RURAL FREQUENCY
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The American Midwest is reflected both in the designer’s memory and
in the materials used to construct the looks. This collection explores the
Heartland not only as a physical place but as an idea, shaped by images,
textures, and contradictions that have gradually settled within Aisy over
time.
The Midwest, as imagined by many, consists of farmland, beer cans, and
the kind of silence only a cold field can hold. But it is much more than that:
it is quiet resistance, deep practicality, and a culture of making do. These
fragments form a landscape, both lived and imagined, that continues to
shape the designer’s understanding of what “America” means.
Through fabric, these details are gathered and distorted. The peeling paint
of a barn becomes a graphic motif. Sequins are cut from local beer cans and
plastic bottles, then stitched into a single garment, a tension between who
she was and who she has become.
This body of work is a kind of rebellion, strong and deliberate.
A reinterpretation of nostalgia into something sharp. A refusal to let
simplicity be mistaken for smallness. What was once functional becomes
expressive. What was discarded becomes valuable. The resulting Midwest
is both real and invented, shaped by distance, longing, and defiance.
Somewhere between memory and myth, a new landscape emerges.