‘The Great Red Dragon’ began as a fixation. Not on clothing, but on a film. Manhunter, the 1986 psychological crime thriller directed by Michael Mann, became something I returned to obsessively while building this collection. It was not just the story, but the atmosphere, the stillness before the violence, the stark interiors, the eerie quiet. It is a film about pursuit, but more than that, it is about the cost of looking too closely. About the moment when perception turns against you.

The character of Will Graham, a man capable of stepping into the minds of killers, became a mirror. His sensitivity becomes his weakness. The closer he gets to what he is chasing, the more distorted his own reflection becomes. He is not unraveling dramatically. He is unraveling in silence. I recognized that state, the feeling of being highly functional while completely not fine. This collection comes from that place.

I imagined each look as something worn by someone slipping out of a ward, undetected. Not escaping in chaos, but in ritual. Clean lines. Heavy restraint. A mental state disguised as control. The tailoring is severe, held tightly in place, almost clinical. But look closer, and there is distortion. Pleats pulling too hard. Closures misaligned. Fabrics that suggest structure, but move like denial. The palette is locked to harsh contrasts, stark whites, sterile light greys, and deep industrial tones, then blood red and a deep void black made of glass beads. Everything designed to look calm, but feel wrong. It is a uniform for dissociation. For someone trying to pass as stable.

That tension reaches its peak in the final look; a wedding gown, restrained in shape but unraveled in implication. It laces tightly at the back, corseted, cold, until the structure splits just below the waist. Where a bustle would traditionally rest, the fabric opens. A clean, draped slit reveals the full curve of the ass, framed precisely, without apology or embellishment. It is a deliberate exposure. Not flirtation, but a quiet rupture. A reference, in part, to The Silence of the Lambs, not just the infamous imagery, but the psychology behind it. The transformation. The cost of wanting to be seen.

This collection is not about elegance. It is about constraint. A study in psychological containment, and the moment that containment fails. The garments are built to hold everything in. And still, something leaks out; a piece of spine ripped out and bloodied.

Academic stress informed the emotional temperature of this work. Not spoken directly, but present in the silence. These are not costumes, they are conditions. They are the shapes worn by people who are trying to stay inside themselves, but know they are slipping. It is not a cry for help. It is something quieter. A sterilized escape. Clean, composed, and completely unwell.