“My initial feeling was scepticism. But as I got more involved, I got more and more excited that I felt like it was truly a project where I was able to take my own vision for my own work,” she says. But the experience became something healing for Stark, who has struggled with body dysmorphia. “It was almost therapeutic in that sense because I was literally using these clothes that were an emblem of beauty standards to liberate the body,” she says.
Stark’s work is a far cry from the stereotype of ultra-thin models strutting in angel wings and bras embellished with millions of dollars worth of precious gems. Instead, she plays with the human body, contorting models so that their chests and stomachs overflow from the garments. Stark’s art captures a feeling of extreme discomfort, a hyperbolised version of what she experienced as a young teenager.
Stark aims to turn that feeling on its head with her art. “Through my work now, I actually have taken on that exact feeling of feeling super uncomfortable in my own skin and feeling like everything’s popping out in the wrong way, and I’ve made clothes and imagery that literally represents that exact feeling, but I’ve tried to make it beautiful and delicate and very feminine,” she says.
There is a thread of fantasy that runs through both new and old iterations of Victoria’s Secret, something that Stark latched onto during her design process. She acknowledges that the “dream girl” illusion is something that fuelled body dysmorphia in young women and girls, so when it came to her own interpretation, Stark focused on what the angels were wearing rather than what they looked like.