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GOLDEN EGGS
La Gallina de los Huevos de Oro — Clothing, Labour, and the Cost of Survival**
This fashion design project draws upon the Spanish folktale La gallina de los huevos de oro (The Hen That Laid the Golden Eggs) as a central metaphor through which to explore the contemporary cost-of-living crisis and the deepening experience of poverty in the United Kingdom. In the original tale, a farmer exploits a hen that produces golden eggs, demanding increased output until, driven by greed and impatience, he destroys the very source of his wealth. Within the context of this project, the hen becomes a symbolic representation of the UK public—particularly those living in or near poverty—while the farmer embodies the pressures exerted by government policy, economic systems, and rising costs of essential living.
The metaphor reflects how individuals are increasingly forced to “produce” more—through longer working hours, multiple jobs, and constant financial compromise—simply to survive. The expectation to generate more “golden eggs” at an unsustainable pace mirrors the realities of inflated energy prices, food insecurity, housing costs, and stagnant wages. As the tale warns, relentless extraction leads not to prosperity but to collapse. The shrinking eggs and the exhausted hen become a visual and conceptual parallel to a nation under strain, where over 15 million people are currently living in poverty.
Within this context, the project critically reflects on the decline of tailoring, garment repair, and home mending. As financial resources diminish, individuals increasingly turn toward fast fashion—cheap, disposable clothing that reflects the instability of daily life. The slow, durable, and traditionally valued practices of tailoring and care are abandoned not out of disregard, but out of necessity. Why tailor a suit that cannot be afforded to wash? Why invest time in ironing when the cost of electricity competes directly with the need for food or heating? Clothing, in this project, becomes a material response to precarity—mirroring lives that are stretched, worn thin, and forced to prioritise survival over longevity.
Ultimately, this collection seeks to position clothing as both symptom and symbol of economic hardship. As life becomes increasingly unreliable and unforgiving, so too do the garments people wear. Through material choice, construction, and conceptual framing, this project exposes a system that continues to demand productivity while neglecting sustainability—of people, labour, and dignity. Like the folktale’s farmer, the system’s impatience risks destroying what little remains. The hens are struggling, the eggs are shrinking, and the consequences of this exploitation are no longer metaphorical, but imminent.
