Design projects
This collection was made for the MAFB competition ‘Fashion Fest’ in collaboration with Museum van Loon. Museum van Loon is a historical house in Amsterdam owned by the family ‘van Loon’, who have a legacy in the colonial past. The collection is a critique of the museum's legacy of violence, and is expressed through wooden corsets. The bendable wooden material and technique is a reference to the tradition of Surinamese woodcraft. The wood is made bendable by creating digital designs and laser-cutting laserflex patterns into the wood.
The collection was shown in Museum van Loon, Amsterdam, 2019-2020. See more
Recognition in Words (2022) is a collection made of wooden headpieces. The pieces are inspired by traditional Surinamese wood craft, and have an innovative touch with the digital designs that are laser-cut in the wood. This collection serves as an ode to influential Black intellectuals such as bell hooks, W.E.B Du Bois, and Maya Angelou, since the shapes of the pieces reference symbolically to their work. See more
The fashion collection Kotomisi is inspired by the centuries-old Surinamese traditional dress called the ‘Koto’ [i.e. dress]. The dress is big, layered, colorful, textured, and communicates messages. For this project, I wanted to reflect this beautiful dress by exploring textile techniques. I used a Canadian smock-technique to create volume in flat fabric. I added wooden, pearl, and shiny beads to the Canadian smock technique to adorn the fabric. I made both dresses fully by hand, without the use of a sewing machine, and handprinted some parts of the dress, to honor the tradition of kotomaking.
The collection is an ode to handcraft, to women’s craft, to Surinamese fashion and tradition. It was a labor of love towards my culture, my ancestors, and the matriarchs in my life. See more