‘Health and Bewty’ is a subtle satirical probing stimulated by artificial womb scientists using plastic bags to raise premature lambs. For Yaz Whitlock, seeing a foetus develop through a transparent clear bag was the ultimate marriage of mother nature and the man-made. We spoke over the phone, from one quarantined space to another…
“I’m waking up too late to have breakfast in lockdown. I mostly work at night if I can choose to, so my body clock is way off. I have to say thank you lockdown for allowing me my natural working hours and avoiding 10am Uni. Dinner does definitely not include lamb. I could never do them dirty like that after I owe this whole project to them.”

Can you tell us a bit about your journey to your practice? What first attracted you to working in fashion?

I originally had my heart set on studying fine art. But my foundation tutor Matt came to me and said ‘why are you doing fine art and not fashion. It can be fine art but just working around a body’ and I haven’t really looked back. He had just graduated womenswear at CSM himself, so I trusted his opinion. I’m so glad it happened because it’s given me a more specific medium to channel my work into. I used to be obsessed with ceramics and spent all my time on sculpting big 1m hyper-realistic faces. I thought I might eventually go into special fx as I'm obsessed with films too, but I'm really happy with where I’ve ended up so far. Im open to where it will go, I’m just going with the flow. I love how I can explore all my other interests at the same time. I was also so interested in going into Biology, Engineering and Psychology as well but that can all come into whatever project I choose. I love that freedom to dip into them as much or as little as I want. I’ve become a small expert on such random subjects from exploring them in projects as I like to get into the nitty gritty of whatever concept I’m exploring in my research.

Do you think our taste in food and scents is linked to our taste in visuals and art? How do you think your work would taste?

Judging by the reaction of my nan to my work I’d say kind of hard to swallow... and bitter-sweet. She described my zine for this project as a horror magazine… But to be honest, I think yes, a lot of people don’t like to look at anything that confronts or exposes the farming industry and some people feel like it's an attack on them personally. It’s really not. It’s just food for thought. Ignorance is bliss though.

What initially inspired the narrative of the feature?

My Interest was triggered from seeing the artificial womb scientists have created using plastic bags to raise premature lambs. Seeing a foetus developing through a transparent clear bag is the ultimate marriage of mother nature and man-made for me. Ironic how the very thing that’s killing wildlife-plastic bags-is being used to preserve and create life. I grew up seeing sheep as a part of my landscape and it’s not since moving to London and coming back home to the countryside in lockdown that I started to actually look at and appreciate them. I’ve been on so many walks through farms and I saw this slime in a sheep field from where a sheep had given birth. I think when something is a constant feature in your life since birth you tend to not actually question its existence. Now I was though, and I was finding so much beauty in these bags of fluid and slime they were dragging behind them whilst they were in labour and the different shiny, wet and stringy textures of these inflated birth sacks. However, all imagery online always seemed to be paired with a human arm in a waterproof nylon coat reaching inside the ewe, plastic glove, or bottle feeding the new-born lambs on a sofa in their living room. The act of taking the sheep birth and post-natal care away from the sheep and into human hands triggered a fascination for me.

The narrative could be perceived to be quite political, a statement. In my own work I am often influenced by politics but disperse this visually into a more subtle narrative. I relate to your work in this way as it holds an ironic glaze to it. What did you intend to communicate with this feature?

This project is not intended to be intense propaganda against the farming industry. It’s meant to be more of a subtle satirical probing. But I can’t pretend that’s my main motivation for choosing this subject matter. It just intrigued me and hit a nerve. I want my work to highlight these occurrences and maybe trigger peoples own thoughts and opinions on these things. Personally, for me it can be seen as a comment on humans over producing livestock in unethical conditions for their gain. I used to go into projects with a much more political standpoint but I found that I would get too weighed down and distracted by the message and it would completely block my design process and I felt so restricted by this as I felt such a responsibility to maintain a clear message that I felt so strongly about. I go into them now with a much more light hearted approach and tend to find that people listen more if you can make them laugh first. My uni tutor recently pointed out to me how clothes date quite quickly when you base them upon current affairs. A house doing two collections plus a year can cover current affairs much more effectively but when you’re a student and need your clothes to appeal still in a few years its probably best to look back at politics retrospectively to avoid this ‘dating’. Vivienne (Westwood) is queen of making runway statements on the now though!

Do you think there is a need for the human race to reconnect with the natural world?

For sure. I’m obsessed with looking and questioning the speciesism we have created as a human race. I’m guilty of it myself. It’s so embedded in our cultures and it varies between every different culture around the world. For example, the hierarchies we have imposed upon animals. Like in most western countries a dog is more important and deserving of being protected than a pig despite a pig having a higher IQ than any domestic animal. I think we’ve all been conditioned to turn a blind eye to our food chain and code of ethics.

You worked alone on this while you quarantined. Were there any other figures, however, that were influential to the project, or are to you in your work?

