Growing up in Athens with a grandmother who ran a tailoring school, it’s perhaps not that surprising that Dimitra Petsa, founder of namesake label Di Petsa, ended up becoming a designer.

Having first undertaken a BA in performance art, the London-based creative graduated from Central Saint Martins’ esteemed MA fashion course in 2018, debuting a poignant final collection which centred around the exploration and destigmatisation of female wetness: think semi-diaphanous t-shirts with watermarks around the nipples, dresses that appeared dripping in sweat, and jeans with urine-like stains to the crotch.

“It was an eco-feminist research project into how the way we treat our bodily fluids has an immediate connection to how we treat the oceans and water at large,” she explains. “Wetness and the futile strive for dryness is so integral to the female experience: we hold our tears back, periods are something to be hidden… These fluids have been a big part of my artistic practice for many years and my changing attitude towards them represents a personal journey of self-healing.”

Having since created custom wet-look pieces for FKA twigs, as well matching mother and baby pieces for Kylie Jenner and her daughter Stormi, Petsa made her London Fashion Week debut for AW20 with an immersive, intimate performance. Now, in isolation, the designer is turning her attention to the future, with a new collection upcoming and the beginnings of a project in mind.

When it comes to your work, what are you most proud of?

Dimitra Petsa: I am really proud of the Wetness project and the community of people who support my work and find beauty and healing in it in the same way that I have.

What issues or causes are you passionate about and why?

Dimitra Petsa: I am very passionate about ecology and feminism. I can’t really pinpoint why exactly: it’s just always been like that for me. I think sociopolitical concerns and ecology are very closely related.

What creative or philanthropic project would you work on with a grant from the Dazed 100 Ideas Fund? 

Dimitra Petsa: I would like to use the money to work on a project with a breastfeeding choir with a live performance in London and Athens, which would subvert the shame of breastfeeding in public, combining ecofeminist poetry and sound design. By creating a meaningful audiovisual experience, I hope that people will draw parallels between our body and the environment, realise our existential dryness, and see that the fact we are wet, and that we come from water, is not something shameful to be hidden.