Photography possesses a unique quality among the mediums. More than many modes of creation, a photo gives a viewer a look at what an artist literally sees. Where a painting can give insight into a vision, and a song can capture powerful emotions, a photograph is a moment of real life, an undeniable reflection of the world we currently live in. Thus, it made sense for Macy Grimshaw, though a fashion designer, to photograph since she was a child, and that her latest collection have an accompanying short film.

The collection is built upon photography as its foundation. Each of the nine looks stems from a picture Grimshaw captured herself, memories of small details. These details include a pigeon feather in a cracked sidewalk, cigarettes squished into concrete, a graffitied window shutter, or a denim jacket blown into a fence, “things most people walk past without seeing,” Grimshaw noted in a release.

The film, titled “M,” is both a tasteful presentation of Grimshaw’s work and a creative reinterpretation of the actual events that led to the looks being made. Each scene displays a time and place where an element of the collection began. The setting is Hackney, a location that holds a particular importance to Grimshaw.

“Hackney is where my ideas begin,” she said. “From the window of my flat, I’d watch a busy Hackney street every day: people, cars, dogs, birds, buildings. Stare long enough, and I start building an extravagant scenario around it. Looks often come to me as mini film sequences rather than something stationary, so presenting them on film is an invitation into how I see the world.”

In partnership with Purple Button Productions, the team built a set inspired by Grimshaw’s photographs. In a local flower shop and on the street beside it, the film’s locale serves as a grounding factor, a great anchor to reality. Supplementing this, the collection interpolates chainlink into pants and hair into headwear, twisting the real with the real, creating an alien perspective on the most terrestrial of items.

Among the flurry of inspiration that Grimshaw seems to be able to pull from the most unlikely of places is an experience she had watching her grandmother live with Alzheimers. Naturally, such an experience heightens one’s appreciation of memory. Much like her intentionality in centering apparently forgettable objects and events, Grimshaw weaves memory into both the content and form of her work. Though her appreciation of memory may be a natural extension of her lived experience, her ability to turn such an appreciation into a masterfully executed work of art is far from common.

Talking about life with her grandmother, Grimshaw said, “It has taught me that clothing can hold memory in the way everyday objects do, and that it can show how fragile memory is.” For every garment Grimshaw designs, there is a memory attached to it, and she garners such material inspiration from clearly honest places. “We overlook the objects we use daily because we can, yet they help us form memories, and we build unacknowledged attachments to some of them.”