Fashion Wire Daily - New York - All fashion to some degree is about the body - clothes, obviously, cover it - but one designer who has made it a particular point of interest, as though she were a combination surgeon-sculptor looking for the best way to cut the latest high-tech fabrics so that they'd play off the body like prosthetic skin, is Victoria Bartlett.

Her collection, VPL, which stands for "visible panty line," has been examining the way that underthings can become outerwear since 2003, and she's well known for lingerie-like pieces inspired by vintage girdles or Victorian undergarments. Often, she'll incorporate antique boning from corsets into her new pieces, repurposing it as decorative, rather than functional, elements.

Bartlett's VPL collections deal with the various ways the body can be shaped or constricted - or rather, give the illusion of such manipulation. It's as though she cut a corset out of tracing paper or placed elastic bands in a such a way so that it looks like she took a pen to the body, plastic surgeon-style, and marked up where a nip and tuck should be. Even more striking are her fabrics, so ultrafine that you hardly even notice they're there at times.

"I'm obsessed with it, I can't get away from it," said Bartlett on her fascination with the human body in her New York studio on Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 28. She was pointing out a knotted rope accessory that looked like a ribcage designed by Aran Baik. Each season, Bartlett collaborates with different artists and designers to create accessories that play off the show's theme. In the case of her Spring 2010 collection, entitled "Atlas of Anatomy," the human skeleton played a major role. Other accessories paired with the collection for the show included cast resin vertebrae necklaces by Lizzie Fortunato.

Bartlett will also soon launch her first fragrance for VPL called "Endorphin," whose name further cements her passion for the body - in this case, not just its anatomy, but its physiology.

The Spring 2010 collection was based on 14th century medical drawings that revealed the human anatomy in a series of layers, each subsequent layer peeled away to show the next section of the body's interior. It's a useful metaphor for the way that Bartlett designs the VPL collections to be worn. VPL's ultrafine layers that do the opposite of adding bulk, instead just barely skimming the body.

Pants and skirts are "suspended" from membrane-like upper panels, another way for Bartlett to make the underthings visible. They function almost like a peek of false underwear - in this case, old fashioned support panties.

Bartlett created prints for the first time that look like ink blot drawings or topographical maps printed on semi-transparent fabric - or, if you're morbid, blood stains. There's a version in coral ("My mom used to wear this color of lipstick all her life," said Bartlett. "You found a color and you wore it for 40 years."), and another in shades of purple that Bartlett revealed was created from an actual x-ray of her head taken 15 years ago when she was in a car accident.

For Bartlett, finding innovative fabrics - and then manipulating them even further with hard-to-achieve sewing techniques - is key. She pointed out the skirt attached to an elastic bandage corset. "Recycled nylon from Japan," she said. "I've always been obsessed with techno fabrics." A tuxedo jacket - Bartlett admits this is not a usual piece for her - is woven in neoprene, so it still has a characteristic VPL stretch and malleability.

Other fabrics are twisted and knotted to create straps that could double as bones. Bone-colored fabric was also used in jackets and pants to give them an antique-I-found-it-in-the-attic aged effect.

A common thread throughout VPL, said Bartlett, is "the idea of malleable clothing that you can manipulate and style and play with. It's always sort of about exposing and revealing."