“Internal Flight”

For my collection “Internal Flight” I wanted to investigate the theories of the Swiss psychologist
Carl Jung. I wanted to focus on his idea of the anima and the animus which is the women in every
man respectively the man in every women. Jung was convinced that every person had a vast
inner landscape were our core ideas, he called them archetypes, come from. One of the most
important archetypes for Jung was the one of the opposite gender. Formed by every interaction
and thought we would have with or about the other gender and how we process this.
This seemed like a very fascinating theory for men since I have always felt and been told that I
had a strong female side within me. Be this through being emotional, empathetic or just caring
sometimes to a point that made me question my masculinity and especially our societal view on
masculinity. A big part of this exploration was also my experiments with psychoactive substances
such as LSD. These substances allowed me to detach from my physical body and my ego and
dive into a place of being were gender is not a defining aspect of who I am nor of how society
sees me. It allowed me to observe my normal thinking patterns when it came to questions of
gender and stereotypes and how they were influencing and restricting my everyday life.
I had always been a big fan of psychology mostly because the human brain and the way it
interacts with our body, soul and ego seems very intriguing yet mysteriously out of reach. The only
way to get answers to the questions that arose for me, was to go within myself and give my inner
world the space it needed to unfold itself.
I had very little visual inspiration for my collection. As I began working on it, I did look at a lot of
visual artworks from Jung himself but also from artists that were inspired by him. Most notably the
Swiss painter Peter Birkhäuser. I consciously choose not to look at any clothing references since
this would have restricted my brain too much. Later in the process I also started to the my own
photographs as inspiration. Not because they were directly linked to my theme, but because I felt
that my photographs are in general a much more unfiltered expression of what goes on inside of
me. Overall I tried to not look at any images when I was creating but more so let everything come
out of my own body. To feel the fabric and the body underneath it while I was working with it,
rather than arriving at I point that was already existing in my head.
In the clothes itself I wanted to create a power dynamic in between the two genders that wasn’t
the usual one of the strong and fearless man and the over romanticised women.
I was seeing a date situation in-between a young man and his anima. The man being extremely
attracted to his anima, his inner female side, and the anima itself which wasn’t really interested in
what the your man had to offer. The man being very eager to express his interest and affection
towards the anima, overthinking his clothing choices to a point of weird combinations of items
resulting in uncommon body parts being exposed. The anima on the other side being very
careless, casual and also intimidating about her clothing choices. I wanted to show the man as
being more fragile and more vulnerable to possibly being turned down by the anima than the
anima itself would be.
In this I also tried to avoid working with the extremes. I wasn’t interested in making my man’s
garments look like toned down women’s clothes and vice versa. I truly believe in finding a middle
ground where all genders meet without leaving behind their strengths but showing up with their
shortcomings in a way to enable the other side to see them as they are and not as we have been
seeing them for decades.
This year has been extremely intense for me, professionally and also personally. Choosing a
theme like I did requires you to go deep within you and dig even deeper even when it starts to
hurt. Looking at my collection now, I feel a deep satisfaction, not per se for the clothes
themselves but for the inner growth they represent for me. The things I found out about myself
through creating this collection will always stay with me and will be the pillar onto which I can
build my future projects.