Aunt Sister Makes Its Debut

Today, Fielder dives deep into her inspirations and intentions for this collection, as well as changes she hopes to see the industry embrace in the future.

How did Aunt Sister come about?

Z: I think it was the fall of my junior year of college, I was in a correlating studio seminar class — it was a core fashion design class that paired up with a technical class. We start thinking about concepts and what we wanted to do before our thesis. That was kind of the introduction to what Aunt Sister is right now.

What about the name, what is Aunt Sister?

Z: Twins run on both sides of my family. My grandmother, I was very close to her when I was younger, she was a twin. She hated her name and preferred to be called Aunt Sister because her twin brother was referred to as Uncle Brother. So I took the Aunt Sister name and ran with it.

How long have you been designing for?

Z: I think since my senior year of high school because I went to a vocational school that offered fashion design as a major. Senior year, we had a fashion show and we all had to design something. But I’ve been designing since I was a kid.

As a part of your latest collection, your narrative encompasses the idea of ‘Rites of Passage’—the celebrations of skin, sexual identity, marriage, and of life. Can you talk about what drew you to highlight these specific moments?

Z: I got the idea of body adornment from a class I took my freshman year that was similar to art history class. My final project in that class was on body modification, specifically piercings and other physical augmentations that aren’t tattoos. I ended up using it for my thesis because, in that class, I understood that the idea of augmenting the body has existed in a trans-historical sense. As in it’s existed in the past, it exists today, and it’s probably going to exist in the future because of its cultural relevance. I decided to conduct a survey for my thesis asking people about their own experiences with that.

What does union look like to you?

Z: I just see it as a practical, realistic sense, navigating through society type of way. I see it as people coming together, it can be more than one person. But it’s people coming together to create something that’s bigger than themselves. People come together for different reasons but from my point of view, I would hope that union would be where people learn something from each other to create something bigger than themselves. I don’t know if that makes sense.

It does.

Z: Technically, union is supposed to be when people come together to create something bigger than themselves, like people getting married or joining a sorority. But in my mind, it’s not just about joining something or coming together. It’s more about learning or being in sync with someone even if you’re on a different wavelength. It sounds kind of pretentious in a sense as I’m explaining it and using the word wavelength and everything, but that is how I wish people would be unionized. That’s also something that I wanted to get out of this collection. I hoped that when people saw this collection at the exhibition I had at my school, they would’ve had a dialogue amongst me and other people that are also observing the collection. And I hope they would have learned something about not just themselves, but also the people that they’re having this conversation with; all throughout, the experiences that people shared with me in order to help develop this collection.

I kind of want to jump back to how you researched body modification; some examples being keloid adornment and tightlacing in the Victorian Era. What would you say is one of the biggest misconceptions of body modification in the Western world?

Z: That it’s ancient. This is something that I was dealing with in my first semester of research in the fall with my professors. This idea that body modification is this ancient thing that is reserved for ‘ethnic’, ‘third-world’ type of people– like that stereotype. It’s just such an ugly perspective in my opinion because as someone who is African-American, part of my research comes from my own cultural practices. People have this perception that the practice of body modification through piercings and tattoos is something that is very taboo. At the same time, in the United States it’s visible and it’s also kind of capitalized on. The biggest example I can give you is in rap music and hip hop. The idea of getting tattoos or piercings for artists is something that comes with the visual narrative or the visual package in a sense. What I’m trying to get at with that example is that despite people’s perspectives, the practice of body adornment is something that is still relevant.

Some people don’t really see the connection between the two, just because it’s during the modern day.

Z: Yes and some of it has even been appropriated.

Exactly!

Z: It was super big in fashion in the ‘90s–the idea of stretching your neck to a really long length. For example, I know that Galliano in the ‘90s did a collection where he had the big neck piece that elongates the neck [Dior Fall/Winter 1997-1998 collection with model Debra Shaw] and that’s seen as totally subversive in Western culture. You see examples in the jewelry, where he’s referring to practices that are considered ‘ugly’, ‘older’, or ‘ancient;’ even though it’s still practiced today. I would just hope that we pay our dues a little bit and point back to where this comes from, to show the timeline of where this has gone through and where it has come to today.

That leads me to my next question. What do you hope to see for the fashion industry in the future?

Z: When I say ‘pay our dues,’ what I mean is that I wish designers, creative directors, or really anyone in the arts and design field in general; would credit where they get their inspiration from. We live in a time where you will be called out for blatantly stealing someone’s work or for appropriation.

I notice that design fields in Western culture where we stand today are straight white male-dominated fields. In fashion, I would say maybe it’s a bit more diverse because of what people have been recently demanding from the industry. But even so, it still doesn’t negate the fact that there is still a system that prevents certain demographics of people from moving up. In a way that other demographics are able to move up in to get what they want. If you’re going to be making a collection that is heavily inspired by somebody else’s work, I personally have no problem with that in fashion because everyone refers to something that’s already existed in order to create something new. But if you’re going to do that you have to let people know: ‘I was inspired by this.’

Who do you want to see dressed in your designs?

Z: If y’all can hit up Solange Knowles for me, y’all could reach out to Kelela, maybe y’all can reach out to Sevdaliza. But in all seriousness, as of right now I’m listening to a lot of female rap so if Meg Thee Stallion wants a piece, or like you know what I’m saying, Maliibu Miitch because I love her music. If any female artist in general would like something…let a girl know because I’d love to dress y’all. You know it would be so nice if I had the opportunity to make them something and they wore it because I feel like they would enjoy it. I like it when people enjoy my work, and the stuff I see them wear, it seems like they enjoy what they wear. They enjoy what’s in their closet and I would just like to contribute to their closets as well.

What’s next for Aunt Sister and you?

Z: The next step is to actually make another collection. I have this collection in mind and I also want to integrate more film into it and some music into it for a performance aspect. For me and Aunt Sister I am both pushing this collection because I want more people to enjoy my work and creating more content. While I’m doing all of that I will be paying all my dues, telling people where I get my inspiration from, and disclosing my research. You know what I’m saying? I will also be crediting artists that I will be working with if I do end up working with them. You know what I’m saying?