Shia Monji — BFA Fashion Design 2026

Phygital

Bio

BFA AWARD: Adaptive Fashion Designer of the Year

Shia Monji is a fashion designer whose work gently weaves together the body, memory, and surrounding environment. Her practice explores how garments can hold space rather than impose form, allowing the wearer to move, breathe, and exist freely within them. Drawn to the quiet beauty of everyday life, unchanged urban scenes, and the subtle sorrow of landscapes altered by nature and urban development, her designs carry a sense of stillness and emotional depth. Influenced by the revival of traditional Japanese methods alongside contemporary approaches, she works with careful construction and tactile materials that prioritize comfort and sensitivity. Through her garments, she seeks to create a sense of belonging and quiet healing, offering clothing as a place one can return to.

Phone number @shiam0000nji

Petrified Memory

This collection gives weight to specific memory and moment with my grandfather, transforming fleeting recollections into tangible form. By fixing memory into garments, clothing becomes an archive that preserves moments that might otherwise dissolve with time. My hometown may one day drift into a distant, mist-covered landscape, yet it remains within me as a place to return to. Memory is record. Through the act of making, it petrifies into material.

This work is also shaped by my experience of cancer within my family and myself. Chronic illness extends beyond the hospital into daily life, where medical garments and visible openings can reinforce the identity of being a patient. Rather than emphasizing medical visibility, I focus on preserving dignity. I design garments that maintain pride and psychological strength while quietly accommodating medical realities. Beneath the surface, each piece functions as a wearable archive where memory, identity, and presence endure.