The question arrives with almost every enquiry, usually within the first exchange: what should I wear? The reassuring answer is that you do not need to bring anything at all. The studio travels with its own wardrobe: an archive built over years and carried between Milan and London for every commission. Understanding what is in it, and how it is used, is the best possible starting point. The atelier archive Over the years we have commissioned an archive of maternity gowns made

For most of the history of the image, pregnancy was something to be hidden. It appears almost nowhere in the grand tradition of portraiture: the salons and galleries of Europe are full of women rendered in silk and shadow, and almost none of them are visibly with child. Pregnancy was considered too private for art, and too far from an ideal of beauty that art was supposed to serve. A woman's changing body belonged behind closed doors. Then, in a single month, that changed. Th