Bella Arini

Excerpts from an Interview with the Designer

Recorded on: Feb 20 2023

Tell me about your collection!

My concept is birth. Which may be a little bit weird at first, but I want to explore something that I feel like made me uncomfortable, because I feel like a lot of people kind of place this idea on women that that's something that I have to do: be a mother and give life for someone else. And for me, that's something that's always made me really uncomfortable. I wanted to kind of explore the nuances. It's not this idyllic, or beautiful process. It takes something away from women.

How are you translating these ideas into the collection?

I’m using traditional symbols of femininity, such as orchids and pomegranates. I think a lot of times women have a lot of symbols rooted in nature, and sometimes food and fruit, which I think is a little bit problematic in and of itself. So I want to incorporate those in my design as well. For one of my dresses, I want it to look like it was pieced together the way they have to literally sew back together your body and your organs.

What do you want your collection to say about women and their relationship to birth?

For me, in my experience being a woman, so many people, even now that we're pretty young, fairly young people still, ask about your future, like, How many kids do you want? I think that is such a weird question that only women are ever asked, because it is this inherent codified norm that is placed on women that we have to use our bodies to produce another body for whatever reason. And I think that, again, people think it's such a beautiful, idealized thing. But I feel like, it's just absolutely not. I don't want to take away from birth. Because I think it is a cool thing, it's a very cool thing to be able to make another body. But I think it is a process that physically and emotionally takes such a toll on people that can give birth. And I think that that is something that I wanted to show. I don't want my designs to be like, ugly or grotesque in a way, but I do want them to incorporate elements and things that people don't really think about and don't take into account, the emotional toll that it can take as a person that has a uterus that can give birth.

Why is fashion the best way to express these ideas?

I think for my collection in particular, I think being able to have it represented on a body is important. Because again, it is taking back your body and portraying something that is happening to your body in a way that you think maybe tells your narrative in a more specific way or more accurately for you. So again, none of my models, as far as I know, have given birth yet, but I think it is important to be able to portray that on a body that maybe necessarily hasn't always been seen as their own body.

What challenges have come up?

The hardest part of any design process for me is if I feel like I'm not quite capturing exactly what I think in my head, what I want to do, or I know there's something missing.It makes me completely not want to continue with the process. I want to give up because I feel like I'm not to the best of my ability, achieving the design that I want. So I think that was kind of a tough thing for me to be like, okay, it's okay to start this and workshop it and build off of it, as opposed to knowing exactly every single element you want to do right out of the gate.