts, which became the inspiration for her main volume piece. Being the designer passionate about zero-waste and sustainability Julian developed this method in 1998 and since it had been taught , demonstrated and published in UK and internationally.

Major part of Genia’s collection are the unique pieces which can not be repeated exactly as they are either done out of recycled jeans or hand-bleached. The main choice of the fabric is denim. All of the off-cuts of the denim and leather are being used in fabric manipulations she put on the garments. As fabric manipulations Genia used BORO stitching, Patchwork, Sashiko stitching and Weaving technique to transfer the old scraps into pieces of art, where the ripped cloth can have a second life.