The feminine grotesque- Tailoring project (process)
My project explores the themes of suitability and suiting, examining obsession over the female desire and subjectivity. How women forsake their humanity for crude projections in literal and metaphorical terms, such as being visually desirable but disposable.
My research pinpoints ethical issues such as Evelyn McHale (Times most beautiful suicide), Hollywood the destruction of the 21st century woman and the feminine grotesque.
I chose these subject matters as I felt connected to them, As someone who often questions the mental and physical meanings behind women’s clothing and how we are reappropriated, reconsidered, remixed and cast aside as a vessel for female iconography; I thought this project and my title would help me physically portray how the body exceeds boundaries- for example leaks, grows or transforms. Fashion can both expose and conceal, it can negotiate how much of the body is acceptable to show and when.
I’m using my research to create an emotionally charged garment that merges erotic allure but empowers visibility- reclaiming excess, pleasure, or abjections. I hope to merge the silhouettes of old Hollywood, exploitation of women during the time and the subject of the feminine grotesque to help embody a physical silhouette that’s both classic and unnerving.
I’m looking at embodied theory: using your body, movement, and appearance to explore how culture constructs control feminity. I can achieve this by exaggerating proportions such as padding the hips, bust or stomach. Distorting shape, like padding the back to create an “ungraceful” silhouette and by playing with bodily fluids or textures- for instance using fake sweat or blood can signal the bodies permeability.
I want to make shame into a spectacle and control into agency; everything will be purposefully too much on the woman’s body as we are usually dismissed.
To materialize my ideas, I want to experiment with deconstruction, contour, layering and contrasting sizing to help exaggerate and transform the feminine physique into a disciplined sculpture.
Photographer-
@ziondw
Model-
@rigbysonya
@lcflondon_ @lcf_pattern_cutting 
