This was originally published in Framework, Vol. 7, No. 1: #25 ‘Bodies’, 2019, available here.

“When connected to social media, digital mirrors can also become spaces of communication.” (1)

I ask to interview Niamh via Instagram DM. This is fitting: Niamh Galea, also known as RAMPTRAMPTRAMPSTAMP, uses Instagram as a tool with which to reclaim visual slurs. Niamh says the lovely thing about Instagram is that “people are able to show who they are in ways we’ve never been able to see before”.

Niamh is navigating a path flagged by semiotics of fashion tropes and the performance of self identity. She punctuates her stories by reminding me, “you have to remember, I’m a big fashion nerd.” Niamh is plotting a course through ethical conflicts surrounding a politicised practice situated within the fashion system.

I ask Niamh the hardest/easiest question first: what is your practice? 

“Practice is hard. It’s so multifaceted. Mine is a fashion practice. I make clothes. I love fashion and I always have but the fashion industry is one of the most destructive things on the planet. I’m very conscious of the negative societal impact it has but I’m also conscious of the impact fashion can have on helping people define their identity or communicate something about themselves to others, or make them feel like they’re part of a community, or a group or a gang.

“I look at how clothing fits bodies, and how certain clothing may not fit the wearer’s body in the way that they are told it should. Part of my practice is making clothing that is more flexible, that can fit different people in ways that they want clothes to fit them. I also want to allow and encourage people to wear clothes that they’re told ‘don’t fit their body’.”

Niamh is also concerned about sustainable fashion and the ubiquity of fashion objects.

“What I hope my practice can do is try and at least contribute to the conversation around alternative ways of making stuff that isn’t just mindless consumerism but special, precious objects that mean something to you and help you say who you are. 

“In terms of sustainability, I use a lot of recycled second-hand garments, I might do deadstock fabrics or vintage fabrics and not only does that create different textures but it also communicates that there are alternatives to fast fashion.”

It was when Niamh was living in Los Angeles in 2017 while interning at Eckhaus Latta that someone first dubbed her a ramp tramp: “he kind of meant it in an offensive way.” What is a ramp tramp? First and foremost, it’s a slur. But what does it mean? “It’s a girl who hangs out at skate parks trying to get laid. When I got back to Sydney, I started telling everyone about being a ramp tramp.” 

Niamh undertook her Honours year of Design in Fashion and Textiles at UTS in 2018. Already an expert conversationalist in Instagram’s vocabulary as a social self-fashioning tool, when tasked with using Instagram as a corporate branding exercise she decided against taking herself and her ‘brand’ too seriously. “Fashion should be fun.” This is how @RAMPTRAMPTRAMPSTAMP was born. “All of a sudden it was all over the clothing as well. I have no idea how that happened.”

Maybe, it happened as a result of “a ‘conversation’ between image and text that voices Barthes’ two distinct representations of the garment [as] image clothing and written clothing.”(2)

The looks in Niamh’s graduating collection were engaged in a conversation with one another. “All of the looks were based around characters. I didn’t want the collection to look like the Sound of Music siblings. I wanted them to feel like a bunch of very weird friends.” Niamh intended each garment in her honours collection to be genderless and sizeless. “Genderless: I know I achieved. Because clothes don’t have a gender. Sizeless was harder. In the end, most pieces fit sizes 4 to 26. Unfortunately some of the pieces, like the white velvet dress, only fit like a size 6 to 10, because I was very restricted in terms of who would be wearing the collection in the [UTS] fashion show. ”

Corsetry, a traditionally restrictive practice, actually allowed Niamh to create more flexible garments. “One of the looks was actually called the Ramp Tramp. In that look I wanted to explore skate culture,” wherein ramp tramps are often ignored even though they play an integral role. “That look had jeans which were suspended by a corset, which kind of looked like baggy boxer shorts. And then the top referenced the ‘logomania’ of skate culture. That shirt was made of second-hand t-shirts, all of which already had logos on them but I replaced them with my logos. Eventually, the logos I had created kind of seeped in to other parts of the collection.”

Niamh’s creation and use of logos also references her practice and regards the creation of ‘special, precious objects’: “the logo is the modern equivalent of the maker’s stamp; … forms of graphical devices that have been used to indicate the origin, ownership, and status of property and people.” (3)

Niamh decided to shoot her graduating collection by using non-models to style and photograph themselves. “I had an idea to do the photoshoot with getting people to do self-take photos, in mirrors. I love mirror selfies, and conceptually they tick a lot of boxes with what we’re talking about. I put a message on my Instagram, and was going to drive round to people’s houses to put on an outfit that they would self-style and self-shoot. I would film them doing that: it was interesting to be let into people’s homes and I thought it should be documented in some way.”

“The adoption of digital media by fashion producers and consumers is concurrent with the adoption of new ways of producing and consuming fashion, … from the exclusive world of the fashion producer to ordinary practices of the self.”(4)

With partner Rex Woods, Niamh has just created a fashion film: Mirror Selfie (2019). “I didn’t even know if I would use the footage. But it ended up being really beautiful and in some ways even captured more strongly people shooting themselves, there was something really nice about it. People have insecurities about photos and the lovely thing about selfies is that you are totally in control of what you see.”

“So Rex, who happens to be a lil film boy, edited the footage.” At a screening of Mirror Selfie at Pink Flamingo Cinema in March 2019, Rex described his editing techniques as a reference to infomercials. “He turned it into something really beautiful. He juxtaposed different media. There are cameos of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian being harassed by the paparazzi and it shows how in mainstream media you don’t get to decide how you’re shown at all, but on social media you really do.”  

Rex Woods is the “lil film boy” to Niamh’s “lil fashion girl”. Rex’s montage speaks to Niamh’s bricolage in knowing acknowledgement and playful subversion of the media systems they are both a part of, and critique.

As Niamh says, “My thesis was about using social media as a way of reclaiming visual slurs in the same way people have always been reclaiming verbal slurs. I always put words on my clothes. I love mirror selfies. A lot of people have insecurities about photos and the lovely thing about a selfie is that you have control of what you see.”

(1) A. Rocamora, ‘Mediatization and Digital Media in the Field of Fashion’ in Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, vol. 21, no. 5, 2016, pp. 505–522

(2) K. de Perthuis, ‘People in Fashionable Clothes: Street Style Blogs and the Ontology of the Fashion Photograph’ in Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, vol. 21, no. 5, 2016, pp. 523–543

(3) J. Pavitt, ‘Logos’ in V. Steele (ed.), The Berg Companion to Fashion, Oxford, Berg Publishers, 2010, pp. 484–485 

(4) A. Rocamora, ‘Mediatization and Digital Media in the Field of Fashion’ in Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, vol. 21, no. 5, 2016, pp. 505–522