Maria Creyts' Trans-Atlantic runway

I’ve heard fashion design compared with architecture. Fashion as personal architecture. Architects enjoy discussing the context of space. Many architects believe a building should be of its place. But fashion embraces your personal space. Fashion is personal.

Maria Creyts designed pieces made of more than fabric. These creations came from her personal fabric of experience. She fashioned a postcard from a land far away, and rather than posting it, gave it life and placed it on people who gave it further life on a runway in June this year as the sun set on 18^th Street in the Crossroads of Kansas City. A long way from Nigeria. Out of context? Hardly.

The runway seemed to reach for another continent. The patterns evoked smiles.

Clothes can establish a personal mood and project a message. What we wear says something about us, so they say. Consider Maria’s designs for a moment. The fabric patterns tell a story.

Fashion is serious, and contemporary fashion often possesses a severity. Power projections via suits and dramatic spiked heels. Severity sells.

We know exotic when we see it. Maria saw it in the exotic place and brought it here, then projected it east on 18^th Street, and stretched her arms across an ocean to a place she learned to love. It may be a stretch to wear these designs in certain contexts and yet fashion is transportable and the transporter can alter the context of a place by simply walking by. Personal, transportable architecture that transforms.

MARIA CREYTS ✴ www.mariaurora.net ✴ 347.687.5247

mariacreyts@gmail.com / 1600 Genessee, # 516 Kansas City, Missouri 64102