Claire Hollingsworth
Hometown: Kinston, NC
Email: kchollin@ncsu.edu & clairehollingsworth18@gmail.com
Bio
Claire Hollingsworth is a student at North Carolina State University’s Wilson College of Textiles, pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Fashion and Textile Management with minors in Business Administration and Religious Studies. Her faith is the foundation of everything she does and shapes how she approaches relationships, creativity, and her purpose as a designer. Claire’s faith has deeply influenced her involvement with Young Life, where she mentors high school girls and invests in their lives through relationships, events, and leadership. Through these relationships, she has developed a passion for encouraging young women to recognize their value, identity, and beauty.
Through fashion, Claire strives to tell meaningful stories through her designs, reflect the values that guide her life, and create work that reminds others of their inherent value and beauty. After graduating, Claire hopes to pursue a career in product development or technical design, combining her creativity with her technical knowledge of garment construction and fit to bring thoughtful designs from concept to finished product.
Collection Concept
Song of Songs draws inspiration from the biblical poem that centers on desire, devotion, and the imagery of the cultivated garden as a metaphor for love. Rather than interpreting the text literally or theatrically, this collection focuses on its symbolic language as expressions of intimacy. In Song of Songs, the garden represents protected beauty and intentional cultivation: love that is tended rather than accidental. Fragrance suggests presence without visibility, a diffused intimacy that lingers rather than demands attention. The recurring imagery of milk, honey, and wine speaks to sweetness, richness, and sensory fullness; love experienced through taste, scent, and touch.
The fountain in the garden evokes life, movement, and sustaining depth, while “faint with love” embodies the consuming and almost weightless feeling of being overcome by love. Finally, the “season of singing” closes the collection with renewal, joy, and the arrival of spring after waiting. Conceptually, the collection explores how desire can be portrayed through layering rather than exposure, and how abundance can be communicated through color and texture instead of ornamentation. It reflects the balance within Song of Songs between enclosure and openness; the tension between being protected and being revealed. Through palettes drawn from earth, spice, wine, and spring tones, the work traces a progression from rooted growth to expressive celebration, translating ancient poetic metaphors into contemporary forms that honor the text’s sensuality while maintaining restraint and dignity.