Helmed by artist Stephanie Jane Burt and fashion educator-slash-researcher Daniela Monasterios-Tan, the two-year-old A Stubborn Bloom has become an industry darling for the way it uses fashion, film and other forms of material culture to explore femininity. Its thought-provoking presentations are often whimsical, nostalgia-steeped and of course stylish affairs.
The collective A Stubborn Bloom, founded by fashion educator Daniela Monasterios-Tan (left) and artist Stephanie Jane Burt, will release Elizabeth’s Diary: Teenage Love and Life in 1990s Singapore in May – a film that explores the lives of young women during the era through the way they dress
Cue the last – held at Objectifs in November 2021 – that gently poked fun at the sexist rigidity of home economics textbooks used in Singapore in the ’70s (the subject was compulsory for female students then). What the duo have lined up next can thus be said to be a natural progression.
Targeted for online release as a short film next month, Elizabeth’s Diary: Teenage Love and Life in 1990s Singapore explores the lives of young women in that decade through the way they dressed. Gen Z’s current obsession with the era’s style was what had sparked off Monasterios-Tan’s interest in the subject, but the project – part of the National Library’s inaugural Creative Residency programme – delves much deeper than the redux of goth glam or baby tees.
Their previous work Home Economics with A Stubborn Bloom (pictured is a still from the film) was a gentle satire on young women’s education in Singapore during the 1970s.
Malls, for example, were the place for teens to see and be seen at, and helped birth several subcultures and their idiosyncratic wardrobe (google “Centrepoint Kids”). And while schools started introducing fashion design and merchandising courses only in response to the government’s push for technical education, Monasterios-Tan points out that if not for such institutionalised action, the local fashion industry might not be where it is today.
She says: “There are so many forces that structure people’s choices and aspirations. Through Elizabeth’s Diary, we want to share how a lot was invested into our modernisation to put Singapore on the global map. At the same time, there was and is a desire to define a local identity…
The increase in conversations that move fashion away from solely being a commercial product and towards something of cultural value or self-expression shows that we are taking fashion seriously and that it goes beyond its retail value and symbol of status. I feel like this will allow us to appreciate it better and be more confident with our own relationship to it.”
Photography Angela Guo Art Direction Imran Jalal Hair Ying Cui Makeup Beno Lim, using Make Up Forever
This article first appeared in the April 2022 Humans Of Fashion edition of FEMALE
