Who are you wearing?

Femke de Vries received a grant for the development of new work. Who are you wearing? is a project that explores which nonhuman animals we wear and encounter in fashion media. On a daily basis, we come across them through the materiality of our clothing, leather, wool, fur, silk, feathers, as well as through their representation in images. While the fashion industry embodies extensive human–animal relationships, the processes that turn animals into garments and images disregard their actual lives. Often absent as subjects in the field of fashion, this research seeks to bring animals themselves into focus and to foster a more critical and considerate approach to our relationship with them.

Femke is a researcher, writer, artist, and teacher whose practice centres on the cultural, social, and political role of dress and fashion. Rather than producing fashion, she uses clothing and fashion as a lens to expose cultural norms and power structures in contemporary (Western, capitalist) society. Her recent works address the relationships between human and nonhuman animals in fashion, highlighting overlooked connections while proposing new and speculative ones, as well as the role of text in fashion media and its influence on fashion vocabulary and narratives. Working with existing visual, textual, and textile materials, which she collects, reworks, and rearranges, Femke aims both to lay bare the status quo and to suggest speculative alternatives, ideally rooted in care and consideration. Her work manifests in installations, archives, texts, assemblages, workshops, publications, and often takes collaborative and participatory forms.