Project Statement

I am tracing a line between presence and absence.
Between a body remembered and a body mourned.
Between the living, and the ones we carry inside us.
My name is Melissa Rosales, and this work is a ritual of memory. A grieving. A release.

My grandmother’s life was taken away on the same day I was born – eight years apart. In my hometown, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
This coincidence—this wound—has shaped how I make.
Through materiality, I try to understand what remains when someone leaves.
I ask: Can a garment hold a soul? Can a thread carry love across generations?
Can fashion become more than fashion—can it become a vessel for healing? Is rebirth transformation?

In this collection, I work with satin-faced organza kindly gifted by the Materials for the Arts, hair, glass, PVC, and concrete.
These materials were chosen for what they reveal—and what they obscure.
Satin-faced organza allows the body to be seen, but never fully.
Hair becomes a relic. PVC traps memory like a fossil.
The weight of 21 grams—a mythic measure of the soul—is carried in garments worn by two bodies, connected by a single thread.

I build sculptures that become garments.
I build garments that become stages.
Each look represents an act: memory, mourning, healing, and hope.

This is not only about fashion.
It is an altar.
A conversation with the ones I’ve never met, but who shaped me.
It is about what we inherit—not just genetically, but emotionally, spiritually.
It is about using the language of the body to ask: what is left behind?
And how do we carry it forward?

Research

My maternal grandmother and great-grandmother

Letters that my mother wrote to her grandmother when she was a little kid

Object iterations

what happens to a garment when its wearer is no longer with us?

the bed is where a lot of mourning occurs / a needle countours
someone’s trace
with white thread /
is it archiving?
is it an attempt at
mourning repair? — the bed is where a lot of mourning occurs / a needle countours someone’s trace with white thread / is it archiving? is it an attempt at mourning repair?

two mirrors
facing against
each other
one single soul
a major force
holding them
together — two mirrors facing against each other one single soul a major force holding them together

the glass is
the body
the reflection is
the soul
two bodies
become one — the glass is the body the reflection is the soul two bodies become one

Materiality exploration

Collection 2 – Parsons MFA Design Studio 2 : Heritage

Process

Look 1

Crushed and silk fused satin faced organza collected from the MFTA, stainless steel underwire, pvc, glass, and concrete

Look 2

Satin faced organza, aluminum, stainless steel underwire, sheer hook and eye tape, and synthetic hair

Look 3

Satin faced organza, aluminum, stainless steel underwire, sheer hook and eye tape, and pvc

Projected: A lock of my mother’s hair and printed acetate paper with scans of my mother’s letters to her grandmother when she was a little kid