Corsets, Couture, and Christina Rossetti: Dreaming Eli at LFW, February 2024
Dreaming Eli has returned to London Fashion Week, with a stunning showing at St Cyprian’s church. The brand’s AW24 collection “The Dead Woman Talks Back” is designer Elise Trombatore’s latest, maintaining a focus on female empowerment by deconstructing the traditional Victorian gothic dress to craft new identities via intentional design. Taking to the floor of St Cyprian’s, and striding through the past aesthetics of patriarchal power, Trombatore’s work offers a precise and impassioned response to fashion history and its place in the present.
Reflecting on her Sicilian heritage, Trombatore’s design philosophy was deeply influenced in reaction to experiences with a ‘submissive’ ideation of womanhood, which she seeks to reverse with her fashion work. Inspired by Victorian poet Christina Rossetti, the designer’s latest collection returns to these essential themes in her practice, refining her engagement with traditional garments and materials to imbue them with a new message.
Nowhere is this more apparent than her reimagining of the corset; an item symbolic of women reshaping their bodies to meet male expectations in the past, now subverted to form a variety of looks. In each case, the lace placement on the piece is reversed; instead of being hidden behind the model, or under several layers (thereby disguising the tension and strain once put on the wearer’s body), it now faces the front, towards the viewer. The collection’s title “The Dead Woman Talks Back” plays nicely into this idea; giving a voice to fashion from the past, contextualised under a modern lens.
In terms of the looks themselves, Dreaming Eli continues to serve its brand staples: taut lace, flowing silk, and an embrace of bare skin. The aesthetics of decadence are on full show, but here highlight the boundaries and distance between the clothes and the bodies beneath them. From the abrupt divisions between fabric and flesh, to the slow pace the models adopt to traverse St Cyprian’s in their platform shoes, the work speaks to a misalignment between clothing and those wearing it. The idea isn’t to desire becoming one with the garment, nor to step into traditional roles and associations with the materials used, but to make an active statement with one’s clothes; to speak through fashion, as means to agency.
Many of the pieces on display lean into Dreaming Eli’s established take on ‘ready to wear’, but with this latest show the brand has made some innovations in its own history too. Amongst the many looks, there is a smattering of streetwear influence; from both shorn and ruched trousers to frankengarment t-shirts, Trombatore is broadening her audience and making nods to everyday wear. Whether or not these will become hints for future projects remains to be seen, but their inclusion certainly opens paths to the future and encapsulates the brand’s fusion of traditional clothing with contemporary forms.
Styling by Matt KingArt Direction Consultancy by Arian De VosDesign Assistants Caitlin O’Connor and Kolya Nicholas
Casting by Irene Manicone
Production by Antony Waller @ AW+C
Makeup by Sharryn Hinchliffe and the M·A·C PRO Team for @maccosmetics
UKHair by Aaron Firmstone for Bumble and Bumble
Nails by Hannah Bent for Mii Cosmetics
Photography by Ines Bahr
Music by Hasna Beats by PHUF lyrics by Elisa Trombatore
PR by IPR London
London Sponsor Dormeuil UK
