An interview taken from our #Pride Issue. Butch is beautiful. It’s diverse and sexy in a way that is often overlooked because it’s almost too authentic, especially in an industry like fashion where fantasy sells. Think of your female queer friends in the industry and its possibly more than ten fingers, think of them as designers and you are only left with one hand, then think of them with their own label. Any fingers up? Now think of queer men in fashion. We can’t deny that gay men have been designing binary clothing for women for decades while the underrepresentation of queer women in fashion still exists and is even questioned in conversations on style. I would even say that fashion is finally having an identity crisis come to terms with the fact that queer women love fashion too!
www.instagram.com/ellaboucht
Portrait Photos by www.instagram.com/anyagorkova
Polaroids by Ella Boucht
interview by Anna Barr www.instagram.com/annoula_b
pairsproject.com
27-year-old London based, Finnish designer Ella Boucht recently graduated from the prestigious Central Saint Martins fashion department with her Masters, but her name and pieces have been growing momentum ever since Rhianna was photographed in her baby pink oversized puffer coat that quickly became a meme, while still a student at Swedish School of Textiles back in 2016. With deconstructed suits and play on shapes creating gender fluidity among structured cuts and tailoring, her unapologetic evolution from bold sportswear to designer for “butches, dykes, female masculine and non- binary people” saw her on Dazed100 earlier this year with her intent on bringing lesbian representation to the runway and beyond.
Speaking from her new studio space in London, Ella is young, smart, sweet and ready to inspire us to own our own bodies while her collections in many ways will stand as a document for future generations, she’s quietly louder than she might think and ready to riot even if she sets her own tempo.
Did you always want to work in fashion?
I wouldn’t necessarily say fashion, but definitely the craft behind it. I’ve always been drawing, doing illustrations, working with my hands since I was a kid. I went to a theatre school when I
was younger for several years and there was one play where we had a seamstress who made our costumes and we could go into this huge wardrobe to find stuff to develop our own character. That’s when it all started. I understood that I wanted to be more behind the scenes.
Growing up, did you see yourself in fashion, especially when flipping through magazines?
No, I would say that I didn’t really care for fashion magazines, but I remember the start of bloggers, how people were posting their styles. There was this site called Hel-Looks from Helsinki all about the styles from the streets of Helsinki, it was more interesting for me to see how people were putting together their own looks than the perfect world created in the magazines. I used to also look at a book by Pierre et Gilles, it was an amazing world to see! Full of colours, queer personalities and fashion. It’s an art world on its own.
Queer women love fashion, but in many ways, they are invisible in the industry. Do you feel there is a lack of representation and what that stems from?
There’s definitely a lack in fashion, but also overall from series to films in what the rest of society learns what queer and butch women look like. People have developed a very stereotypical image. Queer women in history haven’t properly been acknowledged or represented. There aren’t many books, especially photography books from that time. It also comes from the era of cross-dressing, trying to look for the opposites of gender which made you either femme or butch. Today there is a much broader way to identify. There are still lots of stereotypes in fashion, and unfortunately, it is still very much male-dominated in fashion. There are many gay men in high positions and great designers but I would definitely love to see more women and queer women behind the scenes get more representation of how we look and what we like to wear.
I know lots of women in fashion and queer women, but when it comes to actually holding the title of designer, it is still dwarfed compared to men.
When I was researching female designers through history, most of the women I found identified as straight, especially straight white women. Obviously, I have queer female friends in fashion but in the lesbian community its not something that many women are interested in because the fashion industry tough. With a lack of representation, it’s quite hard for a queer woman to get up.
Do you feel there is an objectification of lesbianism in fashion?
Definitely, it’s not like for straight people you go and ask them about their sexuality and if it’s correlated into how you dress. When it comes to queer women, it’s like an exotification, that its something interesting and stems from the male gaze rather than the female gaze.
Even when you talk about the lack of photography when we think of the masculine female, it conjures up imagery by Helmut Newton which again is from the male gaze.
When I was doing my research at the CSM library, there were only four books focused on lesbian women or made by lesbian women. You really have to start digging deeper and go through archives or online because obviously there was a time where it was dangerous to be out in society. A lot of the lesbian context was hidden or got destroyed or letters where they took away the names so you wouldn’t know who it was written from. In some communities, they didn’t even want to be out, like in the documentary Shakedown (by Leilah Weinraub) about this lesbian strip club in America where they talk about not wanting to be in editorials or articles because it’s for them. They don’t care about
visibility because they have their visibility with their people on the inside.
There’s a side where our history has been erased and then there is a part wanting to keep it for us.
Read the full interview in our digital issue:
