NOT A BRAND. A PORTAL.
The Atelier
Founded to create wearable relics that feel both otherworldly and deeply lived in.
Each piece begins with a textile that has already lived a life. I work primarily with antique and reclaimed fabrics—most often silk from vintage kimono and cheongsam garments—chosen for the character they have gained through time.
Rather than hiding the marks of age, I design with them. Fading dyes, softened threads, and small irregularities in the weave become part of the final piece. They are traces of the fabric’s past, carried forward into something new.
Every corset is built using a combination of traditional corsetry techniques, modern construction methods, and approaches I have developed through my own practice. Steel and synthetic whalebone, layered structures, and careful tension throughout the garment create pieces that feel both structured and natural to wear.
Running quietly through the work is a place I call the Crooked City: an imagined city of forgotten elegance, old ateliers, strange rooms and objects that have outlived their original purpose. It is the world in which I place these garments. The place from which some are recovered, and to which others belong.
Fae Skin is, in part, its archive.
THE MAKER
My name is Evelien, and I am the hands behind Fae Skin.
I originally studied Game Art at the University of the Arts Utrecht, intending to work in digital world-building. Somewhere along the way, however, I became much more interested in making things I could hold.
I taught myself to sew and gradually moved into corsetry, developing my practice through years of making, experimenting, taking things apart, and making them again.
In 2025, I spent time at the couture house of Iris van Herpen, where I had the opportunity to work alongside people who approach materials and construction with an extraordinary level of precision. It reinforced something I had already begun to understand: I wanted my own practice to be centred on making.
Fae Skin grew from that decision.
Today, I work alone from my atelier, making each corset myself. I design slowly, work with reclaimed materials, and allow the history and limitations of each fabric to influence what the finished piece becomes.
There is no production line behind Fae Skin, and no collection made twice.
Just me, a sewing machine, a growing archive of fabrics, and a great deal of time spent making things properly.
With love,
Evelien
The Archivist