“I dreamt I was so rich, I could afford my own body”
These words rang out across the upper hall of Cinétol. With this thunderclap of a message, Pauline Blind opened not only her Blasphemous Bodies collection but also Amsterdam Fashion Week itself.
The timing feels almost chillingly sharp: just weeks after Dutch feminist group Dolle Mina’s reignited their protests, galvanized by the murder of seventeen-year-old Lisa in Amsterdam. A tragedy that underlines, with chilling precision, how fragile and contested female freedom remains, even decades after it was first fought for.
Photo: Olivia GracePhoto: Olivia Grace
Staging the show at Cinétol seems more than a logistical decision; it felt like a gesture heavy with symbolism. The building, commissioned in 1891 by the Theosophical Society, carries within its walls the radical legacy of co-founder Helena Blavatsky: one of the most visible and influential women in international intellectual and spiritual circles.
The Society dared to proclaim universal brotherhood “without distinction of race, creed, sex, or class.” Language that, in an age when suffrage and equality were still derided as dangerous, sounded almost revolutionary. The residue of that spiritual fervour still clings to these walls, which we also find back in Blind’s twenty ensembles.
Photo: Olivia GracePhoto: Olivia Grace
” Some models advanced cautiously, hampered by cascading veils that demanded deliberate, slowed movements.”
The garments themselves read ritual all over: monumental veils and hoods, glittering rosaries (a collaboration with Darkai), and crucifixes that remind us of ceremony and dogma. The symbolism is not subtle (and rightfully so). Some models advanced cautiously, hampered by cascading veils that demanded deliberate, slowed movements. They are swathed in sheer, fluid fabrics, their hands bound beneath gleaming belts and even choked by their own hair.
The imprint of a hand dents the leathery surface of a top, leaving us to wonder: is this the mark of oppression, or the suggestion of one’s own hand, reaching to reclaim bodily autonomy? There is entrapment and constraint, but the Converse sneakers poking out from under their ethereal ensembles show a hint of rebellion. We might be far from freedom, but resistance itself is proof that hope might not be gone completely.
Photo: Anna FijalkowskiPhoto: Anna Fijalkowski
“What does it mean to inhabit a female body? What value do we ascribe to fertility and freedom?“
For this collection, Blind, an AMFI alumni and participant of Lichting 2024, worked with discarded garments. In that sense, Blasphemous Bodies functioned as both a sustainable gesture and conceptual metaphor. The result was a romantic yet unsettling collection due to its urgency. What does it mean to inhabit a female body? What value do we ascribe to fertility and freedom? And why is it that, after decades of protest and progress, emancipation still feels unfinished?
Photo: Olivia GracePhoto: Olivia Grace
And yet, the absence of size inclusivity left the vision feeling somewhat partial, as though the liberation it evoked has not been fully embodied. Nonetheless, I count myself a Pauline Blind admirer after this debut, as her work is both lyrical and rebellious, and I long to see those gestures of resistance extended across a broader spectrum of bodies.
