MCAST Designers:
Mikaela Vella
Designer: Mikaela Vella is a young creative with a background in theatre, where her passion for storytelling led to costume design. Inspired by everyday life, she later transitioned into fashion design, using it as a broader platform to experiment, develop her style, and express her creativity through wearable narratives.
Collection: This collection reflects resilience, where the pearl’s journey mirrors Maltese identity. From a grain of sand that works and strives, beauty forms. Like Malta’s past, it reveals grinta, ending in a jewel and a proud celebration of what is ours.
Maria Pia Falzon
Designer: The designer approaches fashion through an editorial lens, using observation and emotion to shape expressive narratives. Designs balance structure with unconventional silhouettes, drawing inspiration from details, human fragility, and personal experiences. Through familiar yet unexpected garments, the work evokes emotion, creating a sense of intimacy, curiosity, and connection.
Collection: When words fail explores anxiety through garments inspired by the layered fragility of a dissected tomato. Structured forms gradually unravel into twisted silhouettes, reflecting fractured thoughts and unspoken words. Soft tones clash with sudden contrasts, while sheer fabrics reveal vulnerability, transforming silent inner turmoil into a visible, emotional expression of the mind.
Matthias Psaila
Designer: A 23-year-old Maltese fashion designer, I began my studies in 2021 after completing my A-levels in marketing. My design approach reinterprets classic silhouettes and tailoring, infusing them with an edgy, contemporary aesthetic that challenges tradition while maintaining refinement, creating pieces that balance timeless structure with bold, modern expression.
Collection: The collection explores the masks individuals adhere to, to conceal their authentic identities, manifesting as dominant, authoritative personas. Drawing inspiration from burlesque performance aesthetics and the clandestine fetish club culture of Weimar-era Berlin, the work examines power, identity, and performative self-expression within historical and subcultural contexts.
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