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The Department of Fashion Design at Shenkar’s class of 2026 is reexamining our inner spaces, those most intimate and vulnerable parts of us.  This year’s graduate collections boldly confront our circumstances, tearing off the masks and giving space to vulnerability and human authenticity. In a time when we sought solace in refined aesthetics or flights of escapism, our graduate projects do not settle for a survivalist response. In their hands, the item of clothing becomes a laboratory of emotion, illusion and rebellion against established norms. The collections invite you on a journey between the anatomy of emotion and the architecture of transience. Our graduates dismantle the fantasy of a utopian existence, instead offering a visible presence to moments in life that are often hidden to the eye. In so doing, they find a startling strength and beauty in an aesthetic that embraces the broken and the flawed and reimagine the journey of identity not as a fait accompli but as an active choice. This collection of works demonstrates how new fashion arises fom external and internal noise to create something bold, personal and unflinchingly honest.

 

An Anatomy of Emotion 

Raw emotions that are often kept hidden, such as love, vulnerability and romance, this year have become vital materials of inspiration. The examples here aspire to restore day-to-day gestures of warmth and mutual care to center stage and make us question the contention of a cynical world that affection should be a source of embarrassment. The restrictions of traditional masculinity are overcome in favor of a desire for a man who is able to make himself vulnerable and to exhibit courage beyond the limits of restraint. Emotion is also expressed through memory, in one case by commemorating the lives lost at the Nova Festival through a fabric that continues to twirl after the body has stopped. At the same time, we see the quiet love of a Soviet upbringing, expressed through physical contact and knitting in place of words, or a study into daily expressions of love — quiet and protective — through knots and envelopment.

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An Architecture of Transience

The sense of “home” is stripped of its familiar constituent components and is no longer presented as a space that can be taken for granted. The students create by investigating the constraints of a space of passages and motion. One example of this is the collection that was born in the cramped confines of a 23 m2 apartment, in which every object had to fight for its space. Home was examined as a place of constant movement for the children of divorced couples who have spent their whole lives with packed bags, attempting to grasp a moment of belonging. Others map the liminal space of “suspension” — the line between marriage and divorce, in which an end is already present, but the new beginning is yet to arrive. Knots, gathering and layers of covering and revealing build an appreciation of the beauty of change contained within a departure from that which is  safe and familiar.

 

An Illusion of Perfection

The collections in this chapter choose to tear the mask from the fantasies we are sold and to expose the lies of refined aesthetics. In place of perfection, we are presented with a disarray that reflects the truth of our reality. For example, we find items beloved of the American wardrobe such as polo shirts and chinos that offer a rebuke of the “American dream”, becoming a glittering display of hedonism. This critical gaze also extends to dismantling the romcom promise of “the perfect man”, with tailored suits in pastel shades cracked to expose the narcissism and control behind the homage. The idealised plastic beauty of the dolls industry we grew up with is also twisted and contorted into broken silhouettes and exposed seams that highlight their flaws. Cracks are also exposed in the fantasy of a “catalogue apartment”, replaced by an improvised and eclectic reality, or a collection that imitates scenes from cinema in which hooks are exposed, fragments of clothes flutter and the illusion of control dissipates before our eyes.

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The Aesthetics of a Flaw 

Weakness, inner noise and human faults are given pride of place here and transformed into a source of strength and desirable beauty. The works take invisible life experiences and give them form: hearing loss, so often unseen, is transformed into silhouettes inspired by architectural acoustics that give the silence a presence. Tourette syndrome is depicted not as a disorder to be concealed but as a fascinating dialogue between physical tension and release through items of clothing that express a dramatic and muscular tension. Post-traumatic experiences and drawn-out reserve duty are represented in terms of toughness and constriction, meeting somewhere between gentle and harsh, with items of clothing interspersed with drawings and texts from a personal diary. Alongside them, there is an all-too-rare boldness to seek harmony in places that are faded and ailing; anxiety sprouts up in a collection that questions the need for constant blossoming and reminds us that a delicate harmony can be found even in a “sickly garden” of wilting flowers.

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A journey of identity 

Identity is not just another predetermined fate. It is an active choice and a never-ending journey. Our graduates call on us “to learn to wear the journey”. In one case, that takes the form of a historical journey from Ethiopia to Israel conveyed through a tailored wardrobe that combines desert colours and traditional “netela” cloth. In another, it is a decision to adopt a foreign culture driven by a love of freedom, a decision that takes the designer to sculpted silhouettes inspired by the Italian couture fashion of the 1980s. The young designers also examine the concept of belonging across borders, connecting to hip-hop and African American culture as part of a shared battle for visibility, expressed through outfits that celebrate belonging and pride through broad silhouettes, embroidery and masculine roughness. At the same time, longstanding traditions received a new twist; for example, the decorations on an ancient door are the jumping-off point for a dialogue between Druze tradition and modernity, translating the visual richness into contemporary volumes and knitwear, in recognition of the ways in which a living culture respects its past, but uses it to grow and adapt.