Image: facebook.com

Teaming up with ad-agency Leo Burnett Milan, Westwood has crafted a visual that draws awareness to the growing brutality against women in Italy. Statistics indicate that one in three Italian women are victims of domestic abuse – a chilling reality that clearly inspired Westwood’s provocative appeal. Stereotypically, mannequins are painted with flawless complexions and aloof pouts. Burnett and Westwood courageously ripped into this aesthetic and juxtaposed a bruised mannequin against the polished dolls of fashion’s trademark advertising. The result is a fragile victim seated timidly between two glamorously confident femme fatales. While the haute-couture dames are draped in sparkling colour-bright material, the hesitant Jane Doe wears a simple black dress that is slightly dishevelled from her violent struggle. Instead of make-up, she is covered with purple-black bruises that bite marks from the hollow of her eye to the arch of her battered shin, transforming her into a model of domestic abuse victims across the world.
 

The idea of fashion labels using their brand power to market slogans that defy acts of gender violence is becoming increasingly relevant amidst claims that seek to explain or justify the harmful treatment to which many women are subjected. Last December an Italian priest, Piero Corsi, made headlines when he wrote:

The core of the problem is in the fact that women are more and more provocative, they yield to arrogance, they believe they can do everything themselves and they end up exacerbating tensions

The article was pinned to a bulletin board inside a church of the northern Italian village, San Terenzo di Leric. Ultimately, the text argues that women spend too much time wearing provocative clothing, and too little time cleaning bathrooms and plating food, encouraging their male counterparts to strike out in frustration. With attitudes like this still finding a place in society, the activism of women is vitally necessary. As an empowering force of fashion, Vivienne Westwood is emblematic of the fight against using clothes as a scapegoat for crime, and her mannequins illustrate that the bruise of a cheekbone is far more serious than a pair of cut-offs.
 

The window display is the face of Westwood’s store in Corso Venezia – one of Milan’s most exclusive ultra-extravagant avenues. Passersby who walk the catwalk of this high street runway are accustomed to the poised glass portals of Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Miu Miu, Burberry and Prada. A stroll past Westwood’s cutting composition would undoubtedly lead to a misstep. Italian mainstream media have splashed images of the storefront across their pages, while crowds have gathered outside Westwood’s fashion-house in both astonishment and solidarity with its message.
 

Image: facebook.com

Image: facebook.com

Image: facebook.com

Image: facebook.com

Images: Facebook
Words: Ra’eesa Pather

Beholders of Les Poupees – the thoroughly seductive characters created by Miss Van – can not help but be enthralled by these lascivious creatures, their overwhelming femininity and the pure eroticism emanating from their gorgeous frames. It’s been fourteen years since the original sultry-eyed Les Poupee de Miss Van first appeared.

Miss Van began painting in the streets at the tender age of 18, not with spray-can in hand, but rather latex paint and brush – as favoured by counterparts, Brazilian graff greats Os Gemeos. The year was 1991. The city, her hometown Toulouse, France. Toulouse is world-renowned for its graffiti scene, Miss Van and her accomplices back then (Mademoiselle Kat and Fafi), couldn’t have help starting a feminine graffiti movement in a more apt place. While the streets occupied her spare time, she was a full-time student completing a four-year degree in fine art.

Seven years on and with enough street-cred behind her, Miss Van held her first gallery exhibition at Galerie Diloy in Toulouse. By the time Parisian Galerie Magda Danysz had proposed to represent her, she had already exhibited in London and Rotterdam. She has since gone on to exhibit in Barcelona, L.A., New York, Melbourne, Sydney, Stockholm, Milan, Amsterdam and Anvers, as well as participating in prestigious group exhibitions alongside the likes of Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Os Gemeos, Swoon, Mike Giant and Takashi Murakami.

On querying the sensual overtures of her work, her response is simple – ‘I just enjoy painting my fantasies without censoring myself,’ she says.

Her buxom burlesque babes echo pure sexual frisson, though Miss Van is quick to point out that not all of them are vivacious pin-up girls – she ascribes them with varied emotions, ‘sometimes melancholic, sometimes arrogant, sometimes coy… much like us (girls).’ It is the sensitivity with which she conveys these feelings that is most laudable.

She has admitted to her beauties being semi-autobiographical, and although her work may have manifested in earlier years through her shocking pink hair and girly wardrobe, it has since steadily transformed to display her own emotional expansion, emerging from girlhood into womanhood and yet still oscillating between the two.Her newest body of work, which will be showing at Galerie Magda Danysz later this year,

explores a broader range of intensity and complexity of sentiment, from melancholic turbulence to the ambiguity and fragility that accompanies provocation.

The evolution is inspiring, beautiful and very real.

The now Barcelonan resident is venturing further afield, from curating big-name group shows and working on her first book, to exhibiting in Asia and South America. With the steady progression and unfaltering passion which encompasses this artist, one can only look forward to what her feminine evolution may unfurl. Though the gallery has taken precedence and the studio has offered a safer space to experiment, her provocative nature still revels in the thrill of the street.

Read the rest of issue 08

Read the rest of issue 08: Part2

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