By Jessica Ye (Jessica Yap)
Masks, distorted silhouettes, a dress that looks as though it has been pulled apart and put back together again.
There is something deliberately unsettling about Don Sebastian Mario’s Shattered Identity, but it is also what makes the collection hard to scroll past. Presented in Timișoara, Romania, in July 2025, the collection has a strong visual identity that immediately made me want to know more about the designer behind it.
Mario studied BA Fashion at West University of Timișoara before spending a semester in Shanghai and moving to London to continue his studies at Central Saint Martins. He is now entering his second year of the MA Fashion course, with Shattered Identity marking an early chapter in a practice that is already looking beyond simply making clothes.
There is plenty to unpack in the collection, from the way its silhouettes transform the body to the references that helped shape Mario’s relationship with fashion. But rather than trying to explain it all from the outside, I wanted to hear how he saw it himself.
So I asked him.
What follows is a conversation about Shattered Identity, the making of the collection, the ideas behind its more unsettling moments, the designers who influenced him and where he wants to take his work next.
Couture Troopers: You describe Shattered Identity as coming from both personal and collective experiences. Before we get into the clothes, what made you want to explore this idea?
Don Sebastian Mario: There were a lot of expectations placed on me throughout my life, from my family, society and from myself, alongside personal struggles and difficult periods that shaped the way I saw myself and the world around me. As I grew older, I realised these experiences were not unique to me. I started recognising similar struggles in people around me and in stories I encountered online, which made me think about trauma as something much more collective.
For me, fashion became a way of processing those experiences and turning them into something constructive. Instead of letting them become destructive, I wanted to make something out of them, almost like turning a wound into a flower. It might be a strange or unsettling flower to someone else, but for me, creating it became a way of healing, growing and letting go.
That was the starting point for Shattered Identity. I wanted my BA collection to be something significant and deeply connected to my own experiences, while also speaking to something that many other people could recognise in themselves.
Couture Troopers: The collection asks what happens when the desire to belong becomes stronger than the ability to remain yourself. Have you experienced a point where you felt you were changing yourself to fit into someone else’s expectations?
Don Sebastian Mario: Yes. At one point, my father had already imagined a life for me, and when he told me what that life was supposed to look like, what I should do and how I should act, I realised that it could never truly be mine.
For a while, I tried to fit myself into that version of who I was expected to be, and it was a very difficult period for me.
I experienced something similar at university, where I sometimes felt the need to fit in and be more like the people around me. Eventually, I understood that constantly changing yourself for other people’s expectations doesn’t make you belong. It makes you lose yourself.
I don’t think you can satisfy everyone, and I learned that real change has to come from within. If it is forced, it will never truly belong to you.
Couture Troopers: Was there a particular experience that made you realise how deeply judgement and rejection can affect someone’s sense of identity?
Don Sebastian Mario: I think my experience as a queer person has shaped a lot of how I understand identity, judgement and rejection. I’ve seen how quickly people can judge or reject someone simply because they are different from what they consider acceptable, and how deeply that can affect a person’s sense of self.
What stayed with me is how easily difference becomes a reason for someone to feel isolated or as though something is wrong with them. We are all different in some way, so I find it disturbing that people can feel entitled to impose their beliefs onto someone else’s identity.
That idea became an important part of Shattered Identity: what happens when someone else’s judgement is repeated so often that it starts to destroy the way you see yourself.
Couture Troopers: There is a fascination with darkness, death and decay throughout your work. What is it about these things that attracts you?
Don Sebastian Mario: I think I’m drawn to darkness and decay because they are things people often overlook or reject. We naturally gravitate towards what is beautiful, lively and comfortable, but I find that the things we avoid can be just as beautiful and can teach us something about life.
I’ve experienced difficult things myself, and looking back, I don’t only see the sadness in them. I see how they shaped me, made me stronger and helped me understand myself. I also found that there is something beautiful about finding people who appreciate these darker things with you, without judging you for them.
There is also something very human about death and decay. Everything eventually comes to an end, and I think being confronted with that can actually make you appreciate life more.
Couture Troopers: Alexander McQueen was an important reference for you. What did you take from his work, and what did you eventually have to leave behind?
Don Sebastian Mario: Alexander McQueen was actually my awakening to fashion. When I first discovered his work, I was completely captivated by his passion, rebelliousness and the way he turned fashion into an experience rather than simply clothing.
