Ethan Bergersen

When Ethan Bergersen first started experimenting with fashion design, he had only a vague understanding of what fashion was about.

“I used to make prom dresses. It was satin pink, it was tulle — that was my idea of fashion at the time,” he says. 

Now an honours student in the UTS Bachelor of Design in Fashion and Textiles, Ethan is on a completely different path. His final collection is an exploration of queer performance and club culture, depicted as an explosion of materiality and elevated couture techniques. 

“All my work is connected to queer culture — the idea of exploring what a body can be and breaking away from social norms. I started my final collection by looking at human and animal hybrids, reading books like Frankenstein and thinking about the human body and what those hybrids might look like in a fashion context,” he says. 

“From there, I started draping and thinking about how we can change the human body through fashion and experimenting with using fabric to restrict and extend the body. For the textiles, I was really inspired by animal skins like scales and leather, but I wanted to be able to use the beauty of animals in a way that was ethical.”  

Transforming natural fabrics 

The end result is a 6-look collection made almost entirely of Australian wool that has been presented at the UTS Fashion & Textiles Honours 2024 Graduate Showcase. Thanks to a sponsorship from the Australian Wool Education Trust, one of numerous fashion sponsorships that the honours cohort can apply for, Ethan received $2,000 to spend on wool products for his final project. He then used them to create a series of animal-skin textiles that drew on all the learning from his UTS degree.

“I dyed the wool and melted recycled plastic on top to make my own leather, which gave me so much control over the colour and pattern, and I made an ethical fur, which I created from wool yarn that I crocheted together, brushed out and straightened,” he says. 

Ethan also used more than 30,000 semi-precious gemstones to create a fish-scale look that adds weight, texture and layers to some of his pieces. The work is light years away from his pink tulle beginnings and confirmation that his decision to study at UTS was the right one. 

Originally from Perth, when he was looking for options for university, Ethan found himself drawn to the work of UTS graduates who shared their post-UTS success online. 

I followed lots of graduates from UTS on Instagram and I saw that a lot of them went on to do really cool things. And then I was able to organise to come over here and view the uni — when I saw the facilities, I was pretty sold.

Having the whole textile room, all the knitting machines, being able to do your own natural dyes, I think UTS is pretty much the only uni in Australia to have all those facilities. That was definitely a big selling point for me.

Where theory and practice collide 

Those facilities were central to Ethan’s UTS experience; so too was the degree’s emphasis on combining design history and theory with hands-on practice. Students were encouraged to research deeply and engage with experimental and creative processes before committing to a design idea. 

These included a body mapping subject where students worked directly onto the human body, rather than drawing out their ideas first, and a knitting elective where they learnt about how to manipulate wool to create textiles beyond traditional knitwear. 

For Ethan, these experiences were key to undoing his previous conceptions of fashion “where you just sit, draw a look and make it” and helping him understand how to generate new ideas that took his work to the cutting edge.

With the Graduate Showcase having come to a close, Ethan sent his final collection down the runway in front of an audience of fashion industry experts.

But while the showcase symbolised the end of his time at UTS, it was truly a new beginning: after graduation, he has grand plans to get some industry experience under his belt before postgraduate study beckons.

You can view more of Ethan's work on his Instagram here.