Twenty-two-year-old August Oster from the Amsterdam Fashion Academy developed his design as a poetic visualization of a total solar eclipse, a moment of perfect alignment between sun and moon. Inspired by Howard Teich’s book Solar Light, Lunar Light, which redefines archetypal gender energies, August Oster interprets the eclipse as a symbol of inner balance, strength, gentleness, rationality, and intuition, light and shadow in perfect harmony.
The outfit consists of two elements, a moon dress and a sun cape, which together embody the equilibrium of opposites. The moon dress features a floor-length, narrow silhouette with an invisible corset inside. It represents introspection, emotional depth, and stillness. The overlying sun cape, composed of multiple layers of silk organza in warm gradients from gold to copper to crimson, symbolizes energy, radiance, and movement.
As the wearer moves, transparency and opacity overlap like waves of light, creating a fluid interplay between revelation and concealment. August Oster works with velvet devoré, silk, coutil corset fabrics, Mylar, and organza. Craftsmanship and technology intertwine. Sublimation printing, heat-cutting, and heat-sealing techniques produce precise edges and controlled reflections. The designer describes light as his true material. It travels across the body, changing form, mood, and symbolism.
In the digital version of the design, created in CLO3D, August Oster simulates the sun cape as a flaming movement. Twenty translucent layers, animated through wind simulation, merge into a virtual explosion of color and energy. The physical prototype translates this dynamic into reality, where fabric, air, and body merge into a living eclipse.
“I wanted to show that wholeness does not arise by choosing one side, the sun or the moon, but by uniting both within oneself. For me, the eclipse is not a moment of darkness but of balance.”