I was lucky to have Phoebe English as a guest tutor on this project. Phoebes massive emphasis on sustainability within her own brand, encouraged me to concentrate on being as sustainable in my practice as I could, even more than usual. I normally play around a lot with resins and Silicones, so I’ve worked on using a completely natural and biodegradable ‘bio-plastic’ alternative, which I made from home using agar, gelatine and condoms. The garments feature repurposed baby harness’ and a very old leather jacket from my stepdad. Phoebe did not impose this onto me or my class at all, but you can’t not be inspired by her ethos. She also made me realise that the back of one of my textile samples was actually far more interesting than the front. Fresh eyes can be invaluable when you’re constantly working alone cooped up.

What have been key aesthetic influences for you in your work?

I like to look at medical references, cursed images, fail images on Reddit and stuff that’s generally hard to look at or ignored, and then make it into something desirable. I like the type of images that look like they’ve only ever been seen by a handful of other people before and have hidden in the depths of a Nokia phone for 15 years. Raw, shiny, odd, circa 2005. I like to find the intriguing bit in the mundane. I enjoy exploring these and growing a project out of one strange old photo from the depths of the internet or a corny textbook to make something unworldly. Some of my favourite photos I’ve ever seen were screenshots from a Russian dating website. I’d say there is quite a big alien aesthetic about at the moment which I’d say I can get behind but personally only if it comes from something subtle and in plain sight to begin with. I like to maintain a raw and authentically human element. This new digital-lil Michaela, fake cgi instagram model- type scene thats so intensely digitalised scares me. Lets keep the models human- or some type of living breathing animal at least.

The garments, also made by you, clearly referenced narrative threads. For example, a recreation of sheep placenta incorporated into one of the dresses. Can you tell us about the process of making these garments?

I tailored this sheep leg silhouette on the skirt and sleeves to embody this idea of humans morphing into the sheep as a result of consuming so many sheep products and acting as my idea of a surrogate to the lambs. The body suit follows similar pattern cutting to maternity bras and utilises old panels and fastenings from a baby carrier harness. The latex textile is made up of over a hundred individually dyed condoms, patchwork together and then disintegrated to reference birth detritus. The sheep placentas really informed my use of textiles. The heel-less cloven heels were made by taking a pair of old work trainers and old heels and combine the idea of a hybrid man-made sheep foot. The shoot also features a big rucksack type leather bag that converts into a dress through a single waterproof zip. I love to do transformable, multifunctional garments and I think it’s a great way to have less in your wardrobe. This features harness details from the baby carriers too and a big inflated knit made out of more condoms to create this placenta type object. I really like how the manmade reflects off the organic materials. I had a lot of images of sheep wearing breeding harnesses and birth prolapse retainer harnesses and this image of a sheep dressed in manmade straps really drove a lot of the design. It’s generally an amalgamation of cross-species motherhood between your modern-day British mum and sheep.

The feature is finished with a distinct, quite ironic creative layout. What motivated this?

I decided to streamline this project into a zine to mimic the health and beauty fads across the world that include these sheep products such as lanolin which is the grease form their wool and their placentas which people take in pills for skin benefits. I was referencing those junk-mail deal booklets you get from health companies that spam you with organic diet pills and other products, with full blown adverts scattered all over them. This over-concentration of adverts theme really sums up what I’m trying to say about mass consumerism and how the animals and the natural get lost in the process.

If you could add a soundtrack to the feature. What would it be? If your work had a soundtrack, what would it be?

Honestly all my work is sponsored by about 10,000 hours of Eminem on a loop since my dad used to play him in the car when I was little, I find it like calming white noise almost, despite it being quite angry a lot of the time. Presentation wise I’d go for anything ethereal that raises the hairs on your spine. I re-watched ‘Silence of The Lambs’ whilst researching this project, even though it only references lambs in one scene, its skin suit is insane too. Anyway ‘Real Men’-live by Savage Republic, rasping ‘free the animals from their cages’ plays in the background during the end scene of the film and that would be the soundtrack to this project remixed with ‘Lambs’ Breath’ by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. I’m lucky to be collaborating with PRXZ who is working on a soundtrack for a video feature on this project right now which is going to be a little mad.

Can you tell us anything about what you’re working on now?

I’m working on a tailoring project at the moment but looking at slightly less heavy research. My projects tend to peak and flow in terms of the intensity of the imagery I look at. I like to mix it up for my myself or I get too bogged down in the more serious dark sides of the world. I’m looking at medieval armour, chakras and 60’s beehives as we speak. I don’t always like to take an ethical or political standpoint, as it can get too much and my head starts spinning. It might change knowing me, but I like to combine different subcultures or imagery together to create something new.

This feature is a comment on current western society and was created during a pivotal and historical moment that will transform the way we live from now on. People are predicting the future more than ever. If you were offered to be able to live eternally, would you take it and why?

That’s a hard one. It would be so sad to watch everyone I’ve ever known and loved die whilst I live on. Probably not because I’m so motivated by death and wanting to prove myself before then so I’d probably have way less drive if I knew I was going to live forever. The future scares me in terms of governments and what society will become but after seeing how everyone has pulled together as a human race during this time, it brings me a lot of hope for the future. There is my Miss Universe/ Miss Kent speech x