After visiting FIT’s exhibit, “The Body: Fashion and Physique”, it is clear that fashion plays a huge role on how society perceives the human body and what is accepted as the ideal. The featured object I chose is an ensemble from the Spring 2015 collection of the brand Chromat, including what I suppose you could call a pant-like caged structure made of plastic boning. Chromat is known to be a champion for women of diverse body shapes, as well as ethnicities, which can be seen especially on their runways. Julia Twigg writes in her chapter “Fashion, Body and Age” in The Handbook of Fashion Studies, that designers have to “[prevent] the exposure of the body in ways that are deemed ‘unattractive’ … in particular where this is linked to expressed sexuality” regarding the aging body, but the same can be said in general about diverse body shapes. Rather than trying to hide it or change it, this ensemble embraces and accentuates the body that a lot of traditional fashion does not, taking back the power to create an even curvier, beautiful shape and structure. It shows that the way to change how we see the body is to show us something different and something more real. I am a fan of the brand, however it is very much not my aesthetic. They investigate the body through exposing the body, while in my own dress practice, I tend to hide my body and give myself an undefined shape due to a combination of insecurities and a fondness for ambiguity.
