Why does fashion have such a problem in accepting all bodies they way they are, and recognising the beauty in different shapes and sizes? I know, I know, we’ve heard it all before, yet depressingly little changes.

Our guest this week has had enough! Self-described as “that body morphing b*tch”, Michaela Starck is a super-talented London-based Aussie dreamboat who’s beautiful work includes her own glorious self, as well as Paris-worthy, bow-bedecked frillies.

A frank convo on fat-shaming, where the body positivity movement doesn’t go far enough, and the magical powers of backing your own vision. What, even when people in your life keep telling you you’ll never make it? Especially then! Take that, naysayers!

NOTES

ABOUT MICHAELA Michaela is an Australian artist and couturier based in London. Her main practice is to create custom, one-off corsetry and Couture pieces that are designed to sculpt and disfigure the body.  More here.

Stark often models and photographs her own pieces as a crucial part of her artistic practice. As a costume designer and creative director, she also collaborates with to create custom-pieces for artist’s performances, editorial and video. Like who? Try, Beyonce!

VICTORIA’S SECRET staged its first parade, featuring hot models in skimpy undies, in 1995. Over the years it got more and more extravagant, with ridiculous diamond-strewn “fantasy bras” and mega famous musical acts. The models, dubbed Angels, became automatic supers. And barely anyone noticed that it was sexist and one-note, while the actual underwear was unethically made from climate-wrecking synthetics. Once lauded by fashion media (for years, it was the most clicked story on the Vogue website, all the models we interviewed were desperate to “get fit for the castings”).

Then, in 2019, it all fell apart. “The cancelation of the 2019 Victoria's Secret fashion show, broadcast yearly on network television, came amid several years of controversies for the brand: Australian supermodel Robyn Lawley in 2018 called a boycott on the brand for "telling women there is only one kind” of beautiful body, parent company L Brands’ CEO Les Wexner's ties to Jeffrey Epstein were revealed in 2019, and a 2020 investigation by the New York Times said the brand had fostered a “culture of misogyny, bullying and harassment.” Via Forbes. Listen to Robyn on Episode 186 of Wardrobe Crisis.

The culture had changed. Or had it…?

Like many of us, Michaela Stark grew up watching the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. In 2023, she was invited to work on the reboot, creating three unique custom looks for models Jade O’Belle and Ceval, as well as herself. "My initial feeling was skepticism. But as I got more involved, I got more and more excited that I felt like it was truly a project where I was able to take my own vision for my own work," she told Vogue. Cue the inevitable was “backlash” from some miserable meanies. At what point do we stop describing online trolling that way & tell it like it is - misogyny & violence.

Michaela has launched her own COUTURE LINGERIE line. These impeccably hand-made pieces are crafted with “the specific intention of contorting and disfiguring the body.” Dazed says her “delicate underwear subverts archaic beauty ideals and celebrates our so-called imperfections”.

Michaela studied fashion at QUT in Brisbane, Australia and credits the school with encouraging her to take the craft of pattern making, construction and sewing, seriously. (Yes, Big Girls Don’t Cry Anymore was an actual lingerie store in the city when she was growing up.)

CORSETS THROUGH HISTORY Women through history have had complicated relationships with corsetry. These items have been worn by women (and some men, but mostly women) since the C16th. What began as a close-fitting sleeveless bodice evolved into a undergarment with stays made of whalebone, and then steel, that encircled the ribs and compressed the natural waist.

The shape of the corset evolved over its 400 years in use, alternating between longer varieties that covered the hips to shorter versions that centred on the waistline. Corsets helped shape the body into distinctive silhouettes, from the hourglass shape popular in the 1800s to the “S” figure of the 1900s.

Getting rid of them in the 1920s is still seen as liberating by many. But this is from French Vogue: “Long derided as a patriarchal instrument of torture that deformed the female body, historians now argue that that there was no one experience of wearing a corset, and that some women may have found them positive.”

BTW, Michaela made the corsets & styled Sam Smith’s 2023 Perfect magazine cover. More here.

BODY IMAGE Studies about that reveal how effed up body image is among young people, like this one from the Mental Health Foundation in the UK. And I quote: “While body image concerns affect both boys and girls, research suggests that girls are more likely to be dissatisfied with their appearance and their weight than boys (24,25). In our survey, 46% of girls reported that their body image causes them to worry ‘often’ or ‘always’ compared to 25% of boys. Body image concerns can also affect very young children. One review found studies identifying body dissatisfaction in children under the age of six, though estimates of the degree of dissatisfaction varied widely depending on how it was measured.”

PUSH BACK Michaela’s body-morphing work stands in reaction to stereotypes of what’s deemed beautiful by the mainstream, and what society tells women they should (and conversely, should not) be ‘confident’ about. Despite some progress, fashion and media still perpetuate one dominant beauty ideal (white & skinny) over and above the rest. If anything, today societal pressure - particularly on young women - to look a certain way is ramping up…

ENTRENCHED Here’s a quote from the feminist writer Roxane Gay: she notes how she thinks about her body all the time - “how it looks, how it feels, how I can make it smaller, what I should put into it, what I am putting into it, what has been done to it, what I do to it, what I let others do to it. This bodily preoccupation is exhausting.” She writes, and: “I don’t think I know any woman who doesn’t hate herself and her body at least a little bit.”

NICK KNIGHT “In 2022, Image-maker Nick Knight collaborated with the artist and designer Michaela Stark on a 3D fashion sculpture which challenges beauty standards and representations of the female form in the 21st century, featuring sitters Dodo Potato and Jade O'Belle.” Discover on ShowStudio

Here’s a good interview with Michaela from Aussie Bazaar.

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