My name is Nathalia Olvera-Barajas, and I am an avant-garde designer based in NYC. I am a senior in the Apparel Design and Production program at Colorado State University, and I recently moved to NYC to pursue my dreams of becoming a costume designer. My work is dominantly inspired by my thought processing of philosophies or ideologies of life. Whatever is happening in my life or whatever the lesson I may be learning is, I try to think of ways to visually represent it. This typically means creating oddly shaped, massive, colorful garments that aim to blur the silhouette of the human body and represent a shape of a thought. Creating these garments is my way of making peace with my thoughts. One of my goals as a designer is to search for sustainable ways to produce large garments. Ways I've been able to achieve a more sustainable design process is by upcycling and reusing fabric scraps as filling for shapes and using old materials laying around my house to build structural foundations for off-the-body-pieces. I aim to create one-of-one pieces for customers, and building a business model in which dresses can only be rented instead of purchased. By doing this, I can reuse the materials from one project for another.