700 WORD CONCEPT STATEMENTÂ âDECONSTRUCTED WEARABLESâ ANGEL ROBERTSON, 2015
âI donât have anything to wearâ
Constructing a look is something the human does every day but how do I do it? Do you construct in the same way I do? Do you pick a piece and work around it? Do you even âdoâ looks? Looks are important to me but theyâre kind of dumb. I try to do looks mostly when I dress myself and if I feel like I havenât pulled off a look I feel funny all day. Mindfulness is important in dressing yourself. Your clothes (like you) are a conglomerate of experience and context. So why do you wear what you wear? Do you know where it comes from? Are you mindful? Do you consider yourself an environmentalist? Do you partake in fast fashion? What if you just had one set of clothes with endless possibilities? Would you still get bored with it? The possibilities may be endless but the object is still the same.
âI look like shit in everything I ownâ
I thought about a lot. I thought about garment construction and creators. I thought about what I want to see in the market and questions I wanted to respond to as a designer. Is it thoughtful about itâs materiality and where itâs sourced from? What would my friends do with it if they actually had it in their wardrobes? I thought a lot about modular clothing- if done right and on a large scale it could be a real answer to halting (if only momentarily) the Internet generations lack of attention span. It could really sustain itself; someone who owned two modular clothing options and grew bored could buy one more and suddenly a whole world of new co-ordinations is available! A new toy to play with. Itâs non gendered, it isnât held by the binaries of itâs time. These are all lofty and ambitious ideas- but with something as vague (yet tangible) as clothing that you buy which then becomes your own creation, these parallels should be drawn. Because it allows the wearer to construct their own identity.
âNothings fitting me at the momentâ
When constructing my modular clothing I thought about people I admire. Margiela assembled finished pieces on models but constructed traditionally, Kawakubo assembled garments like sculpture on a table. I constructed on the body and I worried it wouldnât work for anyone but me. So, I problem solved. Buttons! Holes! More malleable and more alterable and more accessible and more inclusive! But at what point does inclusivity become exclusive? Is it like when you're so politically correct you become offensive? I tested it on four completely different body types and it worked- how much further could it go?
âItâs too small but come summer Iâll fit into itâ
The modular clothing goes like this: there is a default look, all in one colour. Itâs a starting off point. Dylan got deep brown, Talei got mid brown, Gus got tan, Anna got white. The tops and the bottoms have a front and a back which join via buttons. I love fixtures. These fronts and backs can be swapped any which way! You can have a pant back and a skirt front on the bottom- you could even have pants as a top and a top as a bottom! The performers went further than expected, joining from hip to shoulder and pushing limits
âItâll look so good with a tanâ
I tried not to think about my choice of performers in creating the clothing. I tried not to think when I chose them; I chose people with chemistry and then people got sick so I compromised. I tried to be inclusive but not think too hard or be tokenistic. The performers switched and constructed each other and themselves. Collaboration is truly wonderful- I think they made things more beautiful than I ever imagined with what I supplied them with. They responded so much to the mood- I imagined it to be silly and frivolous- like those funny stock images you find on google but it didn't end up that way at all. Everyone was really thinking and the mood was still. It was almost mechanical the way everyone worked at the wearables and it turned out more poetic than goofy.
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