ABOUT
An extension of an artistic practice, S-E-W-N is a design brand created by Stephanie Wilson, featuring wearable pieces of art.
Using a combination of recycled ‘deadstock’ items and handmade items created from scratch, designs are created by combining them with various printing techniques and sculptural tailoring to create statement pieces and collections which comment upon social issues.
(Including distortive body ideals, gender concepts, disability, gender inequality, mental health, etc).
Recent projects have focused upon adaptive clothing for disabled customers and non-gendered designs which feature tailoring and designs to help flatter all body shapes and biological features (which may otherwise cause distress, discomfort or concern - please note these designs are NOT intended to 'hide' but embrace and enhance the bodies they clothe and empower those that wear them).
Stephanie Wilson is an artist making; clothing, sculpture, video and installation-based work, living and working in Edinburgh, UK.
Combining image, objects, fabrics, video and sculpture her practice generates chimera-like forms. Articulating and reflecting a restless sense of mutating materiality and fleeting tangibility symptomatic of our increasingly digitally facilitated interactions.
Incorporating biological shapes with high-tech display and advertisement aesthetics, she re-contextualises and re-appropriates the desiring lure of seductive surfaces to scratch at, and reveal the skin below. Stuck in a fragile state of existence, her works leak and bleed into one another, exposing the porous reality of the blemish-free boundaries, which project and define unachievable ideals upon permeable ‘bodies’.
Rendered through these hybrid assemblages her works maintain a sense of presence and absence; bodies, screens, fabric and flesh are all flattened out.
Void of their volume they are free to perform constant tonal shifts exposing the gaps between physical intimacies and conceptual distances.
Collaborating and supporting FashionABLE
fashionABLE fashion show took place in the iconic Scottish Parliament, that was chosen to raise awareness and celebrate Year or Youth. Participating in this non for profit event provided young people, including those young at heart, with something very positive and empowering to be involved in. FashionABLE supporting education, acceptance and equality, had put the young people at the heart of it all. The focus, as for previous shows, was on the integrity of the fashion, and in 2018 young people also had an opportunity to have hands on experience in making parts of the fashion. Young people were introduced to established designers through fashion making workshops where they had a chance to learn new skills and/or improve existing. As well, young people were fully ingrained in the entire project, from the initial planning stages to the very delivery of the event -with all its aspects on the day (organising team, runway and decoration team, music & dance team, and/or modelling etc.).
Collaborating and supporting FashionABLE
Last year we wanted to take a different approach and focus and take more time on the confidence building, as opposed to the fashion show being the end product - so we organised the sessions for people from all walks of life to feel confident, empowered and happy with themselves. The modelling workshops, also including mini portfolio building took place at the Ocean Terminal, that is so much more than a shopping centre – offering a unique shopping experience at Edinburgh's waterfront, with great mix of retail, leisure, health and dining options! Ocean Terminal kindly supported and funded the project, and with industry experts Models of Diversity’s CEO Angel Sinclair and professional photographer James Alexander Lyon, the participants were able to learn new skills or develop the existing, as well get the images from their modelling and confidence workshops.
