Part One Reflections
Title of Work: Les Vêtements
My initial step into creating the video was to design the outfits I would be filming. I went over to Nile’s house again and with her help and input on creating her favorite outfits, took photos of her clothes to get an idea of the aesthetics of the video. This was helpful on the day of filming and made the process much more smooth.
While filming, I took a picture of each outfit on the hanger so I could later create a storyboard of the order the outfits would be in. I also wrote each word I would voiceover underneath each outfit. The words are antonyms of each other, and whether or not they correlate with the outfit is supposed to be open to interpretation.
The link to the video is here: Les Vetements. (I titled the project “Les Vetements” — meaning “the clothing” is English — because Nile is a native French speaker.)
The most important response I received from the video was that the use of antonyms and words to describe the clothing, or the feeling of the wearer of the clothing, was unclear. This is one of the most important elements to the presentation and reception of the project, and I have since broken down the project into its three most essential purposes:
- To show how clothing is our most intimate and immediate environment — we live in our clothing as our clothing lives on us.
- How fashion is the purest and most common form of self-expression. Even people who do not “care” about fashion, are making a statement each day with what they wear.
- Given this, what assumptions do we make about people simply based on their clothes? As if we were going through a diary, a Phone, a photo album, if we went into somebody’s closet, what would we learn about their life and personality?
For part two, I want to create an interactive experience with the viewer, as if they were stepping into a sort of mystery woman’s closet and trying to discover who she is by her clothes. I want to put an emphasis on the descriptive and antonymic words, perhaps by using embroidery either directly on the fabric or another piece (handkerchief, jewelry, etc).
