The name « Les Petites Ailes » originates from a clandestine newspaper in Nazi-occupied France during the Second World War. It was a resistance effort to keep the French public informed about nazi movements and plans. The headline reads « lisez attentivement… recopiez copieusement… distribuez prudemment… » meaning read attentively, copy copiously, distribute carefully. One of my distant ancestors was in charge of printing some of these newspapers for distribution, André Bollier. He died at the age of 24 in 1944 in a gunfight with the Gestapo, where he took his own life to avoid capture.
Finding out this information about someone in my family who, less than a century ago, was probably responsible for saving many lives and being a part of the French resistance, was unbelievable. This led me to try and dig up more history about my family, whilst being on a trip to our family home in Burgundy, France, that had been passed down multiple generations. The house, filled with things that had been archived for so long, was fascinating. Most of what I found was my grandmother's and great grandmother’s, some of which I recognised from when I was a child.
In addition to this, my other grandparents were designers in Paris from around 1970-1980. I spent much time interviewing them and looking through the small archive of garments that they still had. Overtime, much of the archive of their work was lost, but my grandmother had a few VHS tapes of runways and garments left in her closet. I took a few of them and had them digitised so that I may watch them. I also went through and photographed her physical archive of garments. The details and silhouettes formed the basis of inspiration for some of the garments in the collection.
Through this experience I developed a fascination with the archiving and unarchiving process. Focusing on a raw, unedited, messy feeling presented in a professional way by using old and recycled paper and found objects to create this effect. I am trying to build an « archive » composed of the things I had found in my family’s history, and the development and research I have done for the garments. I’m obsessed with making tactile objects that can be picked up and are sometimes stored in letters out of my developed samples and research.
The aim is to create something that looks like an archive of research about ancestry and the present.
