To Wear Your Insides - LeMÁine

The freeing rapture of elucidation is only known to those who create. Some need to interpret in order to lift a burden of inflicted pain or internal misunderstanding by channeling into craft. Designer Lena M. Áine is an East London-based fashion designer, with a background in fine arts and illustration. Lena planned on studying fine art, but when they got to college they became entranced by wearing that art, and applying it to interests like gender identity and self-expression. Largely construction centered, their movements with the creation of textiles to look like gore and blood is what they are known for. Their brand LeMÁine has pieces with complex intention relating to personal experience. They conceptualize individual truth, encompassing fashion as concept. Their art wields intense emotion to create fashions that are erotically grotesque, realistic, and contemporary- transcribed through a costumier’s hands.

They have a first-class degree in fashion design from Norwich University of the Arts and are heavily inspired by graphic and horror imagery in their work. They have always considered the body as form, originally exploring it through study and drawing. There was no textile journey in mind, but it organically became their means of expression. So began their androgynous, provocative silhouettes and accessories. 

Fashion is a means of rawness, as there is a vulnerability in displaying your insides as dress outside of your body. The nature of clothes is to cover or accentuate, but Lena harnesses this expectation and extracts its guts using a violent grace. Applying these instricts to their life, they use clothes to interpret personal trauma. Their most recent set of three pieces was conceptualized while they were in an ambulance after being sexually assaulted. The top represents the feeling Lena describes after the rape- it has no sheer fabric, it is dense with strips of vascular crimson. It depicts the urge to rip one’s skin off, to get as far away from a physically hurt body and a loss of protection within the mind. The capsule collection goes on to embody not just the immediate feelings after the violation, but the inability to heal that is forced and pressured by society and the effects SA continues to have on victims. A work of art, a scultupre, a mirror, a place of solace, the ability to heal and express.

In terms of garment construction, Lena’s sanguine signature fabric is an imitation flesh textile. It is upcycled, going through many processes to create this latex-based material; but there is minimal public information about the specifics of production, presumably to guard their creative license. In London, it is only Lena and their assistant working on the fruition of LeMÁine designs. Their inspiration is experience- which is looked back upon and reinterpriated in personal and interpersonal contexts. Their work is current and raw, reflecting experience that otherwise would remain unprocessed and unaware.

The theory of their work is not to only be “pretty” but to be “powerful”. It is the way they communicate and explore growth and grief, identity and relationship. They are connecting with others who resonate with their designs and message. Horrifically realistic, while intimately elegant, Lena is crying- ensuring their work be confronted. Even those that do not relate with the content of their pieces feel an enthralling draw. The couture constructed with gore, despite being grume, is natural. For we all look the same on the inside.

References

Áine, Lena M. “About/Contact.” LeMÁine, lemaine.co.uk/pages/about

Áine, Lena M. “Lena m Á Speak.” Search Portfolio, Graduate Fashion

Week, www.graduatefashionweek.com/search-portfolios/lena-m-a-speak 

Dyke, Isobel Van. “Julia Fox’s ‘Blood Dress’ Is Now up for Auction.” Julia Fox’s ‘Blood Dress’ Is Now up for Auction, Evening Standard, www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/julia-fox-s-blood-dress-auction-lemaine-fashion-designer-london-raising-money-es-magazine-b1055163.html

Áine, Lena M. “TW - SA, Suicide.” Instagram, LeMÁine, Sept. 2023, https://www.instagram.com/p/CxTxB_aNZ-Q/

Elsoueidi, Emily. “Lemáine - Flesh Fashion.” Metal Magazine, https://metalmagazine.eu/en/post/lemaine