Our September 2023 collection was all about False narratives, telling a twisted fairytale of its own.
This collection told the a long & winding journey into macabre fairytales, false narratives and long tortured heroines
We started off thinking about storytelling – specifically through the media today. With false news, twisted narratives, deep fakes, opposing political parties twisting the same story to suit different needs… We were just intrigued by the power of story telling and the huge sway that simple changes to your narrative can have over other people. Whether you adapt a detail, leave something out or exaggerate completely you can really get what you want with a good story.
We researched cults, and the stories told by leaders to gain huge and loyal followings – we also looked at other control tactics, such as brainwashing, uniforms, moving somewhere isolated etc. and there are elements of this that you will see through the collection with ideas of control.
But what interested us the most were fairytales. Fairytales are some of the first stories we ever hear, they almost still to this day dictate western societal morals and gender stereotypes and ideas of control, good and evil, etc. It’s so interesting that these stories which can be traced as far back as the bronze age reinforce so much of what we still guide our life by today. So you’ll see references to the big bad wolf, the princess, the evil step mother – to love, nature and escapism.
But we wanted to look the darker side of these too. I think by now everyone knows that the original versions of our classic fairytales were way more gruesome than they are now. But the Brothers Grimm also censored out a lot of other parts – such as the king raping sleeping beauty whilst she slept, Rapunzel getting pregnant and cast out by her mother, and aerials prince immediately marrying another woman after she dies for him.
These are pretty key details, which once removed change the morals of the stories a lot – but the Grimm brothers didn’t bother changing the rest of the tales, the just published them with pieces missing… So we’ve explored some of these darker themes, about womens virginity and value, the dangers of desire and men, and also looked at common representations in them – the innocent dumb princess, the heroic prince, the overbearing father and the stepmother deemed evil and unnatural because you know, if a woman doesn’t or can’t have natural children herself – she must be evil!
That is such a brief overview, I might have to write an essay or article about it but keep an eye out for those themes in the collection and I think you’ll definitely notice a few of our many hidden details and narratives!
