The Unseen Shadow
Wen Chi Ting
London College of Fashion UAL
The Unseen Shadow explores how fashion artefacts can materialise the long-term emotional and psychological impacts of traumatic memories. Drawing from personal experiences, the project examines how trauma is stored, remembered, and reactivated through the body, the senses, and material engagement. The project is relevant in a context where experiences such as sexual harassment are frequently normalised or rendered invisible, while their effects persist over time, shaping bodily perception and emotional memory. By foregrounding these unseen impacts, the work seeks to create space for reflection, recognition, and empathy. The final outcomes consist of a series of fashion artefacts made with knitted copper mesh and felted wool. These materials are employed to evoke residual emotional states and embodied gestures that emerge in response to trauma. Through practice-based methods, the project proposes material expression as an alternative, non-verbal mode of communication.