The collaboration with M0D44 took me 5 months. Around 700 working hours.
It was an interesting and very extensive project, through which I grew significantly.
That’s why I’d like to walk through the details and talk about the processes, as it’s not always clear from the photos how and why certain things were done.
My part of the work involved detail processing — patchwork, embroidery, distressing, mending, darning, etc. Before I was invited to work on this collaboration, I already had some ideas in this direction, and I applied them to the base model of M0D44.
Firstly, I’ll share the presentation with the sketches that I proposed to Anton, the designer and co-owner of the brand.
MAIN ELEMENT
The main element of the entire collection was meant to be patchwork.
For the jackets and pants alone, M0D provided me with about 25 kg of used clothing. We dismantled it, washed it, cut it into hundreds of rectangular pieces, and reassembled them into large panels. The reverse sides of the panels were adhered with backing fabric using a temporary adhesive spray and then stitched multiple times using the sashiko technique, following a specific algorithm.
I calculated that for the jackets and pants, we made about 35 square meters of patchwork — enough to cover the entire floor of the workshop.
Sashiko
Since I fell in love with tailoring thanks to Japanese craftsmen, I’ve been practicing sashiko from the very beginning. I was fascinated by the white stitches on dark blue fabric and their cultural and historical significance. Now, I see sashiko as one of the tools I can use to create an artistic composition.
Sashiko is essentially a simple hand-stitching technique of "running stitches." All you need is thick thread and a needle. This method was traditionally used in Japan to mend or decorate clothing.
The amount of embroidery we wanted to achieve for our collection was impossible to do by hand, so I bought a Japanese machine that imitates sashiko. It's an amazing tool, but not a magic wand. Even with it, quilting all the fabric for the collection took several hundred hours, and the seams alone used 15,000 meters of heavy cotton thread. Nevertheless, I’m happy with the result.
Orange Bags and Hats
For these models, we used vintage hiking backpacks made in 1991-1993 by the Kharkiv Leather and Sporting Goods Factory. Notably, we got absolutely deadstock items—new, unused, and carefully preserved for thirty years.
The way they were made gives some insight into the material shortages of the early '90s. The first thing you notice is that they were sewn with a mix of colorful thread and fishing line.
But their fabric is a treasure—coarse woven cotton in a citrus color, with a water-repellent finish. The fabric has characteristic fiber thickness variations, irregularities, and uneven weaving, typical of vintage fabrics and rare in new ones. Each backpack's shade differs slightly, which resulted in a monochrome patchwork.
Airbags
I usually don't work with synthetic materials, but the team wanted to, so I gave it a try. Although airbags are an interesting material, they are very difficult to work with. Most of them had been used, many after accidents, leaving stains of blood, dirt, and rust that didn’t come out after washing.
Out of about 50 airbags, I selected 20 that were usable, resulting in just one jacket and one bag.
Plus, almost all of them are circular in shape with a round hole in the center, making it difficult to cut out large pieces. Many unusable scraps remained, and there wasn’t much to work with.
So we decided to stop this part after the first samples.
In total, the capsule included two types of jackets, two types of pants, two types of bags and panams, hoodies and embroidered T-shirts.
