The Ask.
Choose a play from the late 19th century and develop a fashion collection inspired by the script, characters, and the fashion during the 1880s-1890s.
The Process.
Choosing the Play
Out of the various late 19th century plays, the one that spoke to me the most was Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde. A theme I am always drawn to in art or media is moral ambiguity and this play explores how the lines of “good” and “bad” tend to blur. Another theme in Lady Windermere's Fan is gender roles, especially the performance of them.
Collection Concept
With these themes in mind, I wanted to explore and play with masculinity and femininity in this collection. As the looks start it is very clear what is masculine and feminine, as the collection goes, those elements bleed into each other, coming to fruition at the end. I wanted to show duality, and just like how Lady Windermere realizes the world cannot be black and white, neither can clothes.
“There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.”
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
Setting the Mood
First, we had to create a main mood board that captures the essence of the play and of the fashion during the late 19th century. In addition, we needed to create a research board for each of our looks. These boards included ten accurate period images and ten images of modern influences. Using The Met’s website for period images and pinterest for archival runway looks helped me greatly during this process. After I collected a variety of images, modern and period, I started grouping them by what could be cohesive in a look together.
Developing the Looks
Grouping these images in a mood board made it easier for me to pull inspiration and create a look. This was a ten piece collection, so I had to create ten drawings. Out of this whole project, this was easily my favorite part because it allowed me to creatively explore period fashion and make it my own.
For my drawings, I chose to do digital renderings on my iPad. I couldn’t immediately just start drawing. I had to take a second and look at the mood board, list out what I wanted to pull out from the period and the modern, and how I wanted to piece together each part. I knew there were going to be a lot of flower and stripe motifs - the former representing the feminine aspect and the latter representing the masculine aspect of the collection. After figuring out each look and having the rendering finished, I had to ensure that they were ordered correctly, so that the blending of the masculine and feminine was evident. Lastly, I had to list out each of the garments in the drawings, head to toe, and point out what 19t century inspired elements were present in the look.
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Look 1
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Look 2
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Look 3
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Look 4
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Look 5
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Look 6
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Look 7
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Look 8
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Look 9
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Look 10
The Outcome
With this project, I was given the opportunity to dive into the late 19th century and really achieve an understanding of fashion during that time. Being able to apply the knowledge I learned about the 1880s/1890s into a creative project helped me connect with the time period. Through the process of acquiring period images, I feel like I gained a new skill of researching. At first, it seemed daunting to find all these period accurate images, but you just need to know where to look and what exactly to look up. Another daunting task for me was the drawing aspect of the project, which is like 50% of the project. I knew I was capable of thinking creatively and coming up with a vision for this collection, but I didn’t know if I could bring it to life because I’m not great at drawing. I gained more confidence in my ability to draw with a croquis, and this project gave me more experience in creating fashion drawings.