Claudia L-Brown

Historically, women have been placed on a pedestal. The male gaze has painted women as ornamental, chaste, motherly. Women strive towards an image of sheer perfection.

Yet we are also expected to be sexual and satisfy male lust. In our present gender landscape, such women are labelled ‘whores’; ‘not wifey material’. Women are expected to strive towards motherhood in order to fulfil their femininity. But what of those who don’t become mothers? Are they less woman? Those who view men as tools of sexual pleasure, rather than saviours of female fragility? This collection is doing it for those who do not fit expectations. The whores. The ferocious women and the fragile men. For those who are neither male nor female.

I give men their sought after feminine woman. But I give them the reality of what it is to be a woman: to bleed monthly, to be sexual and not ashamed.

Men desire women to fit the motherly image. Yet they ransack femininity: picking and choosing from it aspects that are sanitised and proper to be placed on the pedestal.

Women are flawed, scarred, but also indestructible. I look to Marie Antoinette. Notably, she struggled to become a mother. At a young age she was pigeonholed into a frivolous feminine role: dresses; parties.

She took that femininity and stirred a revolution with it. She worked within the confines of femininity to destroy it from within. She remains one of the most misunderstood and powerful figures in history. For stepping outside her role as ‘woman’; for daring to influence society, she was executed.

I bring to the fore the ugly and grotesque using beautiful fabrics and textiles. In this way the collection reflects all women who are a fine balance between beautiful and grotesque, delicate and stoic.