Yanitsa Krasteva
Fashion Design HBO Bachelor
Wdka Willem De Kooning Academy
Graduates: 2026
Specialisms: Apparel / Fashion Product Development / Womenswear
My location: Rotterdam, Netherlands
Yanitsa Krasteva
First Name: Yanitsa
Last Name: Krasteva
University / College: Wdka Willem De Kooning Academy
Course / Program: Fashion Design HBO Bachelor
Graduates: 2026
Specialisms: Apparel / Fashion Product Development / Womenswear
My Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands
About
Fashion, RTW
Being a graduating student, I’ve been feeling quite nostalgic for my years at university, and all the memories I have made, though if you ask me for a specific situation that has stayed with me, my favourite moment, what I remember the most, what I will never forget, it would take time for me to answer and even then, I could not guarantee it would be accurate This difficulty has inspired my collection to serve as an outlet where I could take all of that energy and emotions. My collection is called ‘Longing for something that’s never been’, because we sometimes tend to miss moments or even periods of our lives, feeling nostalgic, bittersweet, although we can struggle recalling the exact details. Memory fades and changes over time, and it's being manipulated by different situations and factors but also by the mind itself that edits and distorts. What I wanted to do with this collection was to recreate that atmosphere. Not to illustrate memory directly because when people hear the words nostalgia or memory, they have very straightforward associations. I wanted something more metaphorical, more fragmented, more twisted. Exactly how memory actually behaves, not how we romanticise it. The choice to make this a ready-to-wear collection was deliberate. I wanted the concept to live in wearable, accessible garments , because memory is not an abstract experience. It is something every person carries in their body every day. Across the collection as a whole, memory loss is visible in the transformation from look to look. Each garment shares elements with the others, the same silhouette logic, the same colour register, the same structural gestures but no two are identical. This mirrors how memory actually behaves over time. We don't recall something once and store it unchanged. We recall it repeatedly, and each time it shifts slightly. This collection is not a single memory. It is the same memory, recalled five times.
Competitions
