The young Portuguese designer has created a socially conscious debut collection, earning him a place among the finalists at the 2023 Hyères Festival at the Villa Noailles. A closer look at a talent to watch.
“Hermaphrodite” is the name of Tiago Bessa’s graduation collection, which explores the concepts of gender and inclusion. It’s a critical and personal exercise on the social construction and pressure of a binary world. This graduate of Modatex in Porto, who also interned at Viktor & Rolf, selected materials that reference his origins in Guimarães, a still very conservative region in northern Portugal. He incorporated fabrics into the ceremonial clothing line, while also introducing latex . Through the pieces, the young designer affirms his identity, opening new avenues for younger generations to embrace their difference. “ Hermaphrodite is a term I’ve been associated with for a long time. Growing up, people used it to mock my non-binary appearance, so this was about channeling my anger in a productive direction,” he stated after the announcement of his nomination. “In this collection, I decided to explore intersex people further [the impossibility of being classified as male or female, editor's note] and, therefore, to familiarize myself with the non-consensual surgery that intersex minors undergo. Hermaphrodite takes a stand against this act of genital mutilation.”
Bold creations
Using the orchid as inspiration and a metaphor for sexual organs, Tiago Bessa presents "deconstructed versions of ideally perfect pieces ." This serves as a commentary on the damage caused by corrective procedures to bodies that are already able and beautiful. The abstract forms thus reveal themselves to be anatomical, with translucent guimpe suits and flesh-colored corseted dresses, designed with overlapping triangular panels of fabric like the petals of an orchid—like a hermaphroditic flower. This collection also tells Tiago Bessa's family history, paying homage to the time he spent in the workshop of his pattern-making mother and his seamstress grandmother, where he took his first steps in the world of fashion. "Their technique is very... traditional," he explains. "They know how to pattern and sew according to the rules, and my work is deconstruction. It was important for me to know how to sew and pattern in order to then get where I wanted to go." " This first creation earned him the ModaPortugal fashion design competition in 2021. Today, he is among the ten finalists of the prestigious Hyères Festival of Fashion, Photography and Accessories, which will take place next October."
