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RMIT Graduate Melissa Tidah Him launches first collection

Feels like home.

RMIT graduate Melissa Tidah Him has just launched her first collection, HOME.

HOME is an exploration of Melissa’s Cambodian heritage, her personal identity and her current design practice.

“My goal in HOME was to explore the contemporary ruins, perished walls and stylistic traits of 1960s Cambodian modernist architecture and then find ways to dress it back onto the body that still resembled my identity.”

Influenced by the New Khmer Architecture movement of the 1960s and its existing contemporary ruins, Melissa created a fabrication that replicated the ripped wallpaper aesthetic. The use of multiple layers of paint, PVA glue and silk produced a rigid textile that when contrasted with fabrications such as knit jersey, formed a distinctive organic and voluminous silhouette.

But architecture isn’t the only thing that has inspired this beautiful new collection. Throughout this project Melissa has discovered a love for acrylic paints and Cambodian art.

“I never really saw myself as an artist but throughout this project, I discovered how much I resonate with an abstract expressionist style of painting.”

So what does the future hold for this up and coming designer? She told Fashion Journal she wants to spend time in New York, paint, learn to teach yoga and exhibit her art. But mostly she plans to come home.

“Eventually [I want to] come back to Melbourne to open a concept retail store like Colette or Dover Street Market.”

Thanks to photographer Justin Mclean you can check out the new collection in Lady Daydream from Vimeo.

Make yourself at home.

Lady Daydream from secretlymalevolent on Vimeo.

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