Manipulated materials - Meet Ana Cristina Codreanu

Ana Cristina Codreanu is a fashion designer at AMFI. Currently she is joining the Hypercraft minor, and, in her project, she creates a future scenario of people living on Mars. Where she creates exploration gear for humans to go on mars with. Where she focuses on manipulating materials in real life and tries to make a digital twin of them. The project for this minor is called ‘’homecoming 2070’’.

Personal Profile

Name: Ana Cristina Codreanu

Direction within AMFI: Design, Hypercraft (minor)

Doer/thinker: “More of a doer but by first I always start by thinking a little but I start doing quite fast. I don’t stand at the thinking stage too much.”

Party personality: “I am that Bubbly friend, I tend to talk to everybody and I want to make sure everybody has a good time.”

Favorite party outfit: “Anything with lace! I dress to make myself look good because I believe when I look good I feel good. I think that is the best comfort an outfit could give you. I do that by emphasizing nice parts of my body in my party outfit.”

What is your Hypercraft project about?

“I created this project with my friend Joshua. We made a future scenario of people living on Mars. We took the idea of exploring other planets, because we are destroying this one so badly. In the future it might be a necessity to move to another planet. We designed exploration gear for humans to explore the planet Mars with. My main focus was on materials. I am a very handcrafted person. I like doing embroidery and working with textiles. In other words, I manipulated materials in real life and tried to digitize them. To give this them a digital twin.”

Work: Ana Cristina Codreanu

As a Hypercraft student, how do you see yourself in the spotlight?

“I see myself as a hybrid designer. I like to use 3D tools to speed up my 2D process. I am very much an analog person. I like experimenting a lot with embroideries and handcraft as I said. But what I like about 3D is the flexibility of speeding up the whole process, creating less waste and making it much faster and accurate.”

What do you think needs to change in the creative industry?

“I think it will be good for the industry to slow down. To create only when it is relevant and when there is a need to create or reuse what is already out there. In that way the creations will have more of a personal value and meaning to people. There must be somebody out there looking for it and not created only for the sake of putting another garment out there because there is already enough!”

How can you contribute to this change?

“I am trying to do this through my collections as I did for hypercraft. I used discarded items, for example I cut little swatches of already existing items from the second hand store or from the thrift store or from the pieces of fabric from a sleeping bag for example and thereafter I created a whole garment out of it. And making them beautiful and personal due embroideries or manipulating the fabric to give it a new life.”

What is your definition of a party dress?

“I think it has to make you feel empowered and have a personal connection to you. For me I am attracted to everything that is very detailed. That is why I am attracted to lace because I know how much work there goes into that to make it such a beautiful detail.”

‘’ There must be somebody out there looking for it.’’