SUBVERSIVE FEMININITY

Subversive Femininity

A letter was sent into The Vampire’s Wife from someone called Lisa from Dorset. She called the dresses ‘shockingly feminine’! She asked if I could define The Vampire’s Wife’s idea of femininity

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The Vampire’s Wife’s concept of femininity is based on the idea that the female form is inherently powerful—and that it does not have to masculinize or militarise itself in order to compete in today’s world. We believe that if you put on a Vampire’s Wife dress the war is already won. The Vampire’s Wife concept of femininity perplexes some because it uses traditional ideas of femininity without shame or irony. The Vampire’s Wife femininity, with its frills, bows and ruffles, is in itself defiant and subversive. It is mysterious and sensuous and even in one of the more demure dresses, there is a lightness of touch, along with a charged sensuality—this unabashed femininity presents itself as a silhouette.

I have always found the female silhouette to be the most beautiful and powerful of things and the very essence of mutinous femininity. When a woman puts on a Vampire’s Wife dress she inhabits not only the silhouette but also the space around her. This feminine aura around the silhouette acts as a kind of exquisite force field.

The Vampire’s Wife, in the end, uses femininity as an event in itself. A person who wears a Vampire’s Wife dress hovers in a space of her own making—powerful, present and deeply feminine.

Love, Susie x