THE DINNER PARTY

Rodebjer is one of those brands who really loves women and consequently knows in what kind of clothes the women want to live, work, feel free and empowered at the same time, after all the head of the brand is a woman, Carin Rodebjer, which, I guess, explains a lot of it. It was really a matter of time when the major source of inspiration would be Judy Chicago´s work and by work a very representative one, “The Dinner Party”. If you never heard of it, I will try to describe it in few lines. This art-installation is an important icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in twentieth-century art. It comprises a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with a total of 39 place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history, like Sacajawea, Sojourner Truth, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Empress Theodora of Byzantium, Virginia Woolf, Susan B. Anthony, and Georgia O'Keeffe among others. The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates with raised central motifs that are based on vulvar and butterfly forms and rendered in styles appropriate to the individual women being honoured.

A quite a big source of inspiration for just one collection, I would dare to guess, but the result is really harmonious and never literal. A black and white shawl-collared coat with ¾ sleeves, featuring shell prints and the tunic with a bell-shaped short sleeves and the same print, are among my favourites, as are all airy-light, almost-sheer organza pieces that made me to love pink or at least re-think about it, not to mention all graphic-patterned ensembles and the fluid, grey-mud-like monochromatic one. 

/ original images courtesy of rodebjer /