folk

I was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, but my parents moved us to the United States in 2003.

Travelling was too expensive, so we never visited home. My brother and I started to lose the language, and in general we felt entirely disconnected from where we came from. At the same time, I never felt quite American enough.

In college, I met a lot of people with similar experiences who encouraged me to explore and build a relationship with my culture. They showed me that I could find something beautiful and unique in the middle.

This is a collection of pieces that try to connect the dots.

This headdress is the first piece I made exploring Bulgarian folk costume traditions.

It is heavily inspired by bridal headdresses, which are all unique and vary by region, but often feature coins, flowers, and pom poms.

The headpiece was built using cereal boxes and wire fencing as the base.

I wanted the coins to be real, so I used pennies and oxidized some of them to create a gradient effect.

In this iteration, I filled it with dried flowers. This was a collection of bouquets I received from friends and family in 2022.

For opening and closing nights, graduation, or just because.