Graduating designers from the ArtEZ Fashion Design BA program presented on June 5, at De Zoetenlab in Arnhem, their collections inspired by personal stories, social themes, and material experiments, ranging from transition and youth to cultural and spiritual reflection.
Sanra Adomaitis
XOX is inspired by their gender transition and imagines a magical world of unicorn trans girls. Using reworked secondhand denim and a DIY aesthetic, the collection celebrates trans joy, sustainability, and visibility while honoring the beauty, strength, and magic of trans people.
Valerija Churina
For the Promise explores clothing as an extension of identity and inner experience. Inspired by Pierre Soulages’ work, the collection translates depth, fluidity, and layering into textiles and silhouettes, allowing garments to gradually reveal more about the wearer over time.
Jillian-Blair Derose
Commedia Dell’Arte explores Pierrot’s story through character design and emotional self-preservation. The Jester, Nurse, Sailor, and Strongman each represent a different way of coping with hardship through humor, care, adventure, and resilience.
Enzo Faber
What Else Is New reflects contemporary youth and the boys surrounding the designer. The collection translates their vulnerability, impulsiveness, and culture into carefully constructed garments that appear effortless, balancing precision and subtlety without overwhelming the overall look.
Lisanne Huizenga
Avernales imagines a utopian world where Art Nouveau and Space Age aesthetics merge. Inspired by self-designed perfume bottles, the collection explores the relationship between ornament, structure, and fluidity, translating sculptural glass forms into innovative silhouettes for the body.
Smilla Junkerjürgen
Immortal Elizabethan at the End of the World examines how the commodification of grain has shaped humanity. Through colour, form, and textile, the collection explores tensions between human and non-human forces while highlighting resilience, connection, and acts of resistance.
Casper Naafs
SuperMen, SwagKnights, Young Boy Prince traces a boy’s growth through evolving styles of dress. The collection celebrates playful, authentic self-expression, combining diverse fashion codes with reused materials, a homemade aesthetic, and technically refined craftsmanship and detailing.
Stasha Pigkou
The Great Escape explores transformation as escape. Inspired by the myth of Icarus, the collection depicts a body in transition, suspended between vulnerability and strength, using asymmetry and layered forms to suggest movement, flight, and becoming.
Sofiia Popil
Intermezzo is inspired by Ukrainians living through war and using hope as survival. The collection expresses escape and mental protection through layered silhouettes and crafted textures, combining vulnerability and resilience within an illusory yet essential sense of safety.
Luus van Steenbergen
Sacred Surface explores the shift from superficiality to spirituality through craft and ritual. Inspired by a personal journey toward faith, the collection connects glamour and modesty, using layering and handwork to create a meditative language of transformation and inner reflection.
Zaïna Timmermans
Adaptation explores self-love and growth through floral, expressive silhouettes. Inspired by personal experiences, the collection combines flowers, prints, lace, and varied textures into a bold, colourful whole where contrast and femininity play a central role.
Julia Verberne
Memoria Blanca explores memory, loss, and longing for an unreachable past place. The collection translates this through reworked patterns and textures, combining nostalgia, fading, and transformation into a quiet space between remembering and forgetting.
Lizzy Isabel Voeten
Eclosion explores innocence, imagination, and transformation. Inspired by childhood memories and family, the collection depicts growth through symbols like butterflies and parachutes, carrying playfulness, protection, and wonder into the transition from childhood to adulthood.
Józefina Wojtkiewicz
One and Three Blank explores stillness and perception of time through fashion and art. Inspired by Joseph Kosuth and still life, the collection examines how meaning, choice, and context blur, drawing on surrealism and a sense of being stuck in time.
Nina Železnik
SFINGA explores the boundary between garment and sculpture. Inspired by concrete and craft traditions, the collection combines heavy, constructed forms with light materials, treating the body as a supporting, visually muted structure within dynamic compositions.
Head of Fashion Design BA: Sanne Schepers
Photography: Team Peter Stigter
