Discarded objects, lingerie, historical silhouettes, layering and a shared slice of cake become a language of community, transformation and everyday resistance.
A yard sale gives things another life. That logic shapes Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen’s ‘Yard Sale Liberation’: lingerie, utilitarian pieces, historical references and repurposed materials accumulate across the body through layers open to transformation.
Picnic blankets become underwear. Quilted corsets meet draped dresses, bloomers, hoodies and wire mesh structures. Vintage Swiss army trousers interrupt softer volumes, while lacing, cutouts and handmade constructions make each look feel assembled from different lives and uses.
Reuse is only one part of Whalen’s language. Corsets, lingerie, bustles and historical volumes revisit how clothing has shaped the female body. Restrictive codes are loosened, exposed and mixed with everyday garments, making femininity mutable and deliberately constructed.
Her visual language thrives on collision. Echoes of Vivienne Westwood and Comme des Garçons meet the romantic femininity of Simone Rocha and the deliberately awkward combinations of Miu Miu. Delicacy meets utility, underwear becomes outerwear, and historical construction sits beside ordinary clothes. Contradiction becomes part of the silhouette.
That collective logic extended beyond the clothes. Whalen explained that the cakes served after the show were made by her studio team. Peaches came from a farmers market, rosemary infused whipped cream was prepared in the studio kitchen, and the cakes were decorated together at 5 a.m. Show notes were printed on paper plates and bound with doilies and string.
She called it “a complex spell in offering”, adding: “resistance is in the small things that we do together, centering beauty at all costs.”
A finalist of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund 2026, Whalen treats fashion as something accumulated, shared and continuously remade, from materials to inherited ideas of the female body.
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