“What Women Designer Want”. The Female Point of View in the Fashion Creative Process

We Should All Be Feminists, the speech given in 2012 by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, became a fashionable slogan in 2017, having been printed on the T-shirts presented by Maria Grazia Chiuri in her first collection for Dior. An operation that also aimed to contribute to the redefinition of the female role within the fashion system. Even though Poiret has freed women from corsets and constrictions, it is thanks to Madame Grès, Madeleine Vionnet, Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel, that a renewed relationship between dress and woman’s body has been questioned, opening the doors to the creations of Mary Quant, Krizia, Vivienne Westwood, Rei Kawakubo, Miuccia Prada, Consuelo Castiglioni and Phoebe Philo, to mention the most relevant. These figures all looked at the woman’s body through cuts and formal and material experimentations by using a personal vision of style and a precise creative process. Far from being limited to gender discourse, the article intends to investigate, the evolution of the relationship between the creative process implemented by women designers and the fashion project. A dialogue that does not end in pure formal experimentation, but that succeeds in giving shape to new cultural and social values and, in defining fortunate entrepreneurial stories.