2026 | Professional

MUSE Design Awards Silver Winner

Living Architecture

Entrant Company

Elena Zharkova

Category

Fashion Design - Haute Couture

Client's Name

Personal project

Country / Region

Russia

Architecture was my first language and fashion the second, and now I speak both at once. Trained as an architect, I live between two obsessions - buildings and clothes. Living Architecture is where these passions meet: a woman imagined as architecture quietly come to life, not frozen in stone but moving and breathing. The capsule is built around sculptural garments that translate classical architecture into cut and drape.
The first look is a short white dress with an architectural neckline and a cut-out framing the collarbones like a fragment of a broken statue. Elongated sleeves fall in controlled folds, echoing fluted columns and ceiling drapery. The pure white palette lets light carve out volume so shadows become part of the design. A small sculptural bag shaped as David’s eyes, 3D-printed and hand-finished to a matte plaster surface, completes the look and refers to my student years drawing such fragments in academic studios, now turned into a wearable architectural accent.
The second look is a white asymmetrical top with black trousers. The top embraces the body like a contemporary toga: one bare shoulder, a sculpted front and a cascading panel that slices through the vertical rhythm of the colonnade. The trousers ground the silhouette and turn the top into a moving architectural element that shifts with every step yet keeps its clarity.
The third look takes the story outdoors, where architecture meets the sky. A grey-blue gown falls from one shoulder in a long wave, like a piece of facade released down along the body. The open side reveals the inner volume of the structure, and among heavy bronze statues the living, fluid silhouette reinforces the idea of living architecture.
I work with dense, structured fabrics that hold their shape yet allow free movement, so the garments feel like soft marble on the body. Cuts remain clean, with hidden construction creating volume without visual heaviness. Living Architecture is for women who see clothing as a quiet statement of strength rather than a loud decoration: the body is not a passive object against an architectural backdrop but the architecture brought to life.

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