Umbra understands transformation as the natural state of identity, exploring the relationship between body, material and thought through the creative process.
Umbra
IED Madrid - Student: Claudia Lastres Feres
Academic year
2025-2026
Umbra uses the shadow as the guiding thread of a research project that understands fashion as a space where body, material and thought evolve simultaneously. Rther than associating it with absence, the shadow becomes a fertile territoy from which to embrace uncertainty, contradiction and change.
Through a journey that connects philosophy, neuroscience, art and design, the project challenges traditional notions of identity, presenting it as a constantly evolving reality shaped by experience, memory and time. Metamorphosis is no longer understood as a rupture, but as the natural condition of life itself, where every fracture opens the possibility for new ways of existing and creating.
This approach is translated into the creative process through a methodology in which material comes before drawing. Toiles, volume studies and textile experimentation become research tools through which the body engages with gravity, movement and space, allowing form to emerge intuitively before being translated into pattern.
Umbra proposes a way of thinking about design through continuous transformation. A project that celebrates imperfection, gesture and time as creative values, inviting us to understand that, like a shadow, identity never remains still—it shifts, adapts and finds its truest form of permanence through change.
Claudia Lastres Feres is a student on the Bachelor's Degree in Fashion Design.
