Social Attire

Firstly inspired by Henry Fuseli’s pen and ink drawing ‘The Debutante’ (c.1807) which features a young woman leashed to a wall, tending to her garment, while a group of envious social counterparts look on. Lowe has supplemented this original narrative with a female figure of his own design, with a helmet, shield, and sketched armor copied from Velazquez's portrait of ‘Mars,’ the Roman god of war. These accouterments help to transform the fallacy of a ‘debutant pet’ into a social warrior of the wealthy elite Victorian, or even contemporaneous, upper-class.