Documentary
Saturnalia: Unbinding Fetish Fashion
For my graduate project at Central Saint Martins, I created a documentary on Fetish fashion called Saturnalia: Unbinding Fetish Fashion. The film is now streaming on the trailblazing platform Girls in Film and celebrates the eclectic desires and fashions of London's Fetish community. While acknowledging fashion's history of Fetish appropriation, it spotlights the creative ingenuity of Fetishists who have long cultivated and cherished kink aesthetics. Viewers hear from the subversive Goth DJ and artist Parma Ham, legendary fashion photographer Nick Knight, dominatrix Mistress Eden, fashion commentator Caryn Franklin, fashion designers Ingrid Kraftchenko and Liza Keane, iconic subculture photographer Derek Ridgers, Skin Two editor Tim Woodward, Fetish artist Miss Meatface and many more. A combination of enthralling film reels, illustration, stop motion, CGI animation and contributions from the Fetish community bring the roaring underground to life. From 1950s magazines and '80s subcultures to otherworldly catwalks and the metaverse, Saturnalia is a tale of sublime physicality, artistic survival and LGBTQ+ solidarity.
Read the interview about my documentary Saturnalia: Unbinding Fetish Fashion with SHOWstudio here.
Saturnalia is available to stream the on Girls in Film and recently won the Best Documentary Award at the UK Fashion Film Festival 2023. Click here for the documentary website.
Zines
My final project in 2022 was a publication celebrating creatives and experts in fashion, literature and art. Named after the legendary 19th century dandy and writer Oscar Wilde, it delivered a metropolis of trend reports, book reviews and news on upcoming exhibitions. Articles discussed pioneering artists, designers and writers like Rei Kawakubo, Mária Bartuszová, Lucian Freud, Celia Paul and bell hooks. It also included exclusive interviews with Professor Kimberly Jenkins (the inspiring founder of The Fashion & Race Database), 19th century literary and costume consultant Eleanor Houghton and Yale art curator Amy Meyers. Contributing artists: Sarah Carter-Jenkins, Chrisie Nimenko, Jessica Worrall and Sarabande sculptor Camilla Hanney.
A zine honouring The Leopard (1958) and its author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. My research for this project was extensive and included 4 biographies, letters the author wrote from 1925 to 1930 and literature on 1860's dress, Charles Frederick Worth and Parisian court attire and Sicilian warfare. Autobiographical images are paired with collages that layer costume illustrations by Piero Tosi for Luchino Visconti's 1963 film, 19th century fashion plates from the CSM archive and images of Sicilian antique furniture from Sotheby's auction catalogue.
A zine produced while in lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic, it acknowledges how consumers felt disillusioned by the fashion industry at the time and visualises a brand designed to help them reconnect with humanity. Using an assortment of secondary and primary images, the book was a group project realised by myself, Michelle Jelmini, Tito Leone Severini, Dan Jiroal and Sinéad Áoife Ní Tomás at Polimoda fashion school in Florence, Italy. My contributions included concept realisation, writing articles, conducting interviews and designing mood boards, collages and the zine layout.
A zine dedicated to my favourite designer Simone Rocha, it includes interviews with herself, historian and lecturer of British fashion Veronica Isaac, English professor Leya Landau, celebrity stylist Zadrian Smith, photographer Jacob Lillis and the director of Hauser & Wirth gallery Aileen Corkery. I enjoyed investigating the relationship between the brand's identity and 19th century romanticism, ancient Chinese motifs and Irish Gothic literature (Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, 1872). Articles are accompanied by an ensemble of primary and secondary photographs and collaged with drawings by the aesthete illustrator Aubrey Beardsley; highlighting the label's Victorian undertones.
A zine inspired by horror films. Imagined as the 7th issue in a series of annual journals, this edition uses a mixture of secondary fashion imagery, symbols and film stills to illustrate the haunting themes in cult classics' Rosemary's Baby, Suspiria, The Other Lamb, Midsommar and Hereditary.
Portraits
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