In the rupture between worlds, something new begins.

‘Metamorphia’ explores identity, cultural displacement, and transformation through a butterfly’s life cycle—egg, caterpillar, cocoon, rupture, and emergence. It reflects my migrant experience of existing between worlds, untethered from one culture yet never fully rooted in another. What is often perceived as displacement is reframed here as a space of possibility and self-authorship, encouraging other migrants to embrace this in-between space in shaping their own authentic selves.

Migration fractures familiar structures, resulting in ambiguity and rupture; yet within this rupture lies potential for creative redefinition, resistance, and growth. Drawing on Homi Bhabha’s Third Space theory, Metamorphia imagines a generative realm where migrants shape-shift beyond fixed cultural categories, creating hybrid identities. Inspired by the avant-garde silhouettes and sculptural storytelling of Iris van Herpen and Issey Miyake, this concept-led collection reimagines garments as narrative vessels. 

The garments feature uncanny, white-toned exteriors symbolising adaptation and the desire to belong. Their distorted shapes evoke quiet resistance—deliberately foreign, sitting askew like migrants within dominant culture. Beneath them, a hand-painted artwork of my memories and loved ones, on printed on cotton sateen, gradually emerges across the collection, revealing my self-made cultural identity claiming its place in the world. 

Material consciousness sits at the heart of this transformation. Each garment is created using limited-waste pattern cutting and thoughtful construction techniques, and the entire collection is made from 100% natural fibres, including 100% silk, organic cotton, linen blends, and cotton poplin. Every scrap and offcut is given new purpose through my own custom bioplastic recipe - a biodegradable, resin-like material that allows me to create sculptural, wearable art pieces that echo the metamorphic narrative of the collection. This bioplastic is blended with natural fibres taken from my offcuts and used to form the face accessories, the cocoon headpiece, the cocoon overskirt, and the Emergence top. Through this process, Metamorphia becomes both an emotional and material metamorphosis - proving that nothing within the third space is wasted, and that every fragment, like every identity in transition, holds the power to transform.

Rather than mourning a loss of origin, ‘Metamorphia’ reframes displacement as a source of power. In the liminal third space, the self is not lost but redefined.