Harper’s Bazaar

Meet the next generation of Australian designers from the 2024 UTS Fashion Honours Graduate Showcase

HB: Tell us a bit about yourself.

Suzaan Stander: I’m a 22 year-old fashion designer raised in both Pretoria, South Africa and Sydney’s north-west. I have a strong interest in storytelling through design, and have a family history in bridal dressmaking and fine art. Growing up surrounded by art and intricate dressmaking laid the foundations for my design work, where I create garments that blend these elements, abstracting couture corsetry techniques to create pieces that act as art pieces sculpted around the body.

HB: What has inspired your work and aesthetic?

SS: I strive to capture the feeling of stepping into a character, and view fashion as a performance and exercise in storytelling. My honours collection explores the boundary between person and thing, inspired by characters that occupy the space between fantasy and reality such as dolls and marionette puppets. This idea stems from my fascination with the historical narrative of corsetry, specifically about how much of its accepted history and assumed truths are based on misinterpreted and misplaced perceptions of feminine vanity. Sustainability and reusing existing materials is something I’m also very passionate about, which is why I chose to work with deadstock fabrics, and repurpose bridal remnants from my mother’s dressmaking as the foundation fabrics for my digital print work. 

HB: How did you first get into fashion and textile design?

SS: My mum is a bridal dressmaker, so ever since I was a little girl I would watch her sew. In terms of truly getting into fashion, that happened for me when I was 15, when I became entranced by designers like Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen. I had always loved history and art, but discovering those designers exposed me to a whole new world — where fashion wasn’t as shallow as it is often presented, but an art practice of storytelling.