Revel in My Autonomy

Lauren Constantino

Revel in My Autonomy is a women’s cocktail wear collection, blended with intimate finishings of lingerie wear. The collection encompasses a gothic story of female imprisonment: a heroine battling confinement, desire and rage. Drawing from gothic works surrounding women’s hysteria and captivity (Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman), this collection emphasizes the power of autonomy and self discovery. Revel in My Autonomy explores the trajectory of how the madwoman can escape her own form of imprisonment–whether its domesticity, identity or abuse–through accessing her agency.

Each garment combines expressive, romantic themes with a dark and eerie twist. Revel in My Autonomy takes inspiration from the romantic gothic style: cathedral architecture, high pointed arches, stained windows, dark superstition and the supernatural. These are represented by textural elements, such as burnout fabric and leather accessories. Iconically dark, romantic gothic textures are represented through fabrics, as well as novel techniques of hand beading.



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ABOUT THE DESIGNER

Lauren Constantino

Lauren Constantino is a Toronto-based seamstress and fashion designer with experience in costuming, production sewing and alterations. She is a graduating student, completing her fourth year of Fashion Design at Toronto Metropolitan University. Specializing in expressive and romantic womenswear, her work takes inspiration from the 70’s, the occult and the gothic. Combining this with hand beadwork, and a focus on fabrication, she creates whimsical, fluid, textural pieces for daily wear. Lauren’s work is informed by her intersectional identities through a feminist lens, with a focus on women’s agency and the abuse created within positions of power. Her identity-based work aims to be inherently inclusive and liberating, seeking to unravel common experiences amongst the communities that she is a part of.

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