serena dendievel
This first manifesto series is an intimate and political project inspired by self-defense strategies and by Serena Dendievel’s personal experience as a woman navigating public space. Conceived as wearable sculptures, these pieces create a sensory experience that operates in tension with the male gaze. Designed to intimidate and to restore a sense of confidence and agency within hostile environments, they question how adornment can become an act of resistance.
Movin through public space as a woman in a patriarchal society remains a challenge. Daily life is punctuated by a continuum of gender-based and sexual violence like invasive stares, catcalling, harassment, unwanted touch... This constant violence functions as a mechanism of control, restricting women’s fundamental freedom to exist, ocupy space, and move freely through the city. It also serves to push women back into the domestic sphere, a space to which they have historically been confined and assigned.
Between protection and self-expression, this series emerges as a cathartic response to this violence. Starting as a means for the designer to reclaim her own body, it also became a celebration of the power of the Feminine as a force of resilience, defiance, and transformation.
The pieces are developed through an experimental approach that combines upcycled Dremel tools and industrial elements with various metals, including brass and handmade sand-cast bronze components moulded from machine parts. Each piece is unique and handcrafted by the designer using techniques such as brazing and lost-wax casting, in collaboration with Sidoine Duranthon. Every stage of the process takes place within the intimate environment of the designer’s studio in the Paris region.
Credits : all photography from this page by Elias Zorn Dubois