senior thesis: look #1

I'd like to continue to explain my senior thesis here on the blog, and today I'm going to start introducing each look and explain the specific inspiration behind it. To find out more about the concept development and inspiration I took for this project, check out my posts here and here. The first post explains a bit about my concept for this collection, which I've named Linguistic Relativity. The second post goes a bit deeper into the concept and shows the charts I made based on research.

For this project, I took a lot of inspiration from words in foreign languages, masculine and feminine perceptions of garments, the different ways cultures perceive color, and the number (plural vs. singular) of certain words.

This is one of the looks I actually sewed during Fall quarter. The look is made up of a leather vest and a chiffon ombre dyed dress. The leather vest is a kind of integration of masculine and feminine details. On one side, you have a very structured vest - gold metal buckles, a tailored bodice, a notched collar. Then spinning around, the back curves upward and transforms the other side of the front to something more playful and feminine, more like a cropped jacket or bolero with strap detailing.

The dress was inspired by the way that the Japanese culture (and a few other cultures as well) views color (source). I found it really interesting that they do not distinguish between blue and green - they're seen as the same color. You can use the words for "blue" and "green" interchangeably. For example, if you came to a Japanese stop light, and the green light came on, you could say that it was a blue light, and not be incorrect. If this isn't making sense, I suggest skimming that wikipedia link above, it's really interesting!
Anyway, I wanted this dress to be a reflection of this color phenomenon, so I hand dyed an ombre effect onto my chiffon, creating a light green to light blue gradation. I wanted the audience to almost not be able to tell if it was really green or really blue.

I'm going to get some better photos of the collection when it's all said and done, the color isn't completely accurate, but I suppose you get the idea. Check in later this week to see more of my collection!