Rowan Simms Ridgway- BA (Hons) Fashion
Gone Afield
Gone Afield follows the narrative of six women who have spent their early life under the control of farming men, a tale inspired by the notion that the invention of the plough has a clear correlation to the commodification of women.
And so this story goes. Each day the women had to submit to their captors. They did not know why or how it had come to this, all they knew is it was deeply, profoundly, wrong. It was upon these thoughts that they were one night greeted, by a blue light. A guide in the body of a mare, urging them to flee. It was now or forever under the wrath of those evil men. They ran. Following an apparition, they gathered all that they thought useful; a tattered tweed jacket left at the mouth of the stables, a flat cap, weathered down to its silk interior, leather boots, scuffed and frozen. And they ran. The nighttime escapade meant that the women had only their nightdresses and undergarments on them, but they didn’t notice the cold, the warmth of hope that the figure provided was enough. Eventually, the mare came to a halt, she could not follow on any further, it was no longer her journey to take. This was the opening to the realm that the women could only ever imagine. It was a world of divine femininity and of true companionship, of wonder, of bliss, of joy. It was what every girl imagines becoming a woman will be, without the disappointments of its reality. For my graduate collection, I have combined my anger of the realities of being a woman with the wonder of childhood imagination. My inspirations include Edwardian night and underwear with the more masculine elements of traditional farming dress, to help drive the narrative. The collection specialises in embroidery and crafting techniques such as natural dyes and hand manipulation of fabrics.
