The main theme of Sarah’s collection was revisiting her 13-year-old self, trying to be an Emo Goth Kid and rebelling from her Eastern European Jewish heritage. What sparked the idea for this concept was when she visited Israel, and learnt to appreciate her Jewish identity not through religion, but through the arts and culture.
It wasn’t just the late 90’s trend of visible underwear that inspired Sarah, but also the layering of sports bras under vests than many young women wear today, as they fit workouts with their busy lives. She believes that we are subconsciously inspired by the people around us, so she used photos of her two younger sisters as unexpected design references.
In recent years Sarah has been heavily experimenting with textiles and embroidery, which inspired her mother to show her three generations worth of embroidered handkerchiefs, pillowcases, table cloths and blouses which she found stored in her grandma’s house. Sarah used this as research to develop her own ideas for embroidered textiles.
In recent years Sarah has been heavily experimenting with textiles and embroidery, which inspired her mother to show her three generations worth of embroidered handkerchiefs, pillowcases, table cloths and blouses which she found stored in her grandma’s house. Sarah used this as research to develop her own ideas for embroidered textiles.
The other prominent theme of corsetry is multilayering. Sarah was looking at the contemporary alternative/gothic clothing in Camden market and how it subverts tradition (In this case Victorian and Edwardian Dress) into something rebellious. This led her to look at the 1990’s-early 2000’s work of John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan and Vivienne Westwood, who all followed this idea in their own way.
The Jewish tradition of a Batmitzva is also seen as a passage into womanhood in Jewish culture, although Sarah never partook in one. Instead she marked her maturity by when she started to develop her own personal sense of style.
The unusual corset shape and structure initially came from a drape with paper, from which Sarah extracted geometric panels. She then put these shapes together to perfectly fit the body seam to seam. Following this, Sarah experimented by further adding extra panels separately to continue to develop the shape and structure.