Katy Harrison

About

Katharine Harrison (Katy) is a multidisciplinary creative with a focus on intimate bodywear for the female experience.

How do you feel about being a mother?

Where on the body do you need some support?

Two central strands of questioning running throughout her work at the RCA.

Through personal experience and first-hand research, Katharine’s work explores how undergarments can assist in the reconnection with our bodies, our intuition and primordial wisdom during matrescence and midlife.

With a background in corsetry and bespoke tailoring, Katharine’s interest lies in how a garment designed to support and control the physical body can be redesigned to support and hold the energy body, through the rites of female experience.

Using traditional corsetry materials renowned for their strength and softness, along with handcraft embellishment, finishings and natural dyes, Katharine explores the nature of a ‘stay’ and it’s role in supporting the body.

Mother Within

2024

Crack open –> Release –> Surrender –> Reconnect –> Bloom

Discovering a lack of recognition within contemporary western culture of female rites of passage around motherhood and aging, our journey into midlife can be characterised by movement between archetypes – Maiden and Mother – through what can feel like the underworld between the two.

A process of letting go of feminine wounds imposed on us and endorsed by a patriarchal culture of colonial capitalism, moving into feelings of compassion, wisdom, intuition, ferocity and strength, stepping into mother, the mature feminine.

Katharine’s work focuses on this space in between.

When we can mother within, we can mother the world – Sarah of Magdalene

How do you feel about being a mother?

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