The Unnerving Beauty of Melitta Baumeister

Looks 1 & 2 of Melitta Baumeister’s fall 2022 ready-to-wear photographed by Michal Plata

Unnervingly beautiful, that was the phrase that came to mind when viewing Melitta Baumeister’s fall 2022 ready-to-wear lookbook released during Paris fashion week. The shapes of her garments are akin to eldritch terrors, but make it fashionable. Really, every collection from the designer, especially her recent work, elicits this agitated nervousness that can only really be described as excitement, as the mind’s way of communicating that one’s eyes are devouring something that is truly exquisite. However, what separates her most recent collection from her past work is the overt, or maybe just exterior, sensuality of the garments. They transform the body into a surrealist wonderland, where dreams really do come true. In fact, the dreams become almost too real, simultaneously consuming the wearer and disorienting the viewer. But these dreams also elevate the more mundane or everyday pieces of the collection, elevating Baumeister’s work to new creative and imaginative heights.

Throughout the collection, Baumeister constructs the body as a site for surrealistic femininity. When you look at the clothes and their construction the first word that comes to mind is, well, odd. Something is off, something is amiss, and you realize that there is something here, but what? There are contradictions here demonstrated through Baumeister's technical prowess such as the abstract shapes of garments versus the organic forms of the body or the blood-red and neon yellow contrasted with the rich browns presented mid-way through the collection. The body thus becomes a site for our fears, for the collection’s oddities, and ultimately beauty. The sensuality of the body is not enhanced through the garments presented, but rather the garments themselves act as conduits for our fantasies, they bleed into reality.

Look 4 of Melitta Baumeister’s fall 2022 ready-to-wear photographed by Michal Plata

Take look 4 from the lookbook, for example. The shape of the garment does not seem capable of existing within our reality and yet it does. Baumeister's mastery of draping creates folds on the side of the body, akin to an opening of sorts. The void hidden underneath is enclosed by something like lips or even labia, serving as a physical representation of carnal love. The body unseen beneath the dress’s passion becomes the chaos of the unconscious, love in pandemonium, the inherent beauty of life. Baumeister's work approaches the abstract and conveluted nature of the human condition. Yet each garment, no matter how abstract, must be wearable because as Toby Ramskill writes in a 1Granary interview between Baumeister and her junior designer, Chi Yu Han, “even the most radical forms must be able to be worn.”