SUZANNE
BFA COLLECTION
My senior thesis collection is inspired by my mother Suzanne Simpson, who passed away in Oct 2024. This capsule is a love letter embodying my mother’s limitless spirit and her relentless optimism. My mom chose to live her life under the virtues of joy, abundance, and kindness. She made the best of every situation regardless of her circumstances, inspiring everyone around her to see the world through rose colored glasses. This collection is a daughter’s attempt to redeem loss by taking on a joyful resistance to grief. I began my design process by looking back at my mother’s wardrobe while she was in university in the 90s, pulling inspiration from different archives such as the classic denim jacket, button downs, and tapered jeans. I explore the concept of two becoming one taking inspiration from 1970s McCalls Simplicity patterns where they began blending different garments together such as the dress shirt skirt and including a bodice under layer stitched continuously into the side seams of the motorcycle jacket. Lastly, to symbolize the reverent joy and bliss of my mother’s character I designed, developed, and printed the entire collection. Curating a series of vibrant doe prints in a variety of hues to replicate a gradient of light. Drawing from my earliest memories of my mother from when I was a child, feeding the deer outside my grandfather's house, the doe print represents the fond memories I hold onto as her love is imprinted on my heart forever.
“SUZANNE IS THE SPIRIT WHO REFUSES TO LEAVE, THE EMBODIMENT OF SACRIFICE AND UNCONDITIONAL LOVE”
RESEARCH
My starting research of my collection consisted of archives of my mother’s wardrobe from her years at university. Looking through old photographs, I choose 4 distinct archetypes of garments to be grounding points throughout the collection, the dress shirt, the denim jacket, the bomber jacket, and the relaxed denim jeans. Following this, I began draping experimentation where I collectively blend the concept of to becoming one, directly inspired by the 1970s simplicity double dress shirt pattern. This was the base of my collection, as garments are sewn in, stitched, and snapped into one another symbolizing the spiritual bond between my mother from heaven and earth.
TEXTILE
The color palette displayed throughout the collection is my joyful resistance to grief. My mother was more than just a human being, she is light. The memory of my mother is has been imprinted deeply in my heart in mind. I choose to parallel the mark she left on my heart by developing my own series of prints and centralizing them in each look within the collection. The deer print was initially taken from the earliest memories I have of my mother, taking me to my grandfathers house, where does and fawns frolicked in the yard eating grass. For my process, I used my school sublimation machine to manually print every textile in the collection.
