Elegance and eroticism as the lynchpin inspiration behind her debut collection, Vivienne Heilig, originally from Geneva, Switzerland, is a fashion design womenswear student who explored the challenges women face when dressing seductively.
Subtle eroticism in photography and art has often attracted her attention such as Ambera Wellmann’s paintings that portray sexual desire from a female perspective in all its complexity.
Heilig says her work that has the power to reveal and conceal interesting in relation to fashion.
The starting point to her concept was an interview she heard with the psychotherapist Ester Perel discussing female sexuality. She found her explanation of female narcissism and modesty in the context of seduction inspiring. Heilig’s work combines and opposes elegance and eroticism in a modern form as well as explores and questions exposure.
The 2020 graduate from London College of Fashion cut or fastened the garments in ways that imply the possibility of change or undressing. When a body is covered in clothing, observers can reasonably assume that it will continue to remain clothed for the time being. However, when the garment gapes or shifts on the body, the relationship between clothes and the body is destabilised.
Vivienne Heilig explored gaping the garments to create an unconventional erotic gaze—such as showing the clavicles or the shoulder blade.
In order to create a tension between sexual desire and conservatism, she inverts the codes of traditional associations we have with garments, fabrics and cuts. Fabric texture and a strong color palette are an important value to her work. She employs colors such as black, grey old pink, lilac and beige which evoke a mysterious femininity and clashes fabrics such as latex with a delicate knit for example.
The juxtaposition of the conventional and erotic challenge the norm and the ideas of traditional beauty. Her final collection fully embodies the modern French woman living in Paris who enjoys styling pieces and combining and opposing elegance and eroticism.