My name is Yula and I live in New York City. Everything around me is new since I arrived in the city, as an abnormal girl like Alice in the rabbit hole. It is not easy, but I am a person who relishes learning something new, so I am satisfied my life. I am from South Korea but I do not like categorizing myself by nationality because it means nothing. It only means I have black hair and dark brown eyes. Since I do not prepare to categorize or to divide, I like the foundation course in the first year in Parsons. Indeed, I like all kinds of art such as photography, sculpture, and painting. It sounds silly, but it makes sense at the same time because all types of art are connected to each other, it is natural. Even though I like all of them, the most favorite thing is fashion and I decided fashion design as my major because I can see a structure, color, movement, harmony, and communication in fashion. Those are same concept with photography, sculpture, painting, and etc. Fashion is a living organism for me.
As my major is fashion design, I am always interested in fashion. My instinct draws me to choose dressmaking for the Bowery project. This idea has expanded to include woman’s rights especially immigrant woman’s rights. I am not a feminist, but I have a duty for feminism because I am a woman. I can somewhat neglect my nationality, but I cannot ignore my gender or injustice. During the research, I found much unfairness toward women in the 19th century. I also found many brave women who fought against unfair dealings. Since dressmaking in the 19th century was one of the limited jobs for women, and when women worked they could achieve rights, dressmaking was a very significant matter for women, immigrants, and society.
For this research project, I visited the Tenement Museum. I was inspired by dressmaking in the museum. I saw the traces of immigrant families form Italy and German in 97 Orchard Street. Nathalie Gumpeltz, who was the first generation of immigrants in the 1800s made dresses in her tenement apartment. One day her husband disappeared, but she could not have her property, even though she earned money and her husband owned the apartment, because all property had to belong to the husband. Even though she could not speak English at all, she sued and finally she got her own property for her children and herself. She was the first immigrant woman who had her own property. This is a very remarkable case in the history of the United States.
After that, I met David Mulkins who came from the Bowery to visit in studio class. He introduced amazing stories of the Bowery and made me think deeply about the Bowery, so I made an appointment with a specialist librarian, Rachel Cassiman, and she offered to access to various information about dressmaking in the 19th and 20th century through the resources at the libraries. I realized there was a lot of information at NYU Bobst Library, and I visited there and found many meaningful resources.
There were more the answers than I had expected, and I am still reading and trying to understand them. We already started making an artifact, so I am making a woman wrapped and strangled by threads. The reading and images of the topic have given me a lot of inspirations. This project is very important to my learning because this is based on history. It does not matter which country or culture the history belongs to. Another thing that I was stimulated by women who fought to get woman’s suffrage in England. This was not related to dressmaking, however, it is the same subject and we should know about it no matter what our history, because those brave women in the history have changed the world. Thanks to them, we can live a better. Studying history is not only learning about the past, it also can be learning about the future. This applies to making art. In art, we can make what we want based on history. We cannot abandon our history. The Bowery is an essential part of United States history. Dressmaking is one of the essential subjects in history, and I saw the many resources of the garment industry in Lower East Side. Since working let people have power, dressmaking is a bridge between women who did not have power and women who can speak up based on the power from the working. Dressmaking is also a bridge between an aestheticc sense or art and a requisite of our life. I am fascinated by the contrasting feature of dressmaking, so I decided to make artifact, and write an essay regarding to dressmaking.
