It takes courage to tackle themes such as sexuality, violence and abuse in fashion, but American fashion designer Heather Marie Scholl has been doing that since she was still a student at San Francisco's Academy of Art University.
At the time she developed a collection that looked at race and gender, and told a tale revolving around the sexually obsessed nature of queer culture and the semiotics of eroticism.
After graduating Scholl moved to New York where she worked on developing her researches to find innovative ways to combine art, fashion, and story telling. The result is series of delicately elegant hand-made embroidered pieces that actually address unsettling issues including feminism and violence.
Her latest project, entitled "Sometimes It's Hard to Be a Woman", is a fashion installation tackling domestic violence and dating based sexual assaults. The project - sponsored in part by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs - will be shown on 7th November 2014 at FiveMyles Gallery, Brooklyn, New York.
Scholl has just launched a Kickstarter campaign (running through July 9th, 2014) to help crowd funding the remaining costs for the garments and environmental support pieces (with an emphasis on hand embroidery and hand knitting) that will be part of the installation. The latter will be the first cohesive presentation of Scholl's art creations and fashion designs.
Scholl highlights how her Kickstarter campaign was launched just as the #YesAllWomen movement - used on Twitter in response to the misogynistic rants of Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old Californian man who killed four men and two women in May to wreak vengeance on the women who rejected him - has gained momentum.
You can back up Scholl's project and help her reaching her goal by pledging your donations and pre-ordering your HMS branded pieces here.
What have you been up to since you graduated?
Heather Marie Scholl: After I finished school, I got myself together and moved to New York. I've been trying to find my way as this is the East Coast and there is a big cultural difference. I grew up in the West Coast which is laid back, relaxed and friendly and not too intense about things, while here there are different pressures, so it takes a different attitude to adjust. The speed which people work here and the speed of the fashion industry is insane as people are pushed to produce in a way that, to me, doesn't seem sustainable at all. Yet I'm a driven person and I know I want to be an artist and designer as well because I feel the intense need to express my own visual voice.
Which projects have you been working on while in New York?
Heather Marie Scholl: We all know that fashion is a very hard thing to do unless you're already established or you have funds to make your own line and in New York there is also a lot of emphasis on how commercial a collection can be, so I have been focusing on different projects. I have been trying to establish myself as a knitwear expert and have worked for Stoll America. I'm also creatively working at VladKnit, developing for them showpieces that allow designers to understand the possibilities that certain yarns and stitches can offer. VladKnit offers hand-knitted sampling and source production in the States and in Russia as well and works for designers such as Ralph Lauren, Oscar de la Renta and many more. Part of my project for this year consists also in developing a small branded line that features for example a very wearable knitted T-shirt with little refined and unique touches, but no experimental knitwear.
And you've also been focusing on arty embroidery that tackles serious issues like femininity, violence and abuse – can you tell us more about it?
Heather Marie Scholl: In a way it was just a natural next stop to do embroidery. I had been thinking about it for a while as my grandma used to do lots of needlework, but I didn't get it taught when I was a kid. In fact I picked up most of my craft skills on my own and figured out ways that could work for me and learnt from other people when I could. I did like drawing and painting when I was young, but they just didn't feel right for me. I can instead employ needle, thread and beads to create a sort of painting and they help expressing myself in a much more liberating way. Besides, my thesis collection included a lot of beading and part of that process really made me feel connected to the history of women. Sometimes I sit down and do the embroidery handwork with a few volunteers who help with the hand-beading and we just establish a special intimacy and talk about things that in other situations wouldn't come up. I really enjoy that and the nature of the handwork.
What influences the main themes of your embroidery?
Heather Marie Scholl: My work is always influenced by the fact that I'm a lifelong survivor of sexual abuse and by how much I was affected when I was a teenager by the idea of the personal as political and that has stayed with me and comes out in my work in different ways. The main inspiration is my personal story, but it's also about how universal and political it can be, so my work always ends up being about all the experiences of lots of other people. It is a form of art therapy. We all know that art therapy is commonly used in traumatic situations since it encourages folks to be able to start expressing those experiences and feelings to themselves first, so the more they learn to acknowledge them internally, the more they start expressing them to others, and telling their story.
A few weeks ago you showcased your embroidery in San Francisco, what kind of feedback did you get and do you have any events scheduled in New York?
Heather Marie Scholl: It was a big event with music and dance happening and it also included my embroidered pieces and people were very intrigued by them. I will be doing an installation in New York in November entitled "Sometimes It's Hard To Be a Woman". It will deal with issues of domestic violence and sexual abuse. There installation will include garments, hand embroidery and knitting as well. I'm also working towards launching a branded line because I want to establish myself as a designer and have a commercial aspect while being able to say something different. I would really like to be able to feed into my more commercial pieces all the deep meanings and issues tackled in my art projects. Come next year I would like to focus on lace making as well, but for the time being I'm busy preparing the November project and working on my Kickstarter campaign.
All images in this post courtesy Heather Marie Scholl
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