The senses of vision and touch

Are you ready to awaken your senses? To get your (creative) juices flowing to the rhythm of a throbbing beat? Let’s pump up the jam and get seriously sexy and sweaty together! With these collections, I am inviting you to dance into a year of celebrations with me: the 30th anniversary of marlies|dekkers! To start, let me take you by the hand to the birthplace of my brand: the booming club scene of the late 80s and early 90s. Representing the senses of VISION and TOUCH, this is where I started sculpting the sensual shapes that would inspire and define several generations of feminine feminists.

So much more than just music venues, nightclubs like RoXY and iT in Amsterdam were sanctuaries for misfits and mavericks like me, refusing to be labeled on the basis of our sexual orientation, gender, race or size. The perfect ambassadors for my designs. Nightlife allowed us to express ourselves in a joyful riot of diversity and tolerance. No labels, no rules. And often, no clothes! Can you imagine feeling confident and free enough to go butt-naked? (The fact that there were no smartphones or social media to document and share everything definitely helped, of course). Most of the time, it was purely spontaneous, like ripping off my dress to go crazy on a go-go box. Other times, it was conceptual, like when I explored the idea of my ‘Undressed’ lingerie line with an interactive happening at the RoXY. Believing that our bodies are at their most beautiful when undressed, the function of my designs was – and will always be! – to enhance that unique beauty, not distract from it. Did it work? I let the public decide for themselves by having dancers and performers wear my designs while I went completely naked. I guess it worked, because we blew the roof off the club!

To this day, I am inspired by the freedom, joy and radical self-acceptance I felt during nights like these. With the Nightlife editions of my Awaken Your Senses collections, I want to share that spirit with you. Can you hear the wild nights calling? It’s time to reclaim them! Forget about ‘likes’, tags and followers; dance, create and make love like nobody’s watching. Let’s get shamelessly sensual. We don’t need permission to express ourselves. The night is ours.