Dust Magazine China [IG] Issue 01 taps models Delilah Koch, Sofia Fanego and Zelda Adams for a thought-provoking fashion story ‘She Refused to Be a Muse’.

Creative Director Dou Qianlin — definitely one to watch [IG] — centers the fashion story around the fashion archives of Christian Lacroix.

Photographer Elina Kechicheva [IG] captures this atmosphere of female refusal in the shoot styled by Jordan Kelsey. / Hair by Alexandry Costa; makeup by William Bartel

‘The Real life bored me; I needed to idealize it’, Monsieur Lacroix, now secluded in Arles, told Dou Qianlin. Within this framework of idealization, the creative director references the Mexican artist Leonora Carrington [IG], describing her as . . .

another figure who has chosen to distance herself from societal norms. Her pursuit of freedom and her rebellion against bourgeois conventions, coupled with her disdainful yet confrontational approach to portraying women as muses while neglecting their creative identities, serve as primary inspirations for this DUST CHINA review of Lacroix’s archival .

Muses and Patriarchy

The entire concept of musedom has been defined largely by men and what men need from ‘their muses’. This frequent male artist/female muse synergy remains patriarchal — even if it’s an overtly dominant woman with her preferred-gender muse.

When things don’t go well in his/her artistic career, it’s most often the muse — and not the artist — who was ‘insufficient’ executing inspiration duties.

It’s within this context of women as muses — readily embraced by Dust China Issue 01 as a confining limitation on women’s potential and agency — that Dou Qianlin further expands this ‘women as muses’ tension in his sympathetic-to-women narrative.

The artist-creator/muse concept sometimes bears significant fruit.

‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s actor Audrey Hepburn was the muse of American fashion photographer Richard Avedon, who said about his muse: