HEAD Fashion Show

Julia Rudnicka - Bachelor collection, Her Hair Was Still Wet

“My collection is a work of memory that returns to the Poland of the 1970s, shaped by the women who lived through it and by the ones in my own family whose stories I inherited. I wanted to evoke their lives under a communist regime, when access to clothing was limited yet creativity was everywhere. Women reinvented what they had, adjusting and transforming pieces to feel good and have fun. That handmade, resourceful femininity is what moved me.

I worked from stories told by women in my family, but also from the raw realism of Polish cinema of that era. I observed how these women lived in those conditions, how they looked, how they moved. From there, I built a vocabulary of archetypes: the white shirt, long coats, furs and fur accessories. I mixed these simple, almost austere garments with more intimate elements, closer to lingerie or eveningwear.

Most of the collection came together through spontaneous styling, almost the way those women would have worked with whatever they had. That immediacy mattered. It was about taking clothes,  playing with them and finding joy in their simplicity. I wanted to tell the story of these women specifically, because when we think of the seventies in Western Europe, we picture disco, freedom and crazy colors, but in Poland the decade unfolded under a completely different set of conditions.”

Maïa Malige
Bachelor collection, Scotché

“I work with tape because my mother works in film, and she always came home from set with bits of tape stuck to her clothes. I wanted to bring that material into my practice. I use it to create spontaneous blur and draping, and in the collection every taped area becomes a silk satin insert. It turns into a luxurious detail that gives value to the garment and also connects pieces to one another.

The wardrobe I build around this is something I call “chic and chill”. I take casual pieces like sweatshirts, T-shirts or football jerseys and tape them to eveningwear, to gala dresses. One look, for example, mixes a grey sweatshirt with a pink ruffled gown. I redid the dress to push the drama further, adding more taped ruffles all on one side. Because the sweatshirt is upcycled, I play with the tension of the tape to change how the garment sits on the body. The weight of the dress pulls the sweatshirt and opens the back, and on one shoulder the tape holds everything in place, creating an asymmetrical silhouette. The whole mood of the collection is getting dressed quickly to go out, but still feeling chic, bold and original.

Tape also lets me pull and distort garments. I use it a lot on upcycled T-shirts. The tape stretches and shifts the neckline, reveals the collarbone, makes the piece feel more feminine and fitted. The sleeves become asymmetrical, one pushed up, the other left natural, and the hem gathers in different areas, shaping the waist almost accidentally. It reveals parts of the body in a slightly crafty, sexy and very free way, which I love.

As for the gesture itself, I don’t know yet how it will evolve. Tape pushed me to develop a whole line of taped pieces, but now that I’m in the Master I want to explore other parts of my identity too. I still make taped T-shirts on the side because people respond to them, and I’m happy they exist. But in my personal practice I’m focusing more on who I am, working on prints, accessories, embellishment, things I didn’t explore as much in the collection because many pieces were defined by the upcycled garments I started from. This year I’m putting tape aside to concentrate on my own choices in cut and decoration, but it could very well return later in a more extreme, more evening-driven way. The concept has endless variations.

I also like working with variations inside the collection. I have three looks where two taped pieces become one dress. One piece even plays with optical illusion: a tailored jacket is taped in the back, and the band runs across the body so it looks like one unified garment, but it’s actually two separate pieces. I love that ambiguity, the idea that the styling seems fixed but is actually completely free.”

Pamela Bitzi
Bachelor collection, The salt is in the hem

“This collection brings together many things that are close to me. It speaks about my family and the traditions I grew up with, especially the Italian side, which I wasn’t always strongly connected to when I was younger. Working on this project became a way to reconnect with them.

It also draws on childhood memories, small references to the games I used to play, like trying on my parents’ or grandparents’ clothes. Those pieces were always too big for me, which created these strange, oversized silhouettes that stayed in my mind. The central figure behind the whole collection is my grandfather. His relationship to clothing has always fascinated me. He arrived in Switzerland in the 1950s as an Italian immigrant, at a time when life for foreigners wasn’t easy. For him, being impeccably dressed was a form of empowerment. It helped him find his place in a society that was reluctant to welcome immigrants.

He wore a three-piece suit almost every day, even though he worked in a factory. He would leave home perfectly dressed, cufflinks on, hair set, arrive at the factory, change into his work clothes, then put his suit back on for the commute home. It was essential to him. And because I share this passion for clothing, I’ve always found that gesture very powerful. Using clothes to create an identity, almost a character.

I worked with the archetypes he wore every day and created a dialogue between those memories, that classic masculine vocabulary and my own contemporary identity. I also leaned into my own wardrobe, the pieces that make me feel good and give me that same sense of empowerment. The result is a mix of elements, always grounded in the idea of a uniform built around the suit and the shirt. These archetypes run through the five looks. You feel them more or less depending on the outfit, but they’re always the foundation.”

Matil Vanlint
Master collection, V*

“This collection tells a part of my story, and how I found different ways to be happy and face the world. In terms of form, I imagined what our bodies might look like if every emotional wound had left a physical deformation. I created those distortions and started from my own wardrobe. I’ve moved through very different worlds. I was born into a bourgeois environment and ended up on the street quite young, so my clothes still carry traces of all these places. I’ve always been drawn to clothing, and I was lucky to meet a tailor who taught me traditional techniques. That created a constant tension in my life between refined, almost bourgeois craftsmanship and the rougher parts of my past. I use upcycling and waste materials. I made bags covered in knots cut from beer cans, a nod to the can-ashtrays I made as a teenager. The knots throughout the collection come from a disastrous tatoo I did when i was  fifteen  in Charleroi. It wasn’t pretty, and transforming something awkward or ugly into something beautiful became the central idea.

The wigs were made by Tommy and Noeh ( @provided_unfits)  in Brussels. I wanted the deformations to run from head to toe, and they created ten handmade wigs that push this idea further, exaggerating details people usually find unattractive, like thinning hair. The shoes come from my own bunions. I amplified that deformation to create something striking and elegant.

Right now I’ve left Geneva. I’m looking for an internship, anywhere. I emptied my room, put everything in storage and I’m letting the wind decide where I go next. I want to work in a house, ideally somewhere with craft or couture. I love immersing myself in very different worlds, so I’m drawn to places where there’s room for handwork, volume research and artisanal techniques more than to any particular aesthetic. Some brands speak to me visually, but I’m not sure their daily work would fit me. I’d rather be where the craft is alive.

For the pieces themselves, I first built all the volumes in tape and newspaper, then reconstructed them in plaster, because to deform shapes this way you need to fix the material completely. All the forms were made in plaster, then translated into garments that mix tailoring, craft and millinery details.”

Noa Toledano
Master collection, Everything sinks but the kitchen

“My collection comes from this feeling of being in between, growing up with a culture that isn't dominant, and slowly moving away from it, even if it still shapes you. There’s a paradox in carrying the traces of your upbringing while becoming someone else. That’s something I’ve felt personally, especially because I don’t have clear images or a unified heritage to lean on.

In Sephardic Jewish tradition, there isn’t really a visual identity that represents you openly, it’s more about protecting, covering, hiding. That absence, that kind of void, became something I needed to talk about. Maybe as a way to let go of the idea of authenticity I had been searching for.

The title, Everything sinks but the kitchen, is a twist on the expression “everything but the kitchen sink.” It’s about urgency, trying to fix things with whatever’s at hand, watching everything overflow and wondering what we end up filtering out in the process. Maybe everything but what really matters. The sink, in a way, is me and that instinct to flee.”

BACHELOR 3