Petra Lehtinen’s graduate collection explores garments that are stored in personal storage spaces. By studying the significance of archives in fashion, the collection brings clothes back from the archives and transforms them from being unnecessary and space-consuming to being important by naming them as an actual archive. The BA graduate of Aalto University has used garments sealed in vacuum bags and drawn inspiration from how archival clothes are typically combined and layered. Lehtinen has used a “serpent-cut technique”, where archive pieces are combined with a spiraling cut and these are combined with collages of items assembled in vacuum bags. By incorporating various techniques and working with repurposed garments, Lehtinen adds a layer of preservation to the pieces, leaving a lasting imprint of the archive on the garments.
