“Be the person you needed when you were younger,” says Kelsey Ann Kasom. Growing up in rural Columbus, Michigan, Kelsey had an incredibly strict, rural upbringing that forced her to grow up quickly, turning to art as a means of total escape. In place of traditional art supplies, Kelsey would use anything she could find, from tree sap to coal, expressing herself through the abstract. At 19, she left her family behind to study for a BFA in Fashion Design at Columbia College Chicago, specialising in Fashion Design. Becoming an artist was the one thing that made Kelsey feel that she could still be a child. “I’m not upset with my childhood, because I know it shaped me as a designer,” she says. During her BFA, Kelsey learned the couture-like technique that sets her work apart. Subsequently, she went on to study Costume Design for Film & Television at Hollywood’s Raleigh Studios, before beginning her Graduate Diploma at CSM.
Kelsey considers herself to be made of two parts: inner child and her creative genius. Her inner child represents the unlived life – the independent, headstrong, logical girl of the past. Her creative genius is just that – empathetic, imaginative, passionate, free and fearless. “I wanted to take that and magnify it within my body of work to represent these two people and, when in harmony, what they can do,” she says. Her cocoon-like armour evokes strength through vulnerability. Near-transparent silks are transformed into fantastical structures, supported by boning, juxtaposing delicacy with strength. Kelsey approached her Graduate Diploma collection from both sides of her personality, letting the creative genius free within the precise, often obsessive way that the inner child creates. This deeply introspective collection represents an amalgam of the two. “My work has always been a way for me to communicate,” she says. “That has transcended my life and that’s why I can totally immerse myself in it.”
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