Eleventh International Conference on The Image

Abstract

This practice-based research project explores how garments can be understood as images, or representations, of the body and its desires, and in particular, how womenswear garments often represent the desires of others, rather than those who wear them. This is seen to be especially relevant to clothing produced using flat pattern making techniques, which tends to flatten and simplify bodies into a singular image, in anticipation of a singular fashionable look. Informed by what Joke Robaard and Camiel van Winkel refer to as “contemporary art(‘s) … assiduous critique of representation,” and my combined background in performance art and pattern-making, the research asks what garment-images do to women’s bodies and what women’s bodies can do to garment-images. Applying a multiple-methods approach, encompassing garment-making, performances, photoshoots, workshops, installations and publications, this practice-based investigation seeks to reimagine how fashion can otherwise view and enact women’s bodies and women’s desires. This is explored across a series of iterative creative projects and aligns itself with similar object- centred, critical fashion practices – such as Elisa van Joolen’s 11”x17” and One-to-One, and Irena Haiduk’s Jugoexport and Spinal Discipline – which seek to understand, intervene and reconfigure both how and what fashion represents.