Capturing Memories & Emotions
Thora Stefans (Guðbjörg Þóra Stefansdóttir) is an Icelandic fashion designer hailing from the North of Iceland, or more specifically, Akureyri. She moved to London in the year 2014 and is still residing there after just finishing her undergraduate degree in Fashion print at Central Saint Martins. She has interned at Versace where she worked on their Versace Jeans Couture Collection, Marc Jacobs RTW and Chanel Metiers D‘arts – Maison Lemarie, developing samples for RTW and Couture. During her time in Iceland during the hight of the pandemic, she worked with the Icelandic Textile Center on a project that ended in 2020 called ‘Bridging textiles to the digital future‘. The project was funded by Rannís where they documented and digitalised hundreds of old weaving patterns which were almost forgotten.
Back in 2014 when Þóra moved to London I myself was living in a small apartment in West Hampstead along with photographer Katrín Ólafs. Mine and Thoras families know each other through my uncle being married to her aunt, so we ended up living together almost through an arranged situation, one which I’m forever grateful for now. Our days living together parted but since then our friendship grew even stronger, and I’m now so proud and happy to see her finish her degree with this amazing graduation collection. After all the fabric cuttings, glitter splatters and sketches strewn across her floor on our dingy London flat, countless all nighters I witnessed, it’s so amazing to see how she’s grown as a designer and too see all of her hard work become reality.
carrying on emotions through generations
I asked Thora to tell us a bit more about her collection, and where her main source of inspiration came from. “In my collection I explore a personal collection of items that seem unlikely to behold any memories or emotions, some may call these items rubbish, but to me they hold an emotional connection. My research consists of small material items that invoke an intimate nonmaterial sensation and memory, I explored these items and connect them to my family heritage and the idea of carrying on emotions through generations.
These seemingly un-interesting items act as a key into my past, I look at them and they bring back memories I thought were forgotten. I explore how these things connect into the future and how unlikely memories might shape my future. A small item that may be rubbish brings back a large quantity of emotions and thoughts. It is fascinating to me how one material thing can hold so much information about the past, without anyone else realising it. Throughout the collection I made a lot of recordings of the draping process, These recordings have become a big part of the research and it puts into perspective the vulnerability of the collection. This process has inspired the shapes and the prints. The print being an accidental process which happened while criticizing my body in the videos. Body image pops up in many memories as it has been attached to my identity from a young age, this collection is an opportunity for me to let go of the negativity I have towards myself, allowing myself to heal in the process of making this collection, it gives my work a deeper purpose”.
It is a part of who I am and how I grew up
We then go on to discuss how she creates a lot of her designs and pieces using old techniques such as weaving, she explains that “the process started naturally, I have an emotional connection to weaving and the loom itself, it is a part of who I am and how I grew up. weaving to me is like writing my story, it was spontaneous and I think of weaving like painting or drawing, you can do anything if you know the basics of the loom. By weaving the fabrics myself I was able to tell the story I wanted, that to me adds more depth and personality into the fabric”.
I ask her if it can be complicated using such traditional methods when creating such modern pieces. “It can be challenging and sometimes there are obstacles, but I think it is important to incorporate it. I think we constantly forget that almost everything that we wear is woven by someone, so in a way I just want to remind people of that. I am always fascinated by how little most people know about weaving, but I think that shows the detachment we have from our clothes and how unaware we are of their origin. That‘s why I like to make those loud colourful pieces, so people ask more questions. My idea as well was to create a fabric that looked embroidered, but instead I wove the beads into the fabric which was a quicker process but still being completely handmade”.
I’m curious to know what is her favourite look from her collection and Þóra says “it depends on my mood! Which is fitting for the research. I think my woven pieces because they took such a long time and such an effort. Then again I love some of the sculptural pieces because they remind me of my childhood. Look 5 I hold very near to my heart because I wove it in Blönduós, where the Icelandic textile center is located, the building that the Icelandic textile center is in used to be called ‚kvennaskólinn á Blönduósi‘ – which was a women only school back in the days. Alongside doing the weaving there I also did some pattern cutting and embroidery there and while I was there I found out I was working on my pattern cutting in the same room that my great-grandmother used to teach sewing and pattern cutting, and later on I found out my other great grandmother used to teach embroidery there and my mother practically grew up in that school with her grandmother and has been working there as a weaving specialist, so the garment has become very sentimental”.
Each piece represents a time and emotion
We talk about how a lot of the pieces from the collection are very sculptural and bigger-than-life, I ask Thora how her need to create these came about. “Through my research I wanted to capture the memories and emotions into physical shapes, becoming a garment that captures time.
In the process of making the collection, I realised that each memory was also an emotional cluster. the garments are not only a memory capsule but a capsule you can let go off, the garment represents the heaviness of an emotions, let go of it by taking it of – therapeutic clothing. This process has become a sentimental body of work exploring the definition of emotions and what is behind them. Each memory connects to a cluster of emotions I have interpreted as a garment on my body, by recording myself draping the emotion appropriately on myself, feeling the weight and the heaviness of it, or the lightness. Each piece represents a time and emotion. When I made the patterns, I was trying to think about clothing and shapes like I did when I was a child because in childhood everything is much simpler and we don‘t really understand the difference between 2D and 3D, so I wanted to create a 2D flat garment, that would then become 3D on the body”.
She goes on to tell me about her future plans after graduating from CSM. She says “there are so many things that I want to do right now, I would love to do some more development on my prints and make more garments that I can sell, alongside that doing some one-off pieces and costumes. I love taking my time with a garment and not being too rushed, so I hope I get to do some performance pieces in the future and I would love to work worth performers and artists. Right now I am also really interested in bio-hacking, set design and costume design, I want to somehow explore these areas further, now it is just about deciding where to start with”.
