BAAQIY GHAZALI
DESIGNER BIO
Baaqiy Ghazali is an emerging fashion designer with a background in architecture and fine art, specialising in sculptural garments. Baaqiy approaches fashion as a tool to investigate the behavioural effect of fashion on human psyches; “why do we wear what we wear?” and “can avant-garde design be desirable?”. An accomplished designer highly skilled in pattern-making and tailoring, Baaqiy was awarded two Designer of The Trimester awards. Baaqiy was also given the opportunity to preview her graduate collection “Love Is Calling For Wonderland” on the Melbourne Fashion Week runway, as well as designing a custom garment for St.Ali, and becoming a member of the Melbourne Fashion Hub 2022/2023. Baaqiy is the winner of MYER Fashions On The Field - Emerging Designer Award 2022, and her winning design will be featured in VOGUE Australia in a 2023 issue.
DESIGN STATEMENT
Love Is Calling For Wonderland (LICFW)is a surreal fashion collection that takes inspiration from Yayoi Kusama’s Love Is Calling art installation that explores the theme of life and death through endless reflection and bright colors, as well as the play on scales and distortion of reality from the world of Alice In Wonderland.
This collection showcases garments in darker silhouettes accented with pops of bright colors through the use of original prints. The first look from the collection represents life, and features a fully tailored jacket in vivid colors and ends with a look that while sculptural, is free-form and layered in scorched black organzas. The final look represents death.
LICFW subverts the design principle “Form Follows Function”, and suggests that ‘Function Follows Form”. This is done through the deliberate removal of traditional garment aspects such as armholes, sleeves, and openings, as well as disregarding proportions and fit. The wearer, while wearing the garment, is seemingly distorting their anatomy, and embraces the design unapologetically.