On crows, wishes, and the things we carry with us.
It was a Sunday afternoon, over lunch with a group of girlfriends, when I noticed a crow wandering around a pile of rubbish nearby.
I couldn't take my eyes off it.
There was something strangely compelling about the bird. In modern life, the crow is often associated with bad omens, darkness, and misfortune.
Yet I have always found beauty in it. I watched it move through its surroundings, searching, observing, existing without asking to be understood.
I wondered why we are so quick to decide which creatures bring us good fortune and which ones foretell something terrible.
The title of this collection had already been decided long before I knew what the collection would become.
Hope.
At the time, perhaps I was wishing for a better tomorrow. Perhaps I was looking for a way out of a life in which I could no longer see the end of the tunnel. I wanted something to save me, something to tell me that things could still change. When you have tried everything you know how to try, sometimes all that remains is the wish itself.
We are taught to associate hope with the dove: its whiteness, its innocence, its promise of peace. It is a beautiful symbol, but I began to wonder whether hope had to be so pure.
My journey was never white.
I found myself drawn instead to the crow, and to the raven, whose symbolism stretches beyond the darkness with which they are so often associated. They are intelligent, watchful creatures, connected in various traditions with revelation, transformation, and the uncovering of what lies beneath the surface.
Perhaps this was the kind of hope I was looking for. Not an innocent belief that everything would be all right, but a more difficult hope — one that acknowledges what is broken, sees what others overlook, and continues to search for something true.
It felt close to the philosophy I have always wanted to express through my work. I have never wanted to make things simply because they are beautiful. I want to look deeper. I want to find a value that cannot be understood at first glance, something that might remain hidden until someone takes the time to discover it.
I wanted this collection to hold both the dove and the crow: two opposing symbols, two different ways of wishing. One represents the hope we are taught to recognise. The other represents the hope we might find when the obvious answers have failed us.
Have you ever wished for a little good fortune?
Not necessarily to a god, or to any particular faith, but to something beyond yourself. An unknown force. The universe. A possibility you cannot quite explain. There are moments when you have done everything you can, when every effort seems to meet a closed door, and you begin to wonder whether there is anything left to do but make a wish.
Perhaps this is why we leave locks on bridges, tie written wishes to trees at temples, or draw a fortune from a small wooden box. We know that these gestures cannot promise us anything. And yet, we make them. We leave a small piece of ourselves behind and allow ourselves to believe, even for a moment, that something good might find its way to us.
Once, a friend told me about an experience he had while wearing one of my pieces. People kept approaching him, noticing his jacket, wanting to talk to him. When he came back to tell me the story, his eyes were shining.
“Your clothes bring good fortune,” he said.
I have remembered those words ever since.
What if a garment could be more than something we wear? What if it could become a small talisman, carried into the world with us? Something that gives us a little more courage before stepping outside, makes us feel seen on an ordinary day, or opens a door we might not otherwise have approached?
Of course, a garment cannot promise us a better life. But perhaps it can change the way we enter one.
This thought became the starting point for the collection's patchwork. Inspired by the gestures through which people express their wishes — locks attached to bridges, fortune slips tied to trees, little offerings left in the hope of receiving something in return — I imagined each garment as a surface that gathers these scattered desires.
Random appliqués and fabric treatments reveal unexpected flashes of sparkle, allowing something luminous to emerge from within the construction. The surface is not entirely predictable. The beauty is discovered rather than announced, appearing in fragments, almost by chance.
Like a wish, it asks you to look closer.
I wanted to make clothes that offer more than a style. I wanted to make something that could accompany a person through their day, carrying a quiet wish for whatever might come next.
Something to wear when you need a little courage. Something to keep close when the future feels uncertain. Something that reminds you that good fortune, however small, is still worth wishing for.
I don't know if clothes can bring luck.
But if wearing something I have made can make someone's day a little brighter, help them feel a little more confident, or give them one small reason to believe in a better tomorrow, then perhaps that is enough.
Perhaps this is what craftsmanship means to me: putting a wish into something with my own hands, so that someone else can carry it into the world.
A crow instead of a dove. A hope that is not innocent, but honest. A small talisman for the life we have yet to live.
I wanted to make clothes that bring good fortune.
And perhaps, in making them, I was wishing for some myself.
