Jéssica Morgades started making clothes at 14, when she took a sewing and patterning class with a group of 60-year-old grandmothers. She came to Barcelona to study fashion design, and since then she has gone on to do wardrobe design on various film productions. She has just finished working on X1, the first European feature-length porno film in 3D.

— How did you get involved in this project?
I began working in a night club, and the guys from the production company were working there, too. They were just then putting together the production company with very few resources. The first time I entered into the production was as an actress. There was a party scene inside a squat, and they needed people to be extras in the background. I realized then that they only had one girl who was in charge of wardrobe and was mostly bringing her own clothing. I told them I was interested in helping, and they asked me to come work with them.

— How did you decide on the designs to use for each character?
I conferred with the producers and director, who told me the story and explained the different roles and psychology of the characters. I made designs for the actresses based on that.

— “Psychology of the characters”?
For example, the director told me there was a schoolgirl character, so we looked for a little mini-skirt and corset with the breasts uncovered and painted, accompanied by a hat with a bow. Then there was the Gothic-futuristic character who had a more industrial look, so we made a trikini with a metallic fabric and chains hanging down.

— But don’t you just see those clothes as a half-second blur on the screen as they drop to the floor?
The typical comment I hear from people is, “Ah, you’re doing wardrobe for a porno film? Well, you won’t be making many clothes, will you?” In this film we did. The people don’t just walk around naked the whole film, and the characters actually play an important part. The person who uses the X1 helmet has to choose a character from a menu. The character appears on the menu wearing the clothes and then does a striptease with those clothes.

— What’s it like going to a job every day where people are having sex in front of you?
Compared with other types of film shoots, most scenes in porno films are pretty boring for the rest of the crew. While they’re filming sex scenes, you don’t have anything to do. They’re not wearing clothes, so I don’t have to worry if something has gotten wrinkled. They’re shooting in one continuous scene without cuts, so I don’t have to keep up with continuity. The striptease scenes were more fun, because I had to keep an eye on whether the clothing was okay, but for me the sex scenes were boring. I just sat there quietly so as not to make any noise on the soundtrack, and waited for the scene to end.

— How long do the scenes last?
A sex scene can last up to 6 or 7 hours, consisting of his masturbation, her masturbation, then him masturbating her, then coitus.

— That sounds vicious.
It’s a lot of time. One day I saw one of the girls walk out pretty saddle-sore. She said she couldn’t even sit down.

— What were the actors like?
We had some famous actresses like Sandra G, who’s on those TV commercials at night, like “Send me an SMS at …” There were, however, some boys that were more amateur, so it was more difficult for them to do what they needed to do — to last the full time or to cum on time. In one scene, a boy’s ejaculation came out only in three little drops, so instead of showing the ejaculation, they decided to show his face in the moment of highest excitation.

— Was there anything that shocked you about how pornos are made?
I didn’t know about boys putting themselves in the “strangler” …

— Right, the good old strangler. Wait, what?
I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s a device with a little cord which keeps the blood in the penis and helps the guy maintain an erection. It’s for when filming starts. The guy masturbates, gets an erection and then slips this device on.

— What was the decision like to take the job? Did you have any concerns about it?
I have a bit of a conflict, because I’m in a feminist group in Asturias that has its own radio program. One of the things we speak out against in that program is pornography, because of all of the slavery that happens to women in pornography. But that didn’t really happen in this film; there is a lot of equality between the two sexes in this one. There is no scene of a women eating three dicks in some submissive role.

— So working on this film changed your mind about porno?
Working on the film opened my mind to the opinions of other people. I saw pornography as fodder for the typical audience of obscene men who were just there for sex and didn’t care what happened to the women. I discovered, though, that there were both men and women who liked porno, and the women didn’t see it as machista at all. They’re just people with open minds, who like sex and who like pornography, by themselves or with their partners. It made me realize that there was another type of audience for porno, not just the one I had imagined of machista men.

— What would have to change within porno in order to remove the social stigma still attached to it?
Porno is basically made for men, so in that sense it is sexist. Women just don’t get horny watching a girl eating three dicks. For the image of porno to change in society, what has to change is who makes it and for whom it is made. Already through biology, porno is looked down upon for women. A woman is looked down upon if she says she masturbates or if she practices sex in public. The topic of sex is still taboo for women. As long as pornography is made by men for men, I’m not in favor of that kind of pornography. But that’s the way it is in all of society. It’s clear to every woman that even the smallest detail of her life is regimented by men. For that reason tampons in Spain are charged with a luxury tax! If it were men who menstruated, they wouldn’t have to pay a luxury tax.

— I didn’t know about that.
It’s the example I always give. Each product has its tax. Food has its own tax, clothing has its own tax. There are taxes for basic products and for luxury products. Tampons have a 16% tax, which is the luxury tax — as if it were a luxurious object! For me, having my period is not a luxury. It comes to me obligatorily every month, and when it doesn’t come is when I start getting scared. It’s strange that nowadays, for as much as we fight for abortion and women’s rights, we still pay four euros for a box of tampons. I think they should give them to us for free!

Jéssica can be reached at:
www.facebook.com/jessica.mendezmorgades

Photo: Louis Hearn