Objects of Desire

Scarlett Rhoda David-Gray is a dressmaker and rubber enthusiast who tugs silk threads until they unravel and then hopes for the best. Throughout their time at the RCA they have been pursuing the marginalised body, debaucherous and degraded/ing, via 30s bias cut crepe, rotten chiffon capes, and pewter contortions, leading to a set of garments created with their own destruction in mind. It is time to turn the fashion language of the bourgeoisie against itself. They have let their work become a cannibalistic parody of luxury in some attempt at fortune telling, a kind of cloth-divination that speaks to a future of queer degeneracy and castrative cuts. But it also talks much of the here-and-now, the oppression and fear felt by many in Britain, and debates the need for self indulgence in the face of a tumultuous present.