senior thesis: look #2

This is the second look in my collection of 8 for my senior thesis in fashion design at the University of Cincinnati. 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.

Click here to see the first look from my collection.

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 the first look I've finished in final fabric this quarter. It has two pieces, a sweater and pants. The sweater was developed after learning the German word for cardigan, "ein strickjacke." To me, this word sounded a little like "straight jacket," and that's where the idea took shape. It's basis is a simple cardigan sweater with an industrial zipper closure, but with draped pieces wrapping around the body and even constricting the arms, it begins to take on a straight jacket feeling.

I'd like to surprise everyone at the end of the month with photos of the whole collection, but I worked so hard this week completing this look in final fabric that I'm giving you a little sneak peek of what the back of this garment looks like.

I've finished the pants in their final fabric as well, a lightweight wool gabardine, but I haven't taken any photos. As I studied these languages, I noticed that in some languages, like French, the word for pants is singular, "un pantalon." But, in others, like Spanish, the word is plural, "los pantalones." I began to wonder what a singular pant would look like as opposed to a plural pant, and this is what came from it. I didn't want my singular pant to just end up being a skirt, so the pant has the crotch dropped so low that it's hard to tell if there are actually even two legs. You'll see my ideas for plural pants over the next week or so.

What do you think so far? Do you have any opinions on these designs or the concept in general?