Spirit of Aether
by Alexandra Debler
I’ve always been good at balancing what I’ve wanted with what other people want, but not so good at disregarding. Playing ‘the game’ for so long has made it so I often quite quickly realize what people want from me. It is not something I can turn off or disregard - or perhaps, I don’t want to. This is a point of contention within my work. I fiercely want to go against all you ask of me - disregard my nature and make something that you don’t like purely to be controversial. I struggle to do so.
In spring of 2022 I made a collection about emotions - the way in which I process my grief. Much like my more instinctual art I could not explain why I made the decisions I did: a wide shouldered, red suit about depression. Almost no one understood it.
My teacher defended me during my critique, that some people turn loud and outgoing to hide what is underneath. This was his way of explaining my choice of using a bright, eye-catching red. A huge silhouette. Though I think now, I was fighting to find myself, or make myself heard - a beacon of who I am. Make it scream I am here, I am present, and I am a creator, and even still I felt as though I was lost amongst the voices in my mind telling me what others wished I did.
I loved my suit. My critique was terrible.
Alex Debler working on garment, 2023In those coming months I mulled a lot over my time at RISD. What a tragically complicated relationship we had. I had dreamed of this school since I was a child. If only I got in, I’d achieve success; If I came, I’d become something worthwhile. What a farce it all turned out to be. In those months I felt the toll of all I was robbed of - not just the tragedies of 2021, but an institution built upon false promises. I would not find my success here. A shattered dream built upon a decade of rose tinted glasses; It made me bitter.
The summer of 2022 I made myself a promise to not bend to what others wanted. I chose tarot as my source of inspiration for my next collection because it is a tool meant to be interpreted, a stop farther down the road of my Spring collection. In it I could create whatever I wanted - abstracted and captivating, to build a world just for me. I wanted to paint my garments because painting makes me feel the most free. The ability to lose myself in the hypnotics of creation, there exists no one but me and the scratch of my pallet knife against the canvas. It is a meditation to be lost in the rhythmic noises, the soft music I put on to filter the city beyond me. Hours go by with just the two of us in a peace created by my own world.
Fashion lacked this for me. Patterning and sewing take a precision and delicate-ness that other mediums simply lacked. I was not raised with a drafting book in hand, but a brush and pencil. This medium was not so freeing to me - How could I make it so?
I painted my garments in dyes. I splashed them, stuck my hands in powder and rubbed them along their trains. I sullied them - these lovely things, delicately sewed with their shiny little crystals, silks and wools and cottons. My garments became my paintings, my muses of chaos and creation.
Midway through their making, they reminded me of Cai Guo-Qiang’s more abstract paintings, when he relinquishes control fully to the gunpowder, to the chaos and beauty. I felt a piece of myself slot back into place - a rekindling of the girl, unafraid of creating. I pushed the drama, a flare of regality and power.
Tarot has many instances in which the masculine and feminine are used as descriptors of a card's meaning. Both are strong in the tarot, there is no distinction of a differentiation in power balance - they mean simply what they mean, and what they mean is something powerful. As a female designer, I wanted to push the idea of feminine being something very strong. A professor asked me long ago, after I told him I was attracted to power dressing, what does that mean? In society power dressing is often to take the silhouette of the masculine man - power suits, boxy trousers, big shoulders - who is to say we cannot create power out of a feminine form? That was a distinct goal in my collection, to create these beautiful, but very powerful, feminine clothes. I put a cis male model in what I call the “wedding dress” (named so because I repurposed my mother’s wedding dress - it’s a very emotional piece, for me)- and the power of him, in the confidence of femininity, was striking. I put a woman in a dress exposing her chest, and never once felt as though the garment became sexual. No, she was feminine and so very confident. She was breathtaking. They became as ethereal as I dreamed them to be.
In the end it found me stewing in my regrets of all that could have been - an unchangeable knowledge that all this time, I had turned my back to myself so much I no longer knew who stood behind me. If you take anything from my collection, Dear Reader, take with it the lessons I’ve learned: Regret is useless. You are never the same person today as years ago. I was not ready then, to be who I am now. To be the designer who created the Spirit of Aether.
Some notes: The research of this collection was supported by the Morgan Library & Museum, who allowed me to see the Visconti Sforza deck (of which I drew most of my inspiration) up close, in person! Additionally, this collection was sponsored by Swarovski, who sent me an amazing array of crystals to work with.
Of course I must list my darling models, of which this would not have been possible: Paige Lind, Drew Leventhal, Lio Skramko, Ethan Hoskins, and Isabella Choi.
