Ever since I’ve started studying the art of fashion, movies have been a never-ending source of inspiration to me. I find myself going back to the same films and reanalyzing them each time I watch them I don’t really take my inspiration from the costumes however. Usually I like to fixate on the representation of certain groups and find different tropes, which seem to appear in different movies. A lot of the time I especially get hooked on the portrayal of women and girls in movies and interpret how the way the media paints us, reflects and shapes the way we are treated in society. Lately girlhood has been a reoccurring theme, not just for me, but for many others as it seems. Designers like Sandy Liang or Simone Rocha are on the rise, with their hyperfeminine designs and girly motives, such as bows. Bows especially, are seen on every corner of the internet as of lately. Movies by Sofia Coppola like „Marie Antoinette“ or „The Virgin Suicides“ have received a new wave of popularity. Sylvia Plath’s „The Bell Jar“ is on everyone’s book shelf by now. We’ve all internalized her fig tree metaphor. However, this interest in girlhood and teenage girls is not at all new to the media. I couldn’t help but notice how idealized our picture of being a teenage girl is, now that we ourselves have grown out of that time. The teenage girl is almost a mystical being at this point, usually white and skinny. She’s painted in rosy lights and showing us just the perfect amount of vulnerability. The perfect balance of maturity and purity. Bonus points if she is really really sad. She’s so delicate, like a withering flower, just in the right frame of time before fading away into the background. And while the reappearing of femininity is so very welcome and refreshing, it quickly takes a dark turn when we realize that the women on our screens are usually not a day over thirty. With my bachelors collection I also was aiming to portray a somewhat idealized version of girlhood. While it is something I love to relish in, I do not look on my own teenage years with the same adoration. My collection is supposed to make the teenage girl appear as even more of a mystical being. I want to make her ethereal while also giving her all the weapons she need to fend for herself.