IED Barcelona Fashion Design Masters Graduate Collection, 2024
EGO, NÉMESIS is a fashion collection born from my personal journey and recovery. It visually narrates moments of emotional depth, using fashion as both introspection and artistic expression.
Influenced by surrealist aesthetics, each of the ten looks reflects a chapter of internal struggle, healing, and self-confrontation. The collection fuses haute couture aesthetics with expressive textures and silhouettes. It draws inspiration from various artistic disciplines to materialize feelings such as fear, isolation, rebirth, and resilience.
FASHION FILM
“Ego Némesis” is born from a deeply personal place. The idea of the “nemesis” serves as a metaphor: an inner rival, an invisible but ever-present adversary that challenges you relentlessly. Fashion became my language, and each look in the collection acts as a visual poem giving form to emotional states that are often intangible.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
The project began with introspective analysis, followed by research across fashion and other creative disciplines. I developed textile samples through experimental dyeing, manipulation, and stamping techniques, later combining them into collage-based design proposals.
From this process, I identified various emotional states or stages that would become the conceptual pillars of each look in the collection. These concepts were connected through a narrative that mirrors an internal journey from trauma to emotional distortion.
From these, I created moodboards that explored abstract ideas visually — using symbols, textures, and artistic references, especially from pictorial surrealism. These boards helped me extract shapes, textures, and movements that became the foundation for each design.
Color plays a vital narrative role throughout the collection. The palette is dominated by deep blacks, serving as a metaphor for void, heaviness, and introspection. Contrasting tones appear strategically: crimson evokes pain and violence; grey speaks of numbness and disconnection; while blue and gold emerge briefly—symbols of melancholy, dreamlike hope, and transcendence.
The collection is divided into three narrative phases.
Introspection
The first phase explores the internal landscape. The origin of pain, trauma, and melancholy. It begins with a symbolic ceremony of emotional awakening, descending into themes of sadness, isolation, and imprisonment within one’s own mind. A surreal, almost divine aesthetic dominates this stage, expressing emotional depth through symbolism and contrast.
Self & Role
In the second phase, the collection shifts toward interactions with the external world. It reflects the struggle between seeking help and concealing vulnerability. The looks in this section are built on contradiction: tenderness and aggression, stillness and alertness, escapism and confrontation. The silhouette work explores both constraint and release, mirroring the search for comfort in imagined worlds.
Distortion & Perception
The final phase represents a descent into distorted perception. A stage where reality is fragmented, and the boundary between the self and the outside world dissolves. This stage embodies loss of structure, recurring fears, and a twisted reinterpretation of protective symbols. The aesthetic becomes more chaotic, symbolic, and charged with emotional and visual intensity.
COLLECTION LINE-UP
1ST PHASE -- INTROSPECTION
01. TRAUMA
Concept
This look marks the beginning of the collection and represents the origin of internal pain: the trauma. It sets the emotional tone for the rest of the journey, symbolizing a ceremonial passage into the darker corners of the mind.
Construction
A full-length gown crafted in black taffeta, built upon a corset base with a double back closure: an inner lace-up and an outer line of buttons. The skirt extends into 30 meters of gathered ruffles, creating weight and volume that emphasize the solemn nature of the piece. A dramatic cape with structured shoulders reinforces the silhouette, adorned with handmade taffeta feathers that also crown the head, evoking a ritualistic presence.
02. MIDNIGHT TEARS
Concept
This look embodies sorrow and melancholy, experienced most vividly during the solitude of night. Inspired by Van Gogh’s Starry Night, it evokes a dreamlike realm where sadness becomes almost divine.
Construction
The gown is constructed from blue lamé, with a corseted bodice and an interior mermaid skirt that extends into a dramatic train. An external overskirt, supported by an internal boning structure, creates a floating silhouette. Crystals hang from the hem, catching light like falling tears. Matching opera-length gloves, closed with ribbon lacing, echo the material of the dress. Gold accents visible in the corset lacing and hardware add contrast and regality. A golden resin tiara in the shape of a crescent moon completes the look, enhancing its celestial tone.
03. PRISONER
Concept
This look reflects the emotional imprisonment one feels when trapped within their own mind. It expresses exposure, fragility, and the violence of inner torment, the feeling of being naked in front of one's pain, with no means of escape.
Construction
A fully knitted ensemble featuring a vertically gradient corset shifting from white to black. The skirt is composed of semi-transparent black crochet, reinforced with internal wire structure to evoke the rigid form of a cage. Beneath it, a layer of black feathers adds depth and movement. From the chest emerge white feathers that gradually become blood-red, symbolizing wounded innocence. The look is completed with a matching crochet helmet-mask, an extension of the cage itself, enclosing the wearer in their own confinement.
