This research investigates how architectural spaces—specifically the emotionally resonant environments of London museums—shape the self-perception and emotional stability of culturally displaced individuals, with a focus on Chinese international students. Through an interdisciplinary methodology that combines auto-ethnography, spatial analysis, qualitative interviews, and design-led inquiry, the project explores how feelings of safety, invisibility, and belonging emerge within curated cultural spaces, and how these affect the construction of identity.

Drawing on theories of embodied identity, emotional geography, and fashion as a psychosocial practice, the research identifies architectural features—such as arches, subdued lighting, and spiral staircases—as key spatial elements that provide psychological containment and sensory comfort. These insights inform a series of experimental fashion designs that translate spatial affect into wearable structures. Garments are developed not as aesthetic objects, but as emotional architectures—soft containers that hold the shifting and often fragile self.

The outcome proposes a new vocabulary for fashion practice, rooted in spatial sensitivity and therapeutic potential. It positions clothing not merely as a visual expression of identity, but as a material strategy for healing, grounding, and navigating in-between states of cultural belonging. In doing so, the research offers a method of reinbahiting the body—and the self—through space-responsive design.