This collection is a timeline stuck in encounters of textures and colours, modernity and tradition—it is also where the Silk Road tales that I heard as a child meet my Scandinavian everyday life.

At the centre of the Silk Road, the meeting point of different worlds, I have my roots. I have long tried to be a Uighur, a Chinese and a Swede, at the same time. Having a multicultural background is an endless source of inspiration for me, it also means self-criticism and delusion. Who am I and who do I want to be?

My vision is to see my references from the colourful Uighur, the conservative Chinese and the balanced Swedish. Everyone with their differences finds peace in my creation. I see my degree project as an inner journey that reconnects me with my origins, while helping me find a new identity that does not have to be neither or, but both.

In my degree project, I examine my mix of cultures with oriental symbols and subtle tailoring which results in a transcultural fashion collection expressing how details in clothing can reveal one’s life story, origins and future. I draw inspiration from shapes and motifs in Uighur and Chinese architecture and textile heritage, colours from my childhood memories, and put them in a contemporary context.