What goes through your mind while you see a pregnant body. What associations, thoughts, feelings, emotions are conjured up for you in that moment? Are they ones of purity? Or sexualisation? The Virgin Mary or the MILF category of Pornhub? 

That is the query designer Dimitra Petsa is exploring along with her latest collection, The Water Broke, the second chapter in her Wetness project which takes as its themes bodily fluids, femininity, maternity, and the malleability of the feminine form. “The feminine body continually changes,” says Petsa. “Its physical form may be very fluid, depending on where you might be in your cycle your breasts can go up two sizes, your body and your face get swollen after which later all of it goes down. We now have this elasticity and malleability of body.”    

Wanting to explore this fluctuating corporeality in addition to the ways the maternal body has existed in patriarchal imaginings, Petsa designed a set that permits for the shape-shifting female body and celebrates the myriad bodily fluids it produces, from breast milk to vaginal discharge. 

For the accompanying lookbook, the designer worked with an almost entirely female team in a shoot that teases out the eroticism of motherhood and female sexuality through a female gaze.

Why did you select to give attention to the maternal body? What message did you desire to convey together with your depiction of the maternal body and motherhood?

Dimitra Petsa: I used to be pondering quite a bit in regards to the maternal water, the womb, the thought of mother, the malleability of the feminine body and experience. My first project ‘Wetness’ was based quite a bit on the current and my current experience with bodily fluids. With ‘The Water Broke’ project I desired to look more backwards and inwards. The research of this project was focused quite a bit on female archetypes, the Virgin, the Mother, the Whore, the Bride, the Witch, the Goddess. I feel ultimately this manifested into the largest focus being the pregnant body since it is essentially the most in-between of all these terms and likewise addressed lots of points in my research.

I used to be very interested by the sexuality of a pregnant woman and was looking quite a bit into ecstatic births which is when a girl experiences pleasure and even an orgasm while giving birth which is clearly the exact opposite of what we all know from popular culture (the screaming, the horrid experience). 

But I also desired to indicate that the feminine body continually changes, its physical form may be very fluid, depending on where you might be in your cycle your breasts can go up two sizes, your body and your face get swollen after which later all of it goes down. We now have this elasticity and malleability of body, which may be very near pregnancy in a way however it is defined totally different within the patriarchal society. One is romanticised and the opposite is hidden. For those who are going to perceive bodily fluctuation and fertility in a mystical/religious way it ought to be the miracle of birth and the miracle of the menstrual cycle.

If I could fit it into one message I desired to convey with reference to motherhood is that we must always embrace all the various sides of our shared female body today and never censor our own experience. The pregnant body is just not suddenly pleasure-less.

The sharp nails stand out against the softness of the colors, fabrics and bodies of the ladies. What went into the choice to have these claw-like nails?

Dimitra Petsa: The nails got here out of conversations with Sylvie (Macmillan) on what each garment meant and my research. She really captured nuances of the concept and brought them out. For instance, in the image where Lily is wearing an open embroidered dress revealing her pregnant belly she has natural nails however the last two are super long and round. This reflected the uneven body, the roundness, the potential of growth, the malleability of the feminine body but then also its hardness. 

Claws’ contrasting the softness was also a component that Jess (Hag Stone) brought out within the concept. Once we were developing the jewellery for this collection, she saw quite a bit the animalistic a part of the body, especially in birth and in depictions of female archetypes which is an enormous a part of what “The Water Broke” project is about.

What’s it about fluids that interests you a lot? Why do you’re thinking that they’ve such an association with femininity to you?

Dimitra Petsa: I feel for me rethinking my bodily fluids was my journey of growing up and rethinking how I perceive my body. I at all times felt very connected to the ocean so I feel what drew me to focus a lot on bodily fluids is that I saw them as an expression of the ocean in me and the feminine body on the whole.

I feel they’re very related to the feminine experience, they’ve the aspect of shame, self-pleasure, the strive for control and hopefully the inevitable give up. And likewise in a more physical sense, we’re fabricated from water and we’re continually wet. Sweat, vaginal fluids (that are constant), period blood, tears, breast milk, etc. We try a lot to cover them and it’s self-inflicting punishment, it’s shame for our body, shame for our experience which may be very closely tied in with the word femininity.

How did the hair and make-up complement and enhance your designs? And help tell the story you desired to tell?

Dimitra Petsa: Make-up, which was done by Mattie White, was based on the skin flush while giving birth and the skin flush when you will have sex. That’s why you may see in a number of pictures the redness on the chest. We focused quite a bit on mixing all these archetypes, the post-coital glow and the virginal blushed cheeks. I feel the makeup really tells its own story of that fluidity between the archetypes and expressed the concept by itself. 

Hair sensible we selected to go along with really straight cut lines, which contrasted the roundness and the softness of the clothes and the body. This was connected to the corsets in the gathering that push one breast in imposing a straight line while the opposite breast spills out. 

All the things on this photoshoot had its own reason for being there which reflects quite a bit how I work once I create a set of clothes it isn’t about purely aesthetics. I like the thought you could see a set of images many times and see these various things like reading a poem.

What do you hope people take away about womanhood from these images?

Dimitra Petsa: I hope all and sundry can take something different, I feel there is simply a lot you may do about communicating a really specific idea and I never strive for that. I attempt to create work that’s meaningful to the people I work with and myself. But I at all times actually need women it to feel something and if nothing else I hope that folks can appreciate its beauty.  

Designer Dimitra Petsa, photographer Nick Hadfield, stylist Kate Iorga, make-up Mattie White, nails Sylvie Macmillan, set designers Ellie Koslowsky & Clara Boulard, jewellery designer Hag Stone, models Louise Earwaker, Alina Stashinova, Jade o Belle & Lilja Hronn