An interview with Elizabeth Fitzgerald.

“We could do with some meringue and cream to liven these up,” laments the striking redhead sitting opposite me, glancing wistfully at the punnet of winter strawberries on her lap. Elizabeth Fitzgerald, corsetiere and founder of Sweet Fanny Anne, is at once elegant and tomboyish. She wears dungarees and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt as she talks enthusiastically to me about her love for creating silk corsets and how she delights in all things fetish.

Born in Birmingham, Elizabeth spent her formative years in the town of Warwick, attending Warwickshire School of Art. Unsatisfied by the generic nature of clothes design she tried her hand at underwear and truly found her flow in corsetry. “I love creating corsets, they are personal and building something that’s so strong and enduring, to me, is very rewarding. Plus, there’s nothing like having something tailor-made, just for you.”

Elizabeth’s designs tread the line between bodice-ripping fetish and tea-drinking gentility, creating a dialogue with current Victorian and Freudian influences. We discuss Cronenberg’s new film A Dangerous Method, which sees Fassbender and Knightley, in a state of dishabille, engage in a notorious scene of indulgent S&M, and how this has ignited a mainstream interest in an act hitherto confined to the privacy of bedrooms, laptops and secret clubs: “I think an open awareness of S&M is just what the sex and lingerie business needs," she explains, "everyone knows 99% of people are into light kink, but we deny its existence outside our relationships. With this film people may come to realise that they’re not alone and lingerie will finally become less about secret crotchless panties and more about strength, class and pride in what you are doing. Hooray for Freud!”

Sweet Fanny Anne is merely one of this girl’s passions. She intends to set up an all-encompassing label and build on her range of corsets. “I long for beautiful old school finishes that modern garments lack,” she says, smiling, “I miss the cover buttons and roll hems, the hand-finished bias bindings and the French seams, so I’m bringing them back, with a latex finish.” And apart from anything else, her fancy-dress costume of choice is “just some well selected Agent Provocateur underwear and a giant freaky rabbit head”. Surely, this alone speaks volumes.

permanence.

In case you hadn’t noticed, tattoos are well and truly in, and for once it’s not just the hipsters and Dalston-dwellers flaunting their body art. Forget nautical or military: tattoos are well on their way to becoming the furthest reaching and most durable (naturally) trend of our generation.

Daisy Garnett discussed the appeal of the tattoo in her 2008 article for British Vogue, entitled “Models Ink”, rubber-stamping them as THE mark of fashion. Ever since then they have become a permanent feature in the very soul of the industry and, once you start looking, they really are everywhere, with most subjects of the needle willing to whip out their individual pieces at a moment’s notice.

With an endless list of models and celebrities sporting a bit - or a lot - of body art, including (much to my astonishment) Helen Mirren and Samantha Cameron, the reach of this trend is untold. Gwyneth Paltrow had hers done at Selfridges and Chanel produced a range of non-permanent tattoos that sold out within weeks, proving that the taboo surrounding the art has long since lost its sway.

Interesting too is the changing role of models: tattoos have transformed them from flawless blank canvases, upon which designers express their vision, to bodies which already have etched upon them their own fashion identity. Once upon a time, a tattooed model would have been unemployable. Now, they can embody the very identity of a brand, perhaps even influencing the creation of the clothes themselves. Just look at Freja Beha or Erin Wasson. Erin sports a grand total of 22 tattoos and Zadig and Voltaire’s new collection is oozing with her style and personality. For this her tribal tattoos play an integral role, specifically in the advertising.

So what is it about this fascination with body art? Why the surge in enthusiasm for such a permanent trend? Especially when considering the fast-paced and disposable nature of the rest of the industry. “All of my tattoos represent something I truly love” says Tom Yates, founder of Dirty Love Clothing and self-confessed tattoo addict, “although for a lot of people there is the danger of getting caught up in the fashion and regretting it”.

I myself want one, without quite knowing why. “But that’s the thing about tattoos” writes Daisy Garnett, “If you want one there’s not much point in rationalising it, because the desire just stays stubbornly put”.

Experience The Mark of Fashion:

-  The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall. A fantastically gripping novel that takes you back to a time when tattoos were solely reserved for the military or criminal classes, and follows the story of a young artist from Morecambe.

-  The International London Tattoo Convention. Brings together the finest tattoo artists in the world under one roof. An unmissable opportunity to witness a wealth of creativity.

-  Nine: Bespoke Tattoo Studio in Brighton (http://www.nineboycesstreet.com). There is practically a waiting list for the waiting list at this place, where resident tattooists Ade, Nige, Jack and James create fleshy masterpieces. But the end results are always out of this world.

-  Permanence: Tattoo Portraits by Kip Fulbeck. Whether you have tattoos or not, you will find this book an eye opener. Great photography and a very voyeuristic look into the personal choices behind each piece of art.

lost in lace.

If I’m not attempting to survive in London, I can often be found at my family home in Warwickshire where I come to write in a clean, quiet environment with a well-stocked fridge. From here the completely underrated city of Birmingham is only twenty minutes away, and thus a trip to the city’s Museum and Art Gallery is always required.

Yesterday my parents and I did just this, and in the process stumbled upon a truly spectacular exhibition. Lost In Lace is a space where twenty contemporary artists have each interpreted the historical, material and aesthetic qualities of lace to produce twenty outstandingly original works with lace at their core. With Lesley Millar at the creative helm, each artist had played with the traditional definition of lace to create their own, modern, take and aesthetic.

Hosted in the cavernous setting of the Gas Hall, each work has ample space to relay its message and the aggregate impact is astonishing. Upstairs in the main gallery there is a useful potted history of the craft, and this acts as an informed precursor that the main exhibition builds upon. I was particularly drawn to the huge variety of materials used to emulate something, which, by definition, should be soft and delicate.

All of the works were commissioned specifically for the show. Among them, installations by Chiharu Shiota and Michael Brennand-Wood had the biggest impact on me due to their truly inspirational takes on the subject matter. Shiota positioned oversized white garments within an entangled environment of randomly placed yarns. This played successfully with the visual aesthetic by creating a sort-of reverse lace with the yarns casting new patterns over the garments as you moved around the installation.

Michael Brennan-Wood opted instead for a harder edge. He utilised traditionally tough materials, aluminum, acrylic and wood, to build what he christened as ‘military lace’. ‘Lace The Final Frontier’ was designed to combine images of weaponry with the Rorschach test to create a harsh, red metallic lace that departed swiftly from both the innocence of white lace and the sensual associations of black lace. 

With its new take on a traditional concept, this exhibition was utterly thought provoking, on a day when I was only expecting to potter around the pre-Raphaelites. It also begs many questions about the modern development of a craft, which, as Lesley Millar suggests, says a lot about ‘how we divide space, both physically and architecturally'.

In relation to the World of Fashion, It is my understanding that as a result of exhibitions such as these, lace is experiencing a bit of a Post-Modern moment. Far from the renaissance of seasons past, where bobbin, needle and crocheted lace have featured in all their classic glory, this spring is witnessing a much more innovative approach inspired by a merger of the traditional and the technical. You only have to flick through the collections of SS12 to see myriad designers engineering new takes on an age-old concept, including Dolce and Gabbana who are incorporating guipure lace into their plastic macs. I, for one, am not wholly convinced, if there’s one thing this lace epidemic has taught me, it’s that I am a traditional girl who will always and forever find nothing more exciting than a good quality bra in exceptional black Chantilly lace.