The Unwearable Collection

Exploring GPP Through Design

By Alisha Singh (TDM ‘25)

FIT’s latest exhibition was another example of its students’ ability to explore fashion and design through unconventional and imaginative routes. Through a partnership with Dutch designer Bart Hess and the German pharmaceutical firm Boehringer Ingelheim, Fashion Design MFA students Natalia Robles Oteiza and Urvi Selarka produced the latest piece in the Unwearable Collection. This venture moves to visually depict the pain and struggles of people diagnosed with Generalized Pustular Psoriasis or GPP.

Known for exploring the close relationship between the body, beauty, and horror through his boundarypushing clothing, Hess designed four pieces for the collection, each depicting a different struggle; Physical Pain, Flare Intensity, Pain of Isolation, and LifeThreatening. The use of broken glass, shards of knives, and burnt fabrics made for stunning, larger-than-life structural garments that no one could safely wear, however for those living with GPP, represent a daily reality.

When designing the fifth piece, Selarka and Oteiza decided to explore the mental and emotional toil the patients must deal with on a daily basis. From this came about the final and newest piece of the collection, Trapped by Uncertainty. Tulle and mesh obscure the wearer’s view of the world like a cloud of smoke while hands seem to struggle against the fabric wound tightly around the frame. Finishing out the gown beautifully, are crystals and glass shards meant to juxtapose the danger of this disease alongside the individuality and beauty of the people who carry it.

When asked what it was like to bring their creativity and imagination to collaborate with new people, Oteiza answered, “We were tasked with a very intangible concept… representing not so much the physical impact of GPP, but the psychological impact and specifically the uncertainty of not knowing when you’re going to have a flare and not knowing how it’s going to affect your life.”

“That was something we had to translate into something concrete. That required a lot of conversations where we had to adapt our design language, for it to be understood by a wider public that doesn’t always have the same references.”

Helping them in this endeavor were also FIT students from multiple disciplines, creative agency Lorem Ipsum, and FIT Faculty, all of whom were tasked with designing and launching an exhibition that complements and advances the message put forth by the clothing.