A KALTBLUT exclusive. Photography by Anastasia zum Tobel. The models are Lisa Babies and Emilio Ratajczak. Make-Up & Styling by Nicole Wedemann. Designs by Marcel Freund.
“My name is Marcel Alessandro Freund. I come from a relatively small town in Hesse, Germany, called Marburg. When I was younger I always liked to dress up and have my own little fashion shows in my room; however, I forgot that sense of freedom when I got older. The urge to start making clothes and the idea of becoming a designer is something that I got when I left Germany for an exchange year after I graduated in 10th grade. I was fortunate enough that my parents and my uncle made that possible for me. In that year I learned a lot about myself and that I wanted to be part of the fashion world.
Fashion was fun to me when I was younger. It was like changing characters without changing my body. I could be a spy when I put on my dad’s suit pants and the trenchcoat my mum owned; of course, they were too big for me, but still, it was always fun. Becoming older, that obviously changed. Marburg was not known to be a fashion-forward city and I didn’t attend a school that tolerated extravagant clothing, so I adapted and put away the joy that came with experimenting. But when I went to the U.S. it all changed, no one knew me and I could be a different character – someone who dressed eccentrically. I did not wear skirts or heels to high school, but just wearing a lot of colours or cropped jean jackets was a big step forward for me and definitely paved the way for me to get the confidence I have now. Enough for me to enjoy wearing whatever I want.”
Collection:
“With my collection Victorian Punk, I combined the classical way of dressing in the Victorian era with the patterns and roughness that are common in the punk era. I arrived at this topic by accident while doing research for my collection. I was genuinely struggling in the beginning to find a topic I could identify with. For me, having a story that I can tell is very important; I need something I can research and read into.
When I started to read into the Victorian age, I quickly learned about the censorship of pornographic topics. It felt like I struck gold. I tried to read as much as I could and find out how the artists of this generation struggled to include a sense of sex and eroticism in their work.
I found a magazine published between 1879 and 1881; „The Pearl“ was a collection of pornographic literature during the Victorian era. I knew from that point on I wanted to include it in my work. So I read all 18 published issues and tried to reference them in my work. So if you find some time during your day, I highly recommend looking it up and reading some extracts for yourself.
Something that was strongly present during this era was the dress codes women had to obey. These included not showing your shoulders or too much skin in general. Women also wore many layers which were a nuisance to take off; especially in case of emergency. To highlight some of those rules I wanted to make sure that the shoulders were either free or the collar was wide enough to show parts of the shoulder. When I designed the male outfits I focused on lace parts on the hats that hide parts of the face as a way of hiding the awfulness of men during that time, since men were overly aggressive and a lot of men raped women or hurt them in other ways, which was widely accepted and mostly seen as the fault of the victims at the time.
With this collection, I wanted to tell the story of the pressure women were under to obey the many rules that were put on them by men. I also wanted to draw attention to the way artists had to face censorship in their craft and how they worked their way around it. Furthermore, I wanted to express that it’s not the clothes that make us, but it is us that decide how we want to be perceived. Making rules on how to dress just puts us further behind in finding out who we want to be and what we like. My clothes can be worn by whoever and I never want that to be taken away by anyone. Designing and executing this collection made me feel like the little child again who was standing in my parent’s closet who could be whatever he liked and no one could tell him otherwise.”
Designs by Marcel Freund / Instagram: @m.a.f_studios
Photography & Retouch by Anastasia zum Tobel / Instagram: @thrutheart
The models are Lisa Babies / Instagram: @lis.sab
and Emilio Ratajczak / Instagram: @beerenfalle89
Make-Up & Styling by Nicole Wedemann / Instagram: @nitschj
The brand is MAF Studios and includes all fashion brands from the editorial.
All pieces are made by Marcel Freund @m.a.f_studios
