Krucible’s ‘Piece of Mind’ Part II: Fragile Armour in an Urban Oasis
“How many times have I been overwhelmed and snuck into the bathroom to take a breath?”
With that confession equal parts private and universal Krucible opens Piece of Mind, Part II of its evocative Urban Oasis collection. A meditation on introversion, overstimulation, and the quiet defiance of seeking stillness, this new chapter from the London-based brand blurs the line between clothing, object, and emotion.
Following the quiet acclaim of its first release, Krucible’s Urban Oasis series continues to offer more than just fashion it offers pause. Piece of Mind is a constructed moment of internal reflection made tactile. It’s a collection that asks: what does peace feel like when the world won’t stop spinning?
Duality as Design Philosophy
At the core of Piece of Mind is Creative Director Alexander Barakat’s exploration of duality between nature and artifice, stillness and sound, vulnerability and protection. The collection is hand-built in Krucible’s East London studio and takes its shape through deliberate contrasts: soft deadstock silks cut on the bias bloom under sharply tailored vegan leather jackets; hand-frayed cottons resist polish; asymmetric silhouettes destabilize symmetry in the name of intimacy.
For Barakat, asymmetry is luxury. It’s the mark of the hand, the opposite of mass production. It’s the refusal to smooth out imperfection for the sake of scale. Each piece reflects Krucible’s central ethos: fragile armour clothing as both protection and exposure.
Slow-Made with Purpose
Each garment in Piece of Mind takes up to 14 days to create, made to order and cut from luxury deadstock fabrics. Krucible’s approach is inherently personal, resisting overproduction in favour of storytelling. This is fashion not made en masse, but made to mean to carry memory, to hold space.
The campaign is no less intimate. Shot entirely on analog film, the imagery spans surrealist scenes in Morocco and the UK. These environments, part dream and part memory, reflect the collection’s emotional palette and unfold in Krucible’s interactive digital showroom, where each piece can be explored, touched virtually, and shopped within its context.
Expanding the Narrative Beyond Fashion
While Krucible’s work challenges binaries in gender, silhouette, and texture, it now extends even further beyond the garment. Piece of Mind Part II introduces one-of-a-kind vintage objects like artisanal brass taps sourced from Moroccan markets. These items don’t just decorate; they echo. They are extensions of the collection’s tactility and mood, allowing the wearer to carry the story from body to home.
An Oasis Within Chaos
What anchors the entire Urban Oasis concept is a theme of resistance through softness. The idea was born when Barakat’s garden became a personal sanctuary during London’s lockdowns. That first moment of stillness bloomed into a design philosophy: that even amidst the chaos of urban life, there can be space quiet, rich, personal for something tender.
Krucible’s Piece of Mind Part II is more than a fashion release. It’s an offering of peace, beautifully constructed and deeply felt.
Part II: Piece of Mind is available now at www.krucible.world. The final chapter, Part III: Home is Where the Heart Is, will launch in June 2025.
