This Wasn’t Meant to Happen — But It Says Everything
While working on my risograph zine, something unexpected happened during the printing process. As I was preparing the masters to test colours, remnants from the previous person's print transferred onto my images. At first, it seemed like a simple error, but after sitting with the prints and reflecting, I realised that this unplanned disruption actually worked in my favour — and could be seen as a form of détournement in itself.
This accidental layering felt symbolic. It echoed the way fashion media constantly imposes conflicting, recycled, and often harmful messages onto women's bodies — messages we haven’t asked for but are forced to carry. Just as my image was overlaid with remnants of someone else’s print, women are constantly layered with societal expectations, edited ideals, and unrealistic pressures that distort how we see ourselves.
Accidental Resistance
By embracing this ‘mistake,’ I realised how powerful the unexpected can be in visual storytelling. The disruption became meaningful — turning into a critique of the polished perfection often demanded by the fashion industry. It visually represented interference, distortion, and confusion — all themes that run through my work. It shows how hard it is to create something authentic when so much noise already exists around the female body.
Including these prints in my project highlights the beauty in imperfection and reinforces my aim to break away from the clean, controlled, hyper-curated visuals fashion constantly promotes. It also shows how even flawed or spontaneous outcomes can carry critical weight, especially when they mirror the chaos and contradiction women experience through media
This moment is now embedded into the fabric of my campaign. It acts as a reminder that my work is alive, responsive, and not always neatly planned — much like the reality I’m trying to communicate.
Reclaiming Print: My Voice on Their Pages
As I approached the final stages of my zine production, I decided to layer my own détournement directly onto one of the risograph-printed magazines I had created. This act was both deliberate and necessary — a way of physically inserting my critique and presence onto the very media I was reimagining. After experimenting with found imagery, industry advertisements, and manipulated visuals throughout my process, it felt important to turn that same critical lens inward — onto my own work.
By adding détournement to my finished zine, I was not only disrupting the media I critique but also the form I created. I began to see the zine not as a polished, untouchable final piece, but as an evolving surface — one that could still be interrupted, challenged, and reclaimed. This was an important shift in my thinking: it gave me permission to stay raw, to stay political, and to trust the value in pushing past aesthetic “perfection.”
The détournement became a form of self-critique too — asking: am I really subverting enough? Or am I still playing it safe with layout and image? These questions were critical to my development, especially as I explored the contradiction of using traditional fashion formats (magazines, campaigns, photography) to question the very systems those formats uphold.
Ultimately, this act marks a key point in my project — where form and message fully collide. It reinforces the idea that fashion media must not just be reproduced differently, but actively reworked, rewritten, and revoiced — even after the ink is dry. In doing so, I reclaimed not just the image, but the process itself.
