Impasse transforms creative block and uncertainty into tools for imagining new forms of creation, understanding moments of pause as fertile spaces for transformation.
Impasse
IED Madrid - Student: Javier Domínguez Pérez
Academic year
2025-2026
Impasse explores the state of creative blockage as a space for transformation rather than a final destination. Inspired by the idea of uprootedness and the feeling of being suspended between what has been left behind and what has yet to begin, the project turns uncertainty into the driving force of a creative process that understands fashion as a way of inhabiting the in-between.
The research engages with artistic movements such as Dadaism, Fluxus, Spatialism and Conceptual Art—currents that emerged in times of crisis to challenge established structures and propose new ways of seeing reality. The project draws on these references to reflect on emptiness, rupture and the loss of meaning as conditions from which new aesthetic languages can emerge.
This exploration takes shape in a collection where volume plays a central role. Silhouettes that expand or distort the space between body and garment, protrusions, displaced structures and deliberately unfinished finishes create a formal language that materialises the distance between identity and its representation. Three-dimensional modelling and experimentation with form become tools for designing intuitevely and giving shape to experiences that are difficult to define.
Impasse reflects on the value of moments of pause. A project that reclaims creative block, doubt and uncertainty as fertile spaces for making, suggesting that it is often within these intervals that the deepest transformations begin.
Javier Domínguez Pérez is a student on the Bachelor's Degree in Fashion Design.
