Bold, confident, sexy and never demure - the lingerie of Dutch
designer Marlies Dekkers adorns the Rotterdam Kunsthal art gallery
to mark 15 years of an illustrious career.
Black dominates the collection on display in a two-month
exhibition, with hardly a spot of white or touch of colour to break
the contrast against the artificial, pale mannequin skin.
But the most striking constant, the signature on the majority of
the g-strings, guepieres (a type of corset) and bras she designs:
the straps.
One, two, sometimes three straps cross a breast, creep around a
neck, snake across a hip in Dekkers' distinctive seal which has
characterised her collections throughout the years.
"I tell the same story repeatedly. There is nothing wrong with
that," she told reporters at the opening of the exhibition.
Her lingerie, said the designer, "is perfectly adapted to the
female body".
And why change that, "since that is what pleases them?"
Having started with a grant from the Dutch ministry of economic
affairs, it took hard work and a lot of persistence to get Dekkers
to where she is today, having built up a niche empire of nine
boutiques from Rotterdam in her mother country to Paris and New
York.
Starting her career from her top-floor apartment in Amsterdam
in
1993, Dekkers managed within four years to become a supplier to 40
outlets around the world - doing everything, from the design,
sewing, distribution and publicity, herself.
Her real break came four years later when the Kunsthal in
Rotterdam invited her to stage an exhibition - the first of its
kind in an art gallery anywhere in the world and firmly putting her
on the map.
The very next year, she was invited to design a collection for a
big Dutch brand, and by 2000 she had boosted her number of outlets
to 300.
Today she has 1,000, and receives regular fan mail from happy
clients.
Having won several awards, including the Dutch Businesswoman of
the Year and the CILA Award in New York for best fashion lingerie,
both in 2007, Dekkers counts among her clients such well-known
singers as Christina Aguilera, Diana Ross and Kylie Minogue.
And now she returns to the Rotterdam Kunsthal, lifting a corner
of the veil over the universe in which she finds her
inspiration.
A hotchpotch of famous quotes and classical art pieces are used
to illustrate her thinking - from the ancient Greek philosopher
Plato on love, French poet Charles Baudelaire enthusing about the
garter belt, and excerpts in Dutch from French author George
Bataille's novel The Tears of Eros displayed in flashing
letters.
A table by painter Piet Mondriaan and chair by furniture
designer Gerrit Rietveld, both fellow Hollanders, represent
Dekkers' work in "the Dutch design," according to her spokeswoman
Annabel Cnossen.
And to illustrate her erotic influences, the exhibition uses a
drawing by Picasso and oil canvasses of South African painter
Marlene Dumas.
But many a visitor is left at a loss in the jumble, confused
about the link between the masterpieces and the tiny fabric
artworks created by Dekkers.
The artist defends her references.
"Plato, Nietzsche, Borges, Antonioni, Greenaway, Fassbinder,
Botticelli: each artist or writer who said something sensible about
love, about relations between the sexes or the portrayal of the
(female) body, is adopted and incorporated into her thinking, and
finally in her work," explained Cnossen.
Tellingly, the works of photographers Helmut Newton and
Nobuyoshi Araki, best known for their erotic images of the naked
female form, are also on display: titillating, alluring ... like
Dekkers' lingerie.
Source: SMH
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that we are slightly bigger and if companies truly want to make a difference and sell more product, they need to listen to a large segment of the female market which is the plus size niche.
