Many of your garments reference literature and philosophy, such as the Freudian slip dress, Shadow top, and Tears of Eros sweatpants. How do you think language and fashion have a dialogue in your work?
LIZA: Well fashion is a language - arguably the most immediate form of social communication we have. Both fashion and language are systems of signification, capable of revealing, concealing, and oscillating between meaning and absence. I’m drawn to that tension, to the way clothing can seduce, not just through the body but through suggestion, subversion, and double meanings.
I like the way Baudrillard talks about seduction and language. He describes seduction as a form of covert power that employs symbols that don’t just communicate, they withhold, tease, and destabilize. The most compelling things exist in that liminal space between revelation and secrecy, inviting interpretation but never fully surrendering to a singular definition. My work operates in that realm—garments that don’t just sit idly on the body but whisper dark little jokes, provoke, and engage on multiple levels—visually, emotionally, conceptually. There’s an immediate sensuality, but beneath that, a quiet pull to look again, to rethink, to be drawn in further.
Humor plays a role too! I love the interplay of a half-joke, half-confession. So a printed phrase isn’t just a reference (puns in particular); it’s a provocation, a slip of the tongue that exposes something deeper; some inherent nature or an underlying quality that might otherwise remain hidden. You mentioned the Freudian Slip, which is basically a slip dress (traditionally/historically hovering between modesty and exposure, often existing for the visual pleasure of the male gaze) — but in my one, it’s printed with a naked body and the words “Freudian Slip” at the hip line, playing on the classic linguistic error where an unconscious thought escapes into speech. I think it’s just kinda funny, but it’s also about reframing exposure—both of the body and the psyche. The dress doesn’t just reference Freud; it performs the slip itself, making the wearer a spectacle of revelation, but it does so in a way that recontextualizes that exposure as an act of defiance and provocation. It redirects the gaze from the observer back to the wearer.
In Georges Bataille's Tears of Eros, one of the themes he discusses is a connection between death, eroticism, and the sacred. Bataille sees sacrifice as a way to access the sacred through violence, mirroring the way eroticism breaks down barriers through transgression. The book seems to be a key influence for you and I noticed in your mood boards a lot of imagery that reflected these themes. What do they mean to you and your work? How does sacrifice relate to this for you?
LIZA: Bataille is my soulmate! Haha. He’s such a tragic thinker, but so raw and enlivening at the same time. I see a lot of his views reflected in myself: a kind of dark romanticism, extreme obsessiveness and a generally anxious disposition.
When you read him it’s like you put your finger on the pulse of life. And every now and then you get these kind of annihilating glimpses of the darkness and wilderness of human experience. It’s devastating, and yet it kind of quickens you to life all in the same breath. I love it!
The relationship between eroticism and death is likewise central to my work. There’s always this push-and-pull between control and surrender, power and vulnerability. A sense of this drama in motion - veiling and unveiling, and that tension is where desire emerges. Bataille understood that beauty and destruction aren’t opposing forces—they feed into each other, creating something richer, more complex, more dangerous.
