0155
13-10-2004
UNDRESSED
Marlies Dekkers
Other, fashion designer
My fear resists a pleasure from which I recoil; I plumb the depths of my desire.
(in Braille)
According to fashion designer Marlies Dekkers, people yearn for a common ideal: a family – with wife / husband and children – which provides security and stability. This blissful state not only gives them strength and confidence, it also imposes restraints. Other, far deeper desires can be suppressed as a result and can lead to a fierce inner struggle. Marlies Dekkers is convinced that space needs to be given to these deeper feelings in order to be able to use them constructively.
Creativity rather than disruption; intimacy rather than perversity! We must prevent this inner struggle from being triggered and activated by, for example, traumatic experiences, which can have far-reaching social consequences.
Dekkers advocates self-examination of our deeper desires. With her designs she hopes to provide a context within which this can be articulated, communicated and explored. In her view, self-knowledge is required in order for us to be able to examine, accept and perhaps reject our true desires, as well as a willingness to put familiar circumstances on the line. Once started, examination leads gradually yet inexorably to a new reality. It is difficult to imagine a way back; each step must therefore be taken deliberately. The manuscript for the Vedute collection is the record of a gradual voyage of discovery into deeper desires. The various stages on that journey are clearly discernible in the manuscript: the happy family in its private space and unfamiliarity with the Braille text, the sharp flipside, the expression on the woman’s face and the final surrender to pleasure and vulnerability.
