Serbian designer Maria Chany, known for subversive, sustainable designs, will present her new Elysium Collection at Berlin Fashion Week 2025.
In July of last year, Maria Chany’s SS25 collection, Terraforming, debuted at Berlin Fashion Week. That collection, and its subsequent presentation at events like Art Week in Prague and Fashion Week in Milan, amassed international curiosity about the brand. This year’s Elysium collection is expected to build on that success and continue the brand’s narrative.
The upcoming show in February is to take place at Berlin Recycling, a waste management facility. Chany’s choice of venue is one overt example of this collection’s purpose: sustainability as rebirth. More specifically, sustainability as a means to return our world to its natural state of nirvana.
Previous collections New World and Terraforming questioned the potential of having to leave this world behind for a new, alien home somewhere else in the universe. Key themes included the cosmos, alien bodies, aspirations of unity, and abandoning a corrupt world.
No longer lost in space, the brand comes back to Earth for a visit home. Making use of the rubble left behind, Chany constructs industrial, yet sleek garments using recycled materials. The name of this year’s collection, Elysium, comes from a Greek word meaning a Utopia of transformation and joy. The result is a suggestion to consumers and the industry that to achieve Elysium here requires innovation and commitment to sustainability. It’s not so easy to leave the Earth behind, but to stay calls for major change.
While Greek heroes would have been granted passage into Elysium, Chany offers that same rebirth to the discarded materials– resurrecting them into wearable art. But the collection’s objective goes further than new life for the reclaimed rubber, bio-materials derived from nuts, and deadstock fabrics.
More broadly, it is a hopeful call to action to the entire fashion industry– a machine bolstered by over-consumption and wasteful practices– for new practices to preserve our world and thus ourselves. Chany’s work proves that fashion is undeniably cyclical in more ways that one. Her brand leads by example, guiding the industry as recycled materials become the standard.
Maria Chany’s collection is innovative and hopeful this season. Maybe Elysium doesn’t have to be some place far out in space– it can be the future.
Follow Maria Chany on Instagram for previous collections and upcoming projects.
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