The Horn of Plenty was particularly important for my collection. I was fascinated by how he could take something as discarded and ugly as rubbish and transform it into something incredibly beautiful and powerful.
But I also had to learn to leave McQueen behind. For a long time, I was so inspired by him and felt so connected to his aesthetic that I almost wanted to become him. Eventually, I realised that would contradict everything Shattered Identity was about.
There will only ever be one Alexander McQueen, just as there is only one me. I could take what awakened something in me, but I had to transform it into my own language.
Couture Troopers: How did you translate something as invisible as losing your identity into something physical?
Don Sebastian Mario: For me, it was about turning something internal into something visible, taking a feeling of rupture, pain and losing yourself and putting it onto the body.
I imagined Shattered Identity almost like being trapped inside a nightmare, where what is happening psychologically becomes physically visible.
For example, the red cut-out dress is constructed from many pieces that can never truly fit together. I imagined them like the fragments of a shattered identity. You can try to rebuild yourself, but the pieces will never return to exactly what they were.
The masks and makeup push that transformation further. Some characters become so lost or degraded that their identity almost disappears completely. They stop looking like themselves and start becoming something else, almost a monster.
For me, that was the physical manifestation of what happens when you lose your sense of who you are.
Couture Troopers: You mentioned that the reaction to the runway was quite strong. What went through your mind when you saw people leaving?
Don Sebastian Mario: I honestly didn’t know how people would react because it was my first collection, so seeing it on the runway was quite shocking even for me. Once I saw the models with the makeup, hair and the way they moved, the whole atmosphere became much more intense than I had imagined.
When I saw people leaving, I actually laughed. I liked the reaction because it showed me that the collection had genuinely affected people.
I want my work to evoke emotions, whether they are positive, uncomfortable or even frightening. I don’t expect everyone to like what I do, and honestly, I wouldn’t want that.
For me, there is something powerful about making something people remember. Someone might leave a show because they find it disturbing, but years later they might still remember that show. I would much rather create something that stays in someone’s mind than make something simply because I think other people will like it.
The reaction also surprised me in the opposite way, because I received a lot of support and realised that there were many people who connected with the collection and understood what I was trying to do.
Couture Troopers: Is there a particular look that feels closest to you personally?
Don Sebastian Mario: Look two is probably the closest to me personally. It was one of the most technically challenging parts of the collection, especially creating the volume and making it hold the shape I wanted.
It took a lot of trial and error, but seeing it finally come together was incredibly satisfying.
Couture Troopers: You studied fashion in Romania, spent a semester in Shanghai and then moved to London to continue your MA Fashion at Central Saint Martins. What has that journey taught you about yourself so far?
Don Sebastian Mario: Looking back, I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is how much I’m capable of.
What started as a silly dream and, in many ways, an escape, has gradually become something I genuinely see as my life. My studies in Romania, and especially my semester in Shanghai, gave me skills, confidence and the courage to believe that I could actually do this.
Since then, I’ve continued to evolve both creatively and personally. I’ve learned not only about design and making clothes, but also about how the fashion industry really works and what it takes to survive in it.
I still doubt myself sometimes, but I know much more now about who I am and what I’m capable of than I did when I started.
Couture Troopers: Now that Shattered Identity is out in the world, what do you want to leave behind with this collection, and what do you want to explore next?
Don Sebastian Mario: With Shattered Identity, I want to leave behind the idea of fashion being purely theatrical and focus more on creating clothes that can actually be worn and lived in.
It was a collection where I could push my creativity without thinking about practicality, comfort or whether something could actually be worn every day. I’m grateful I had that freedom, but now I want to take what I learned from it and make clothes that people can actually live in while still keeping my vision.
What I want to explore next is craft, really understanding how to make beautiful, considered clothes. I’m especially interested in working with scraps and overlooked materials, transforming them into something desirable and meaningful.
I already started exploring this in Shattered Identity with a pair of trousers made mostly from scraps, and I want to develop that idea further and make it a more authentic and personal part of my practice.
Credits Editorial
Models: @ariana.0.udrea, @robert_vacariu, @gligorlau, @oum.aahz, @sscorpio.sting, @iasminandreea_ (runway)
Photographer: @hannafphotography
Artistic direction & edit: @edward.heidel
Creative Direction and fashion: @____mario_________, @marioxmad
School: @mdvtm.uvt
