This was an intervention I was testing with a designer I have a persona relationship with in all honesty she is my cousin and she is part of the reasons why I got so invested into fashion since she is a fashion designer. I have always admired her work and when I asked her if she was willing to participate and do a project for me she was all for it but I think it is important to note that she is my cousin for ethical reasons. Her name is Paulina Arango and she has published a book on fashion drawings and illustrations which people in Colombia buy to color inside them I am going to add the book below.
That is the book as well as some of the images she has inside however they are not collared this is her own interpretation however when you see it you are able to see the fact that this are not real bodies they are fashion crocuses that she uses but this is what she was taught to use in universities and brands pay her to use. For example when I used to design on bodies that looked more real my mother would tell me that I should ask my cousin for help since hers where so much better and more pleasing to the eye than mine she wanted me to draw more I this format than more realistic bodies which looking back at it where not realistic at all either.
My question for her was that I wanted her to design different types of bodies that she might use to do designs and represent different bodies but still do it in a fashion way and that was the brief I did not want to tell her exactly what to do I wanted to see what her interpretation of the brief was and she asked me questions such as the fact that maybe a different body type could be a pregnant woman and I told her yes and I think she stuck to the brief in a very fashion oriented way and was very much doing the same thing the fashion industry had been doing with slight changes.
This was what she sent me once she was done and I think that in a design format they are really well done I am not really questioning her abilities as a designer but I really wanted to see her interpretations as a designer to the fact that I asked her to create different bodies than the ones she had used previously but she kept them somewhat in the same proportions because they are all the same height she made some of their proportions different but this are not what I would consider real bodies this are still very much fashion design circuses that one could use. I really found it interesting that in every single one of them she included the color bones when in reality you cannot see everyones color bones which is very unrealistic and she included the long legs on all of them there where no proportions of some other being shorter and taller which is part of the general population. which I found very interesting and she described this as a very hard task and it took her some time to figure out how to do it which makes me think about the fact that the fashion industry is so closed that there it is almost unimaginable to do something different. This is something that I can connect to my conversation with a classmate from another course at central saint martins when I was speaking to her and showing her what I was working on she told me that one of the silhouettes in a previous activity I had done was the right one and when I asked her why she just said that it was what the industry expected and that was just what was done. then also with the field study I did in the mall in Medellin where there were 21 participants and where 7 chose two of the smallest and most unrealistic silhouettes even though in some of them they had other options as well.
This were all the people that chose this type of silhouette that is more unrealistic and the least representative of the female population it is similar to the ones Paulina uses actually the one from the right hand corner was one that she had given me previously that she had worked on for her book.
One of the main points that they brought up was the fact that they should use one of this since it has less stereotypes come from it which is really interesting. Secondly there is the fact that they think that it makes it easier for the designers to work and one person thought that it was important for there to be representation for thinner bodies as well since at times in Colombia there are designs or clothing that is not made for them since women in Colombia are expected to have more volume in their body.
I connect both of this interventions because it if as if it was a given that the industry needs to work like this to make it more efficient however it makes me think about how we expect there to be change if we are only looking at the efficiency side we also need to look at inclusion which is something a lot of my participants think there is lacking in this different spaces.
I was really grateful that she did this for me as a designer since I know she is super busy with her personal and profession projects however it leaves me thinking about what else can be done in order to change this rules that are in designers and general publics brain that in order for it to be used in fashion it needs to be small and thin and even unrealistic.
Leave a Reply