Flaneuse

Category: Apparel

Flâneuse centres women walkers in the urban landscape, exploring the ideas of surveillance and observation. This conception of the flâneuse draws on Sophie Calle’s Suite Vénitienne, an ‘artwork-cum-quest’ which examines the complexities of being both the surveyor and the surveyed. The artist follows an acquaintance, Henri B, around Venice, documenting his movements, and hers as she traverses the city. Calle plays on the archetypal experience of being a lone woman in an urban landscape, instead placing the vulnerability on her male subject. Referencing the beginning of women’s liberation, in which the figure of the lone city walker was born, I focused on the modern retooling of the Edwardian hobble skirt to explore methods of restriction. I used light weight organza in combination with boiled and felted wools, along with suede.

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