Lilian Brade - Hochschule Pforzheim

The Feminine Urge – Hochschule Pforzheim

PARTICIPATION IN THE BEST GRADUATES SHOW AND NOMINATED FOR THE NEO.FASHION. AWARD

Birth, Creation, Sexuality, Motherhood, Death, Rebirth – that is the closed cycle within which this collection moves. The Feminine Urge adresses physicality, expectations and refusal, fascination and shock, attraction and repulsion. At the center: the Monstrous-Feminine. The collection goes hand in hand with the representation of femininity in the horror genre. It transcends the boundaries of the vestimentary, blurring it with film, performance, and body horror. In doing so, it leaves behind patriarchal fantasies and the female victim role – pure, passive, compliant – a figure that only exists to be desired, looked at or rescued. It creates self-empowered antagonists who consciously evade the idea of the correct, familiar, digestible woman, a vestimentary resistance. Here, femininity is neither soft nor still, it drips, bleeds, gapes, devours, deforms and multiplies. Where fashion usually seduces, presenting the body as conventionally smooth, beautiful and complete, this work turns to the grotesque, the repulsive, the excessive. Fascination arises not despite but precisely through discomfort. The dissonance between perfection and rejection forms a focal point of the collection. Smooth, soft surfaces meet wounds and gaping holes, exaggerated cleanliness is confronted with disgust, glamour coexists with decay. The silhouettes alternate between sleek elegance and physical distortion. Aesthetics are questioned, caricatured, subversively reversed, rejecting orderly categorization.

Driven by a desire to reclaim and rewrite the narrative surrounding femininity, I deliberately challenge the taboos surrounding bodies perceived as female and queer. My designs subvert traditional notions of beauty and present femininity in all its facets: fluid, in constant flux, unbound and at times monstrous. At the heart of my work lie storytelling and the creation of aesthetic visual worlds. My stories unfold not only in the garments themselves, but in all aspects of the design process and across a range of creative media such as styling, film and performance art. I am deeply rooted in craftsmanship and materiality, creating new surfaces and textures and favouring antique and second-hand, handmade materials. In doing this I work across disciplines, drawing on connections to metalwork, jewelry design and special effects techniques, thereby challenging the boundaries of what fashion can be. With this hybrid approach, I strive to create radical, intimate and expressive works that empower marginalised identities and offer them a form of vestimentary expression.

Foto 1: Stefanie Ritter @pfan.ni
Fotos 2 & 3: Phuong An Phi @aniebea
Fotos 4, 5, 6 & 7: Stefanie Ritter @pfan.ni