My sophomore year work is a culmination of learning technical garment construction via Core Program fashion courses and a corset-making course. Gaining this foundation has allowed me to begin working in fashion with my conceptual interests of uniformity, repetition, and individuality.
Fashion Illustrations, Fashion Illustrations, 2023, graphite, colored pencil,18x24in
Volume, movement and shape are indexed in a vocabulary of mark making and gestures developed without the constraints of a croquis or model. The scale of each illustration only aids in the construction process and execution of detail. Drawing is language for me.
Victorian Corset, Victorian Corset, drill cloth, 2022
Learning the craft of corset making developed a foundation in creating structure I was otherwise unfamiliar to. It has become a tool and skill carried throughout my sophomore year.
Leather Corset, Leather Corset, second-hand leather, 2022
Working with leather maintains its challenges, especially second-hand leather such used here. Its malleability and delicate nature presented an array of challenges from which I learned immensely.
Journal Process Development, 2023
I am an observer of the mundane, uniform, and structural. I have an affinity for repetition, grids, and squares. Research spans from daily drawing and photography to learning of my families time in communist housing and its subsequent effects. Repetition and uniformity breeds my excitement.
Journal Process Development, 2023
Process development of my sophomore final garment. Final muslin is pictured as well as color/print story and detail images of corset construction.
Fabric Samples, Muslin, Chemical Dye
Fabric tests for sophomore final garment. Top sample is hand dyed and printed over top with the aerial view of my grandmother’s neighborhood after immigrating to America. The floorpan of her home is laser engraved overtop. The visual similarities of her home and communist housing become a mode of representation materialized in my final garment. Middle sample is a heat press print of the aerial view of my grandmother’s neighborhood. Bottom sample is a laser engraving of a communist housing structure constructed by Oskar and Zofia Hansen.
Sophomore Final Garment Illustrations, 2023, graphite, 18x24
Illustrations for sophomore final garment. There is constant conversation between my drawing and garment construction. Both feel as though they contribute equally to the actualization of a garment.
Sophomore Final Garment, 2023, hand dyed/printed Muslin and Drill cloth
Individuality is an innate need within our human experience. I’ve come to understand this through architecture, specifically the communist housing my family comes from in Poland. This brutalist architecture marks a moment in time where political structure obligated people to go to lengths to individualize themselves. My aim is not to make a brutalist-looking garment rather it is to highlight the way it has formed people. The prints are of this architecture and the aerial view of my grandmother's neighborhood after immigrating to America. The silhouette of the garment is a meld of time periods, the 1940’s basque, victorian corset, and midcentury cowl. The visual similarities of the prints and variety of silhouette are my language to explain neither political structure nor geography dictate the want to individualize oneself. The process of individuality is never finished, it entails fluctuation and perseverance, traits that remain beautifully human.