Week 1: Combining Fashion, Literature, and Culture Through Couture
Hello everyone! My name is Allison Kuester and my project is Pages and Petticoats: Designing Sustainable Fashion Inspired by Classic Authors. The intersection of clothing, culture, and literature has always deeply intrigued me. Fashion and novels have long been the best reflection of historical times and movements as well as the cultures that operate within them. This project will focus on the sociocultural of different parts of the world and different times through history reflected in classical literature, such as combining the Vietnamese áo dài with the romantic fabric manipulations of Jane Austen.
Guided by Dr. Liljequist, an associate professor of practice for the Fashion Industry’s Science and Technology Branch at the University of Arizona’s Norton School of Human Ecology, I will research the different aspects of clothing design from various cultures and come to understand how to thoughtfully incorporate traditional styles of other cultures and historical aspects into modern Western couture. So far, we have compiled a research bibliography that includes Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity. (2003) by Elizabeth Wilson, Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing. (2000) by Diana Crane, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century. (1994) by Philippe Perrot., as well as primary sources like the magazine shown below, Godey’s Lady’s Book.
The final project will be a couture line of six different pieces, each covering a different novel and culture. There will be a specific focus on the work of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edgar Allen Poe, Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, and George Orwell. The line will reflect the themes of different novels, the historical trends of the time, and different fashion customs from across the globe to reflect the sometimes neglected, but omnipresent diversity of the fashion industry.
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