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The Gentle Frame: archive
Collection:CSM Museum & Study Collection
Date: 2025
Artist: Karma Casto
Dimensions:
Wooden Box: 120 × 200 mm (12 × 20 cm)
Photographs: 175 × 115 mm (17.5 × 11.5 cm)
Medium: Wooden box, Hahnemühle bamboo paper, paper stock
Object number: FA.2026.29.CC.1-9
Description1. printed poem
2. photograph
3. photograph
4. photograph
5. photograph
6. photograph
7. press release
8. written profile
9. research file
The Gentle Frame is the title of Hannah Smith's CSM BA Womenswear final collection.This body of work was made by CSM BA Fashion Journalism second year student, Karma Casto, as part of her collaboration with CSM BA Womenswear final year student, Hannah Smith, for the shadowing project.
Description from the maker:
I created The Gentle Frame as a response to Hannah Smith’s graduate collection, which explores disability-led design, medical aids as extensions of the body, and the delicate tension between restriction and support. After speaking with Hannah and model Alice Dyer, I became interested in how the collection could live beyond the short-lived, inaccessible moment on the runway.
Hannah told me that fashion shows can be limiting in how they communicate a concept, and that not everyone can experience them in person. I wanted to answer that by fossilising the collection in another form: a photographic series housed inside a physical box. The object functions like a reliquary, jewellery case or locked cabinet — protective, romantic, and slightly withholding. Its gate-like panels reference the wrought iron motif running through Hannah’s work, where structures associated with defence and exclusion are softened into something more vulnerable.
The photographs were made in the style of 19th-century portrait paintings, using soft directional lighting, and carefully arranged props, including silverware and dried flowers. I wanted the models to be cradled in all their beauty and divinity within the image, rather than simply snapped-up for a look book shot. The garments, bodies, chairs, and crutches all share the same visual language: one of dignity, stillness, softness and structure.
For me, this work is about preserving not only the garments, but the conversations and lived experiences that gave them meaning.
2. photograph
3. photograph
4. photograph
5. photograph
6. photograph
7. press release
8. written profile
9. research file
The Gentle Frame is the title of Hannah Smith's CSM BA Womenswear final collection.This body of work was made by CSM BA Fashion Journalism second year student, Karma Casto, as part of her collaboration with CSM BA Womenswear final year student, Hannah Smith, for the shadowing project.
Description from the maker:
I created The Gentle Frame as a response to Hannah Smith’s graduate collection, which explores disability-led design, medical aids as extensions of the body, and the delicate tension between restriction and support. After speaking with Hannah and model Alice Dyer, I became interested in how the collection could live beyond the short-lived, inaccessible moment on the runway.
Hannah told me that fashion shows can be limiting in how they communicate a concept, and that not everyone can experience them in person. I wanted to answer that by fossilising the collection in another form: a photographic series housed inside a physical box. The object functions like a reliquary, jewellery case or locked cabinet — protective, romantic, and slightly withholding. Its gate-like panels reference the wrought iron motif running through Hannah’s work, where structures associated with defence and exclusion are softened into something more vulnerable.
The photographs were made in the style of 19th-century portrait paintings, using soft directional lighting, and carefully arranged props, including silverware and dried flowers. I wanted the models to be cradled in all their beauty and divinity within the image, rather than simply snapped-up for a look book shot. The garments, bodies, chairs, and crutches all share the same visual language: one of dignity, stillness, softness and structure.
For me, this work is about preserving not only the garments, but the conversations and lived experiences that gave them meaning.