How often are you aware of the sensations of your body?
We are always being touched by what we wear. Always held, covered, nudged.
The body is always interacting with its surroundings.
I realise the absence of touch in digital interactions, and how many of the core tenets of my designs with fitzpleisure are lost or unfelt until you actually have the opportunity to hold the pieces in your hands. To wear and to feel the materials on your skin. Purchasing clothes online is an extremely visual experience, often we may be solely driven by images and words, and an active desire and imagination to project what we see onto ourselves. We feel compelled to purchase things that we can strongly visualise on ourselves. But this visual journey excludes touch, and the effect that feeling has. Perhaps we can imagine how the clothes we buy will feel to wear, and not just how they may look. This is then where words and knowledge may assist us. How is a product described? What sensations can we imagine? What do we know about the fabrics used? Can we distinguish fabrics and their textures?
Even within the spectrum of laces and elastics that I use for making lingerie, there is so much variation in how materials feel. Some are firmer, some softer, some more delicate. It is a large part of why I enjoy experimentation and customisation, because there is just so much variety. The art of making is a textural journey where I envision your experience of wearing while I create. I anticipate comfort, or discomfort, and take adjustments to improve the sensations. If I deem a material impractical or uncomfortable I will find alternate use for it. I once made the mistake of using non-stretch lace as an inner thigh band trim, and the discomfort I experienced after wearing it to an 8-hour shift at work still lingers in my memory. We can so easily take touch for granted, or our bodies become accustomed to minor discomforts, especially as women where so much of our clothing is restrictive or focused on making us look a certain way without care for the lived affect of our body's experience of those clothes. I want you to be aware of your body - notice how your clothes feel, and how you want them to feel?
This screen is a barrier as much as it is a bridge, for you can read my words and see my images, but our connection is still fractured. I rely on images so heavily for creating affect, and for sharing my art. A large part of fitzpleisure is in its curation of images and creative imagining of what it can be to be feminine. Part of the experience of fitzpleisure is in its imagery, in how it evokes connection to oneself, to others, and perhaps most importantly to nature.
I've been reading about posthumanism, an ideology that decentres humans as the exceptional focus of knowledge and importance. Rather, in posthumanism, people are embedded in their environments, and the importance of the more-than-human world is emphasised. This includes objects and places. It can sound a bit vague or unclear, but essentially the way we view our position in the world can greatly shape how we interact within it. In the context of making clothes, recognising the importance and agency of objects problematises waste and excess. If you view objects as holding significant value, value similar to that of your own body, then you begin to pay much more attention to what you possess, how those things possess you in some ways, and how to perhaps most of all, what other relationships exist between you and objects aside from ownership? We tend to view things outside of us as distinctly separate, but we are ultimately connected. In modern posthumanism, even technology has agency. Technology is as real as objects, and we cannot see our existence in isolation from it.
What does this all mean then? I suppose I want to share my thoughts as a philosophy of why I care so much about what I make and how it is made. Objects are more than products, more than goods, and more than their monetary value. Objects have significance due to their materiality. Because they exist as much as we do. And I create lingerie because I want to redirect my consumption into creation. I created Fitzpleisure because I want to share ideas, inspiration, imagination and art beyond just items to be purchased. I don't create lingerie because you need to wear underwear and there is a gap in the market for colourful and custom-made lingerie, I create it because I know you care about what you wear and put on your body as an extension of yourself and because you value art and the potential of objects in fulfilling a version of yourself connected to the world. You consume intentionally, you value design, and care, and effort. And I hope you can sense this, even through your screen. I want to create sensations and motivate your thinking, for art is meant to be engaged with, whether or not you own it or it can even be owned at all.
