Sifana Shahzad

“This past summer I have often questioned whether I am awake”

Journal entry, July 2026

‘Inside’ clothes; mismatched pyjama bottoms and oversized T-shirts – the clothes I have spent much of my life in are rarely discussed and are considered to exist outside of the fashion space, perhaps even embarrassing to be seen in. There is then the opposite of that – suiting, tailoring, “serious clothes”. The sort of clothes I imagine real adults wear as they take on the world with a crisp confidence mirrored by their lapels and pinstripes.

At this age, with so much uncertainty floating around the periphery of life after university, I have often found myself unable to understand the world around me or envision what the future looks like, leading to me retreating into myself and the familiarity of my bed. The sensation of wanting to feel comfort but being pressured to indoctrinate oneself into the ‘real’ world, time and reality feel ever out of my grasp and I find myself often writing about a detachment that feels so confronting, I have questioned whether I am awake.

A vision of stumbling out of bed, half awake, half asleep, getting dressed in the dark in what turns out to an eclectic, hazy mix of those two polar opposite worlds of pyjamas and tailoring, I see someone stuck in between. Wanting everything to stay forever the same, like the terribly worn pyjamas you come home to, and aspiring to be cleaner, sharper, more proper, like those suits that can seem so distance.

This collection combines a softness in materiality and shape with details that are sharper to convey a lucidity outlined in the concept. It has been designed as responsibly as possible with natural  materials making up the basis of the collection, supplemented by dead-stock and up-cycled material. Using wools, cottons and jersey with a repeating motif of stripes – as seen in both pinstriped suiting and bedding- add a sense of structure and line the materials themselves balance out. Essentially a capsule wardrobe, with many pieces that are changeable to the wearer’s preference, the collection is designed to be worn in many configurations.

Employing a sense of both irony and sincerity, I aim to bridge the gap between these poles within fashion and to capture the essence of the confusion that many of us face as we stagger through the world, unsure, but trying our best to seem put together.