Minami Sato

The leather moulded trousers are a sculptural, memory-embedded garment that fuses craftsmanship with emotional narrative. At their core is a rigid, body-shaped hip section, created by wet-moulding vegetable-tanned cowhide directly onto a mannequin. This technique allows the leather to take on a fossil-like impression of the body — a physical echo of presence and time. In contrast, the lower half is crafted from soft sheepskin, allowing ease of movement and balancing structure with wearability.

What sets this piece apart is its surface: a richly textured finish created through a Polaroid emulsion lift technique. I transferred distorted fragments of old photographs — blurred faces, faded hands, fragmented memories — onto the leather while it was still shaped. By carefully lifting the emulsions from instant film and manipulating them in warm water, I was able to stretch and tear the images into abstracted forms. These were then embedded onto the moulded leather, clinging to its curves and creases like decaying memories etched into skin.

The result is a garment that doesn’t just tell a story — it holds one. Each crease, tear, and wrinkle in the emulsion becomes part of the trousers’ visual language, referencing memory loss, identity erosion, and the passage of time. Hand-stitched details using waxed thread (0.6mm, 120D/16) and machine reinforcements with Gutermann extra-strong thread anchor the piece in durability, while the edges are burnished with Tokonole and sealed with Resolene and acrylic spray to preserve the visual and tactile integrity.

These trousers exist somewhere between fashion and artifact — wearable but also exhibitable — and are ideal for performance or installation contexts where narrative, texture, and body are in dialogue.