Meet Student Designer: César Benavente
César Benavente Oblitas is a designer and systems thinker working across fashion, sculpture, and material research. Rooted in sustainability and cultural memory, their practice reimagines garments as folded messages—structures sent with the intention to be activated.
Through collapsible flat-pack constructions, Oblitas challenges traditional hierarchies of authorship, visibility, and value.
Born in Puno, Peru, and based in Chicago, they hold an MFA from the School of the Art Institute, where they developed their design methodology. Their work moves between functionality and friction, drawing influence from the photographic legacy of Martín Chambi and the engineering logic of origami. Their research-based design platform explores modular forms, repurposed materials, and sustainable systems of circulation. Recent projects examine the afterlife of garments, the authorship of absence, and the tension between industrial scaling and emotional trace.
