Capsule Collage
prActiZe x Louise Margaret Fuller
Collaborative project focused on the speculative meeting of bodies and garments. In itself an exploration of visual and written language. The time leap between both images approached through an associative
lens, contemplating how many [linguistic] steps must be taken to align both.
prActiZe x Louise Margaret Fuller
Sensible? Perhaps not.
Sensational? All the more.
A young woman in an interior, leaning – what seems somewhat defeated - against a room divider. Letter in hand, perhaps from a lover. The slightly bulged up fabric of her powder blue bolero reminiscent of the folded paper barely clasped by her fingers; as if worn out after finding their way out of the depths of her sleeve. Adorned with a puzzled look, her face speaks volumes of a language one can only speculate on. A young woman in the prime of her life, framed by flowers. The ones on the foreground big and blossoming, the ones in the back freshly budding, and - who knows - these sprigs perhaps picked by the very same hand that wrote the letter. Captured at a momentous time in her young life; her anticipated response to the mysterious letter either accelerating or impeding her own coming of age. Time temporarily on pause, or tilted even, depending on how she’ll handle the content enveloped in the inked tissue of which her fingers try not to lose grip. In case of a forbidden love, or a complicated one, she’ll feel torn. Torn between the temporality of her current being and that of what might be. Her life possibly about to be turned upside down. In her heart, filled to the brim with light, she knows all too well she’s in love. Her heart a lighthouse, a beacon. Shedding her bodice, her hitherto stifling cocoon; at last, giving her heart the space to expand beyond the constrained allowance it has grown accustomed to. The hourglass figure taken down a notch; her waist redeemed by the perseverance of a dropped hemline. No longer indefinitely fixed in time and space. A caterpillar at the crux of life, ready to turn into a sumptuous butterfly. By virtue of this metamorphosis only one step removed from the love of her life, or at least its creator. A taste of what this other life could be right at her fingertips. Standing by her side all along, those freesias could well be the ancestors to the top notes of L’eau d’Issey. A scented offspring of its eponymous inventor, the same craftsman behind the freedom she has been longing for all this time. Through the nectar of the freesias, the air filled with particles of a sense of freedom she might not be able to picture for herself quite yet. Her play on time and space reciprocated by his play on words. This being her odyssey. All this time, the lover in fact emblematic of a nurtured sense of freedom for herself.
Young Woman in an Interior . Auguste Toulmouche [1870]
Minaret Dress . Issey Miyake [1995]
Kindred spirits wrapped in textile, bonding over a loving sensitivity for the asymmetric. The equilibrium, however, slightly shifted, from the waist down to the knee. By virtue of a sense of shared sisterhood – sisterhood of the travelling skirt, if you will - one finds herself wearing a skirt of a time yet to come. And in doing so, in sporting this skirt of myriad nature, is able to embrace the equally myriad nature of her own existence. How she had longed for this. Her femininity no longer a sport needed to be performed, but simply one to be lived through. Long-awaited. Piled up on a chair in the corner of the room, a manifestation of her longing. Which, all along, her eyes had laid hold of. Waiting with eager anticipation for the moment she would dare to take the plunge. Diving into it head-first, in this compound of layers of pillowcases and aprons. Tokens of her femme role in society. Markers of utter domesticity yet to her equally the very pinnacle of resilience. Tactile layers not infused with what some might consider vanity, but rather layers steeped in a contradictory vigour. Reckoned among the feminine, yet without prejudice of her ability as a female. A certain vibrancy running through her veins, one of which the credits more often than not are denied to her, dismissed as either superficial, be it ostentatious. The intimate embrace between the strands of her DNA being one of similar nature: XX, as if sealing their commitment with a kiss each. A loving act yet in turn the very reason as to why she - as being a woman - is supposed to feel subordinate, merely because these strands wrap around in replica. However, a status quo that her body - wrapped in a skirt of ambiguity and polyphony - subverts. And you bet it requires skill to do so, to stand your ground amidst a fury of opposing voices considered to be the established order. Her hands unwaveringly in the air, surrendering not to patriarchal expectations, but precisely an omen of her non-adhering to such notions. Her posture prolonged. In itself a pose once considered provocative. A picture of problem, ambiguous as to what exactly is depicted or insinuated. Only her lower half swaddled in fabric, fabric riddled with the vibrancy of its previous owners. Nowadays considered deadstock material, it proves to have stood the test of time. Resilient enough to be transposed back to its origin story, invigorated with its by now acquired emancipation. Both fabric and wearer dealt a new destiny.
pomps and vanities . john collier [1917]
skirt Autumn-Winter . Chopova lowena [2023]
ongoing feature.2024
... co.curated project