The American footballer bride that ended up on the runway
How Mia Mengai Hu reimagined her childhood confusion into a narrative elegantly subverting traditional virtues and empowering women
Mia Hu working on her White Show garment in the fashion studio. (Photo: Anderson Hung)
Quotes were translated from Mandarin Chinese.
A bride in both an elegant wedding veil and gridiron shoulder pads, instead of walking down the aisle or touching down on the field, marched down Central Saint Martin’s playground-themed White Show on Thursday. On the runway of first-year fashion students’ annual, iconic all-white show, the layered flyaway draped down the bride’s back from a helmet deconstructed from a pair of trainers while the appliqué sculpted into blossoming buds dangled in front of the royal-iced number 8 on her chest. CSM student Mia Hu progressed on to BA Fashion Print from the college’s Fashion Folio programme and has left her hometown Wuxi, China to become the mastermind behind the bride character and her unconventional dress. What she called the “runaway bride,” escaped from not only her own wedding, but also the boundaries of femininity.
“I have two aunts who took care of me and my sister throughout our childhood, and the younger one is unreservedly genuine, humourous, and also very athletic,” Mia said when she first started conceptualising the project in October, “she’s always exerted this youthful boyish energy, especially when she trains with her sporting team in full tracksuits.” Mia then presented to me a photo of a bride standing still and smiling reservedly in a wedding dress with a royal train embellished with the same hydrangea-like appliqué, dated February 1995 and captioned my aunt’s wedding. “When I first saw this photo as a child, I imagined [my aunt] in the photo would start running, so that she would become the exuberant aunt I’ve always known.” The sense of confusion fueled Mia’s imagination of a narrative intertwining her own impression of her aunt and the photo that misrepresented it, manifested initially in a series of collage exploring athletes running in wedding dresses. The usually very restrictive wedding dress was vitalised with the momentum of an athlete.
Mia’s sketchbook page that imagines a knightly character who would wear her garments. (Photos: Anderson Hung)
Mia’s research emphasised the juxtaposition of hyper-feminine bridalwear and hyper-masculine American football gear. “I want to show the tough and forceful side of femininity by fusing them into one” Mia said while she was busy welding a helmet-shaped structure attached to the skirt to resemble the way a football player rests their helmet against their hip. Mia and her aunt both grew up in China, where marriage customs and traditional femininity are entrenched, especially in the 90s, nurturing this notion of conforming oneself to fit into the boundaries. And Mia’s aunt’s rejection of this idea inspired Mia to do the same, as she said determinedly “I want to pay homage to women’s persistence and disobedience.”
Her preliminary illustrations studying the form of lily petals, an element inspired by “the narrative of a runaway bride running with a bouquet of lily in hand,” were translated onto resembling structures attached to the spandex football trousers. As I became Mia’s personal assistant who passed her pins to adjust the veil during a fitting, she said “I was very inspired by James McNeill Whistler’s The White Girl, for the image of a girl holding a Lily is so serene, yet so powerful.” Whistler was part of the art for art's sake movement that rejected the didacticism of art, but Mia has managed to reimagine that same kind of strength into an energy that dissolves gender boundaries and empowers the feminine.
Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl by James McNeill Whistler. (Left, Photo: National Gallery of Art)
Mia fixed the lily petals attached to the trousers. (Right, Photo: Anderson Hung)
The dress initially had a one-piece chapel veil draped over the bride’s back which Mia experimented with synthetic organzas loosely supported by a metallic endoskeleton that created a rough silhouette. In a crit session, Mia’s tutor noticed the lack of structure of the veil that restricted the movement of the model, and recommended she study how actual bridal veils are patterned and constructed then “inject an athletic twist,” also referencing Cristóbal Balenciaga’s revolutionary 1967 wedding dress that reimagined the curve-accentuating silhouettes that dominated womenswear for centuries into comfort, simplicity and minimalist elegance.
Cristóbal Balenciaga’s 1967 wedding dress. (Left, Photo: 1Granary)
Mia prepared the accessories for the bride. (Right, Photo: Anderson Hung)
On the day her bride took her wedding photo, Mia demonstrated her amendment: different layers of fine tulle were attached to the helmet to form a veil. The same tulle was used to embellish the shoulder and chest exaggerated by football shoulder pads. The dress became an armour that extricates women instead of restricting them. “Eight is my aunt’s favourite number,” Mia pointed to the jersey number, standing behind the camera, “because of ‘fa’.” Eight is homonymous with prosperity, “fa”, in Chinese, a reference that all Chinese speakers automatically understand. When asked if she thinks the idea of a bridal dress is outdated, she replied “it’s never going out of fashion, but the silhouette is changing to accommodate women with different personalities.”
On the day of the show, I infiltrated backstage in disguise as a photo-team member only to find out that Mia did the same as a model, still with the blue and yellow eyeshadow all models wore. As Mia put on the helmet for her model, it struck me as an image of a queen knighting a bride, preparing the bride for combat, just like the character she imagined. As Mia’s bride walked away from the studio and the veil fluttered in the air, it is with no doubt that Mia has reclaimed the individuality her aunt was stripped of in her wedding photo, and has empowered not only the dress, but also the bride.
