After visiting the FIT Museum, I especially enjoy the exhibition from the lower floor:”Fashion From the Extreme”. This exhibition shows people how fashion can challenge the status quo, and can twist the thoughts of garment in the traditional way. Among all garments exhibited, this padded shoulder winter dress is my favorite garment.
This garment is a great example of garment challenging people’s traditional ideas. While it look thick and padded in the front, and with fur covering the hands, the back of this dress looks not wintery at all. Both of the shoulders and the whole back are exposed. At first when I was looking from the front, this dress did not stand out. However, when I turned to the back of this dress, it really surprised me. In Fashion and Cultural Studies, Susan B. Kaiser wrote: “The interplay between body and style-fashion-dress in gender constructions and reconstructions can be captured by the idea of performative.” (1.) This garment uses it’s design and creativity to show ideas of performative. Instead of being a useful garment that keeps people warm in winter, it is more like an art, expressing the ideas from the designer.
As a designer, I really opened my mind through this exhibition. In the future, I want to design garments that can express my ideas, and maybe inspire other people. I want to jump outside the box and be truly creative.
Work Cited:
Excerpt From: Susan B. Kaiser. “Fashion and Cultural Studies.” iBooks. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/fashion-and-cultural-studies/id883384215?mt=11
