Fashion Design
Sarah Treacy
The Eternal Embrace
‘The Eternal Embrace’ S/S’25 womenswear is a collection that was inspired by my
grandparents love story. I began by looking at pictures of my grandparents when they first
met in the 1940s, and I was on awe at how there was a constant embrace and togetherness
seen between them. This brought me on a journey to look at fine artists and how love has
been portrayed in art throughout history. I focused on artists Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele
whose work portrayed love, relationships and the connected bodies seen in an embrace.
From this I analysed the shapes contained within Klimt’s work. I looked at ‘The Kiss’ and
‘The Family Embrace’ as sources for the silhouette of my designs as he would have his
figures surrounded by a large cloak. For my colour I wanted to my collection to have a rich
luxurious feel to it. I was inspired by the colours seen throughout Klimt’s work. In particular,
the rich golden hues he brought throughout his artwork.
For my fabric I choose a mixture of heavy weight canvas fabrics and light weight satin
fabrics. As my collection is oversized structured silhouettes, I needed to have a mixture of
fabric weights to show this.
I wanted to show Schiele’s graphic line drawings as a surface design on my garments. He
drew the twisting and connecting of the bodies in an embrace throughout his career and I was
heavily inspired by this. I wanted my garments to feel the embrace of love and movement of
the body. I focused heavily on stitching figures and twisting shapes on the surface of my
garments while also incorporating wire design on top of my stitch lines to bring a 3D surface
design to my garments.