2ND PHASE -- SELF & ROLE
04. ASYLUM
Concept
This piece bridges the introspective with the institutional, representing the conflict between the human need for help and the dehumanization. It’s a commentary on vulnerability, resistance, and identity within systems of control.
Construction
Tailored blazer crafted in white jacquard, digitally printed with the poem Tulips by Sylvia Plath across its entire surface. The corset, integrated into the blazer, is made from raw-colored Piñatex and secured with four waist belts that mimic the binding of a straitjacket. Additional belts encircle the sleeves and extend lengthwise along the cuffs. Underneath, a sleeveless linen body suit inspired by hospital gowns features hidden buttons and a shirt collar. A matching leg garter, structured like the belts and laser-engraved to resemble a hospital admission wristband, bears fictional patient data, reinforcing the theme of clinical detachment.
[SECTION IN CONSTRUCTION...]
Digital–Physical Workflow
This collection was developed through a hybrid process combining digital design in CLO3D with physical garment construction.
Each look began with traditional patternmaking and sewing techniques, which were then translated into digital simulations to test fit, proportions, and fabric behavior. Conversely, digital explorations informed adjustments in the physical prototypes, creating a feedback loop between the virtual and the real.
Each look began with traditional patternmaking and sewing techniques, which were then translated into digital simulations to test fit, proportions, and fabric behavior. Conversely, digital explorations informed adjustments in the physical prototypes, creating a feedback loop between the virtual and the real.
Look 04. Asylum -- CLO3D Viewport
CLO3D -- Look 01 in motion
Each garment was prepared with clean topology, optimized pattern geometry, and accurate material properties, making it suitable for export to other 3D environments such as Houdini and real-time engines. In this way, every look functions not only as a physical outfit but also as a fully operational digital asset, ready for simulation, animation, and integration into future applications in digital fashion pipelines, virtual showcases, or interactive experiences.
PHOTOSHOOT
The shoot featured the three completed looks: Trauma, Asylum, and Glimpse of a Nurse. The styling drew from imagery of witches, spirits, and horror, seeking to portray each character as an ominous entity. The shoot aimed to embody their psychological weight, transforming the models into entities that navigate trauma, vulnerability, and distorted care.
The shoot was divided into two contrasting sets:
Hospital Set: Created within a university studio space, this set recreated a clinical hospital box. I collaborated with a creative director who sourced props such as a gurney, wheelchair, curtains, and medical accessories. The result was a sterile, high-contrast white space that symbolized the real, tangible world—the starting point of suffering and transformation.
Abstract Set: Photographed against a black backdrop, this scene represented the introspective and surreal dimensions of the collection. Here, each character came to life in their own imagined realm, blurring the line between vulnerability and threat.
The individual portraits were retouched using surreal and abstract art references, transporting each look into a distorted dreamscape. The group shots, on the other hand, remained raw and clinical. Set in the white hospital environment, they captured the emotional tension between the three entities, showing how trauma, numbness, and distorted care coexist in a shared space.
Together, both sets of images mirror the conceptual duality of the collection: the real and the imagined, the body and the psyche.
01. Trauma
Surrounded by white flowers and children’s plush toys, the model plays provocatively with symbols of innocence. In close-ups, she lays tarot cards on her hand: only the Death card appears, mocking her own vulnerability with a defiant glance.
04. ASYLUM
The model writes frantically in a diary, lost in her own inner world. She stares at the viewer with a mixture of terror and threat. The same plush toys appear again, but this time, she clutches them violently, both protecting and harming them.
10. GLIMPSE OF A NURSE
The model assumes a poised, commanding stance. With a wheelchair in hand, she invites the viewer to sit down, suggesting control cloaked in care. In other shots, she sits like a queen on her throne, radiating superiority and unsettling grace.
Photo
Neus X. Liria Vivancos
Models
Daina Massanet i Llobet
Júlia Torres Ruiz
Irene del Canto
Hair, Nails & Make Up
Ibar Vacino
Antonella Cerda Araneda
Irina Ryumina
Jassly Powell
Olesia Gordeeva
Artistic Direction
Andrea Monclús Pujol
Video
Víctor García Gutiérrez
Neus X. Liria Vivancos
Models
Daina Massanet i Llobet
Júlia Torres Ruiz
Irene del Canto
Hair, Nails & Make Up
Ibar Vacino
Antonella Cerda Araneda
Irina Ryumina
Jassly Powell
Olesia Gordeeva
Artistic Direction
Andrea Monclús Pujol
Video
Víctor García Gutiérrez
