Ella
Morris

Ella Morris is a Womenswear Fashion Design student from Brighton. Her collection explores the way in which possessions maintain the ability to both hold and reflect their owner. ‘Prized possessions can be so intimate that they convey their owner’s emotions: Fears and hopes, lies and obsessions,’ she summarises.

The initial inspiration for this collection stemmed from the contents of an old box that Ella discovered in the attic of her family home, marked ‘Royal Air Force Uniform Box’. Within was a christening dress and petticoat. Upon this discovery, Ella began to trace the history of these garments throughout her family archives and discovered that they appeared in numerous images throughout the decades. Further research into these artefacts led Ella to a treasure box, where she found a ‘navigator's sweetheart brooch,’ which inspired her experimentations with metal, notably evidenced in her inclusion of a reimagined sweetheart brooch within the collection. Inspired by Olivia Parker, who reportedly distributed her pocket money onto train tracks to watch the coins flatten under the passing trains, Ella recalls: ‘This led me to understand meaning as being something that is fluid, when an object’s physical state is altered, its meaning can also change.’ Culminating these inspirations created Ella’ show look. Experimenting with scale suggests that these items demand never to be forgotten and they maintain the ability to convey truths about ourselves in years to come. 

Alicia Tomkinson, BA Fashion Journalism
@leeshtomkinson