Before the Words Disappear

Before the Words Disappear is a fashion collection inspired by my late grandfather and his experience with Alzheimer’s disease. At the center of the project is his diary—a deeply personal record that changed as his memory declined. What began as coherent words gradually became scattered numbers, fragmented marks, and eventually, almost nothing.

Watching this transformation made me think about what it means to lose someone gradually. Alzheimer’s does not create a single moment of farewell; instead, memories, language, habits, and pieces of identity disappear little by little. I translated this process into clothing, using fragmentation, reconstruction, layering, and fading visual elements to capture the instability of memory.

Yet I did not want the collection to exist only in sadness. My memories of my grandfather are also warm, colorful, intimate, and sometimes playful. Bright colors, flowers, handmade details, and familiar objects appear alongside disrupted silhouettes and traces of disappearance. These contrasts reflect the complicated experience of remembering someone: grief and affection, absence and presence, deterioration and beauty can exist at the same time.

The collection ultimately became my own way of saying goodbye. By transforming fragments of my grandfather’s life into something physical, I wanted to preserve what Alzheimer’s was gradually taking away.

Before the Words Disappear is not only about losing memory, but about our desire to hold onto the traces a person leaves behind—and to give those traces a new life before they disappear.