WORDS BY THE AUTHOR / It all started with my final project as a fashion design student at Shenkar – the College of Engineering and Design in Israel.
During my time at Shenkar, I have been made more and more aware of the importance of sustainability in fashion. This is an issue that has meant a lot to me, so it was crucial to implement it into my final project.
The inspiration for this collection has been my personal experiences as a female athlete, competing in triathlons since early on in my life and dealing with the conflict between the abilities and the inabilities of the human body. In a sense, I have brought myself completely into this collection by coming to terms with the duality of the athlete and fashion designer in me.
The collection is a sustainable one. I’ve used my own ‘second-hand’ sportswear as a readymade, dismantling the pieces and creating a new sustainable garment that combines my ideas about the concept of sports and femininity.
The turnover of sportswear, whether on the professional or hobby level, is extremely high. Once you change teams or sponsors, you need to change your uniform. Every year or even season, newer designs replace the former ones and the old jerseys are tossed aside. During the years, I’ve kept all my old sportswear for sentimental reasons, and now I am reusing it and giving it a new meaning and purpose.
My final project was a natural continuation of an endless passion and desire to never stop exploring. Exploring smart and creative design, giving new life and meaning to older unused clothes, transforming them and re-establishing something new, beautiful, valuable and desirable.
Today, I am still competing in cycling and triathlons but with less intensity than I used to. The combination of fashion, femininity and sport seems very natural to me – today more than ever. I used to feel that it is unusual and my two loves are too much of polar opposites but this is what represents me the most.
BIO / Hila Cohen is 27 years old and works as a fashion designer for an Insraeli sportswear company Funkier. Parallel to that, she’s working on her own sustainable women’s wear line, made 100% from recycled clothes. The company she works at harbors a massive quantity of samples and a surplus of unused clothes. Hila is reusing them, by giving them new features and making them into new clothes. Her goal is to stimulate awareness, trigger a different way of thinking, and encourage creativity. She strives to revolutionize women’s fashion with her vision of a modern, strong and feminine woman role model.
CREDITS
Designer @hila.halo
Photographer @adi_segal
Makeup @gali.keren
Modeling @karinahorbenko
