Recent graduate from Edinburgh College of Art, winner of Graduate Fashion Week’s Tag Your Talent 2019 competition and nominee for Doncaster Fashion Week’s Northern Powerhouse Designer of the Year award 2019, Yorkshire sustainable designer Olivia Gabraitis’s Graduate Collection ALTERED PERCEPTION Autumn/Winter 2020 explores her disabled brothers Surrealist inspired Outsider artwork.

Her multidisciplinary take on fashion allows her to create without limits and in an emotionally considerate way, that - much like a piece of art - leaves the collection up to the viewers interpretation of what it means to them.

The collection explores Olivia’s artistic family and their connection to the art world, their relationship with colour, twisted utopia and traditional family values in association to 1950s Americana. It also looks into how her brother seems to create art in a visually dependent world despite his visual impairment, acquired ataxia and learning difficulties as a result of a brain tumour when he was younger.

The collection takes a sustainable approach to manufacture, with the use of zero waste felts and vinyl waste/off cuts from local fabric companies, organic silks, recycled and reclaimed felts and BARKTEX, a bark cloth material made from Ugandan tree bark.