Robyn Hennessy

‘Intimate Friends’ is a collection that turns misremembered queer history into a dreamy, chaotic love story. Inspired by hidden lesbian relationships throughout the centuries mis- labelled as friendships, erased as “roommates”

It imagines their secret lives, their laughter, their chaos and the missing pieces, and queer love stories that history has left unaccounted for.

Starting with the diaries of the ‘first modern lesbian’ Anne Lister an obsession grew to find other queer women from the past.

Sadly finding that many of their stories were speculative, rewritten, or completely lost. The silhouettes draw on the wardrobes of Victorian lesbian couple Radclyffe Hall and Una Vincenzo, reworking masculine tailoring and feminine softness into something entirely new.

Taking these historical references into modern contexts, the collection imagines lovers caught in the act, grabbing clothes from the floor, half-dressed, maybe even wrapping themselves in their bedding as makeshift outfits.

It’s proudly messy yet polished at the same time.

Garments are twisted, slightly too big and proportionally strange.