Katarzyna Długosz

As the culmination of my graduate work, Ghosts of the Fireplace tell a story of Slavic cultural craftsmanship, and a question posed to the future of fashion. Rooted deeply in Slavic garmentmaking traditions, the collection is an homage to my cultural origins—but also a speculative gaze into the future. I reimagined folkloric silhouettes through the prism of my belief in contemporary design and emergent technologies. This collection is my desire to introduce the richness of Slavic cultural craft into the fashion limelight, and my aim to question the role of innovation in garments and its future purpose. By bridging traditional forms with interactive technology and adjustability, I attempt to change not only the physical properties of garments, but the cultural, emotional, and critical narratives they carry.

Each piece merges the contemporary fabrication—3D-printed elements, soft robotics, textile innovation and adjustability—with the silhouettes of historic Slavic dress. The traditional corset vest and skirt, found across different Slavic regions, is deconstructed and reversed, turning heritage form into speculative function. By inversion of shape, adapting traditional embroidery into an interactive experience, the collection reinvents the garment as a fluid form. While Parzenica is a promise of future in which garments can be customised by their wearer, Sviatovid is a storytelling device, using robotics and fashion to immerse others into an eerie world of Slavic mythology and craft.