Julie Impens
Born to a French mother and Belgian father, Julie always felt deeply connected to the country in which she grew up. France. She has always been interested in the history of France and its unique notion of luxury. Yet, it was when she moved to London in 2006, through the exposure to a melting pot of cultures, she started to cherish how important her national identity was to her and to her work. She started to understand the extent to which her origin was shaping the person and the designer she was the natural path she chose to explore her identity as a designer. For her degree collection, she decided to pick a muse, to inspire her work, a woman who symbolises a sense of French grace, lavishness and femininity that she emphasises in her designs. Her muse is Marie Antoinette d’Autriche. Despite the fact that she wasn’t born French, she is the most famous queen that France crowned over the centuries and symbolises in an ironic contradiction: one of the most famous eras of the French monarchy and its loss. Inspiration for her work came from Marie Antoinette herself and also the epoch she lived in, the Rococo era and the splendour of the court of Versailles. Her inspiration also came from Napoleon III and his famous wife Josephine’s era associated with an art current called the Naturalism. In addition she looked at the beauty of the eighteenth and nineteenth century garments and detailed laces, which also portray the wealth of French heritage, at a time when France was associated with grace, leisure and a utopian lifestyle. Her collection is a way to refer to the nostalgia of these times of great leisure, which had a great cultural impact. A time when France shone all over the world and established itself as a cultural exemplar.
