25 Aug 2021DisruptorsInflatable fashion empowers women to take up space
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Fashion brand Feyfey is trying to get women comfortable with the idea of taking up space through a satirical line of clothing that inflates to cartoonish sizes. The line comes as the working world grapples with restarting their commute to the office and diminished personal space.

Author
Jonathan HassallJonathan Hassall is a senior behavioural analyst in the data and insights team at Canvas8. A published academic with a master's degree in psychology, he’s brought cutting-edge research techniques to some of the largest brands in the world. He can usually be found immersed in niche musical genres or being a doting father to a panoply of plants and a primadonna cat.

Artist and fashion designer Feyfey has created a line of inflatable ready-to-wear designer garments for women. The line, called 'Slowly But Surely Take Up Space', uses cartoonish silliness to speak to the pressures put on women to constantly change their behaviours and outfits to be taken seriously. Pieces like ‘The Redeemer’ highlight the violation of personal space millions of women experience on their daily commute in major cities, and the designer wants to get women comfortable with taking up space. “I imagine that women will wear these clothes to work in the uninflated form, and on their way home from a tiring day of work, they’ll balloon themselves up, enjoying the expanded personal space and a moment of attention from everyone."

As people's lives slowly return to normal, crowded commuting is entering back into people's lives and will likely impact the freedom from personal space invasion people have had during the pandemic. In pre-pandemic times, sexual harassment on commutes in Japan necessitated the development of anti-groping devices, and in the UK, 71% of women have experienced some form of sexual harassment in a public space. Even the shift to working from home hasn’t freed women from unwanted sexual advances; there’s been a rise in reports of workplace harassment moving online. Twitch is taking a strong stand against online harassment by involving a third-party law firm to investigate.