‘Better Looking, Better Looking.’

I have a morbid curiosity for 1950’s and 60’s cookbooks and over the past few years I have amassed quite a collection. These features some of the most disturbing and bizarre of dinner party foods. Cakes and jelly are a personal favourite of mine, their shapes, colours and structure have inspired my final collection. The imagery taken from my cookbook collection feature a recurring character, the housewife. There is something unsettling about this woman, her toothy grin and perfect demeanour as she goes about her domestic chores. My collection pokes fun and subverts these images of apron wearing and starched bloused housewives, with her perfectly layered cakes and jelly’s setting in the fridge. I have often considered the real women expected to create these works of culinary art. The roaring misogyny of the time is blatant in the very traditional representations, but how did she really express herself? I have used sheer fabrics, PVC and embossing, the embossing specifically referencing the textured wallpaper of the time. I did not want to create another housewife that blended into the kitchen wallpaper. My aim was to create looks that reclaim what it means to be feminine today, my women are no submissive, background characters they take centre stage.