Fien Ploeger

Sandberg Instituut Dutch graduate student Fien Ploeger does surgical interventions to denim to improve the wearers’ self-esteem for her final project at Fashion Matters.
The past two years at the Fashion Matters program have meant a period of intense personal development for Fien. Her research work became a productive and emotionally-involved experience when she realized her lifelong fascination with physical transformation and extreme body shapes, could be applied to fashion design with the same intent to create a higher self- esteem that she has been obsessed with since early on in life. With her thesis project, UNDER CONSTRUCTION, on view from June 16th to 18th at Nieuw Dakota in Amsterdam, Fien deconstructs garments entirely made out of denim, the same way a surgeon operates human bodies.

Fien’s preoccupation with achieving an ideal of physical perfection has been a recurring theme to research about for as long as she has been attracted to clothing. Her graduation collection from her BA at Gerrit Rietveld Academy FULL-BLOWN (2014) already explored the concept of hyper reality in relation to the body. But her inspiration comes from earlier on, during childhood. “I saw my mother changing her identity every couple of years. I was fascinated by her dedication to create and own her unique image. She never really cared about what people around her thought of her extreme looks. I have a lot to thank her for because she made me the most imaginative dresses, but especially because she allowed me to find my own identity and go wild with my own styling. Ever since, I’ve been attracted to ideals of beauty and self-improvement, and to plastic surgery, not necessarily for myself but as one of the options out there in our times. With UNDER CONSTRUCTION I want those who wear my clothes to feel more confident about themselves by doing similar surgical interventions to those that are often done to the human body for aesthetic self- improvement.”