Milla X’s Student Collection "Insurrection": Inspirations

I am pretty much submerged in the thought of my final student collection 2 years in advance.

I finally found cohesive sources of inspiration and I am kind of getting them toghether in a blog as a "collage" to facilitate the creative process.

I am in the process of developing a label, that a lot of you know about. The name of the label is "Noblesse Oblige". But as an individual designer, I am calling myself Milla X. As a revolutionary, I have to drop the name in which I have been known while I have been in intellectual and creative bondage. Plus, I carry the legacy of my marriage and divorce and legally, I am still ladden with my baby-daddy's last name...EEEEWWWWW. Talk about slave-name.

I am proud of my last name and love my family and all, but Milla X also has PUNCH. No designer has gone that route yet.... I might go the way of Prince, or the lead singer of my "homey" beloved band Cafe Tacuba ( if you have not heard them you have to, they hail from my 'hood of Satelite, Edomex, Mexico) and change my name whenever I feel like it.

I already have three looks 3/4's formed in my head and that I need to sketch and flat, the opening look who will be worn by my Saffi, the closing look, and one that involves aluminum chainmail. On all, I have to outsource stuff I cannot myself do like airbrushing, the chainmail and heavy beading. The light beading and embroidery and what not, I can do and I am recruting my mom. She needs to help me. These will be kept top secret. I am also sketching a decoy collection with something cute and bland and innocuous to throw the professors and fellow students off my scent.

But here are my inspirations...

Yes, I know Rami Kashou was also inspired by her but I am heading a COMPLETELY different way...

"Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true." MLK

"To ignore evil is to be an accomplice to it." MLK

FAT LIBERATION MANIFESTO


1. WE believe that fat people are fully entitled to human respect and recognition.

2. WE are angry at mistreatment by commercial and sexist interests. These have exploited our bodies as objects of ridicule, thereby creating an immensely profitable market selling the false promise of avoidance of, or relief from, that ridicule.

3. WE see our struggle as allied with the struggles of other oppreressed groups against classism, racism, sexism, ageism, financial exploitation, imperialism and the like.

4. WE demand equal rights for fat people in all aspects of life, as promised in the Constitution of the United States. We demand equal access to goods and services in the public domain, and an end to discrimination against us in the areas of employment, education, public facilities and health services.

5. WE single out as our special enemies the so-called "reducing" industries. These include diet clubs, reducing salons, fat farms, diet doctors, diet books, diet foods and food supplements, surgical procedures, appetite suppressants, drugs and gadgetry such as wraps and "reducing machines".

WE demand that they take responsibility for their false claims,
acknowledge that their products are harmful to the public health,
and publish long-term studies proving any statistical efficacy of their products. We make this demand knowing that over 99% of all weight loss programs, when evaluated over a five-year period, fail utterly, and also knowing the extreme proven harmfulness of frequent large changes in weight.

6. WE repudiate the mystified "science" which falsely claims that we are unfit. It has both caused and upheld discrimination against us, in collusion with the financial interests of insurance companies, the fashion and garment industries, reducing industries, the food and drug industries, and the medical and psychiatric establishment.

7. WE refuse to be subjugated to the interests of our enemies. We fully intend to reclaim power over our bodies and our lives. We commit ourselves to pursue these goals together.


FAT PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, UNITE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE ....

By Judy Freespirit and Aldebaran
November, 1973


Originally Published by the Fat Underground,
Los Angeles, California USA

Creating terror is not just screaming, making an artistic statement or getting in touch with your anger. True anger is not a flame. True anger is ice. True anger is calm and sure. It does not require legions of people to succeed. It requires determination as strong as steel. An act of terror can be large or small, innately personal or massively public. Let's use our queerest gift--creativity--to Do the Right Thing. I know some of you are shaking your heads as you read this. Many of you will no doubt shrug it off. Go ahead. But remember, I want to live. By any means necessary." Kiki Mason

When I said I am out to tear the fashion world a new one, I am not kidding. 40 years of hate and abuse and ostracism and pain and discrimination. 40 years burning in my memory and soul and heart and temples. 40 years boiling in in my brain and my spirit, and I am about to unleash it all on the world through beauty.

Love ,
Milla X.