Our Favourite Period Drama Is On
Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen, the Brooklyn-based artist and designer, is practically obsessed with researching fertility, motherhood, and women’s bodily functions, specifically in how to represent those subjects in dressmaking. She’s in love with deadstock textiles and antique linens, and designs for soft, evolving bodies, constantly in search of opportunities to expose the body and all their strange and sacred habits.
Her FW26 collection is called Birthing Circle, and opens in creamy white, Victorian era inspired, disheveled looks. Each look is cut twice: once in naturally white secondhand linens and vintage nylon, then again in its red-dyed twin. Also: the red is meant to be red as Period red. Birth blood red. Abortion red. Bodily function red.
Whalen has taken inspiration looking at pre-industrial pregnancy corsets, sanitary belts, early maternity wear — garments designed for bodies in flux. The first look has a cardigan twisted as if a hungry baby had just yanked it impatiently. There’s a slit cut clean over the breast: the possibility of nourishment becomes a design principle. Combined with a shimmery petticoat, a sheer bustle layered over it, it comes together as an unravelled Victorian ghost-mother.
Further on, shiny, structured corsets are layered over matte knits. Hip pads are small and loving, while summoning some fertile iconography. Halfway through, pants appear — new for Whalen. They’re cut to accommodate hips that might widen and stomachs that might swell, water that might break. Even when she uses corsetry, often associated with the constriction of women, hers feel collaborative with the body more than punishing.
Her show notes include the line: “That we may all live in the communal weight of motherhood.” It’s hard not to think about how loaded that idea feels since Roe v. Wade was overturned and motherhood has acquired a sharper political edge. Tradwifery floats around the algorithm in prairie dresses and sourdough starter. But Whalen’s version of fertility isn’t nostalgic or submissive. It’s celebrational, bodily and devotional.
