Fashion Design Commons^™

Ricucire Il Tessuto Della Società: L’Intersezione Di Moda Femminile E Femminismo, Caroline Grace Bisese

Honors Theses

La moda è tutt'altro che una conseguenza frivola e accidentale dell'abbigliamento disponibile e del luogo in cui si va a fare shopping. L’abbigliamento è una forma di retorica corporea che evoca un ampio dialogo non verbale. Una narrazione che va ben oltre il materiale e lo stile, sebbene entrambi questi dettagli sono fondamentali, la moda al livello più elementare è essenziale per capire chi sono le persone, perché sono come sono e in cosa credono. Queste sono alcune dei capisaldi per capire una persona in relazione alla cultura e una cultura in conseguenza delle persone che la compongono. È una …

Ornamentalism: Costuming And The Portrayal Of The Chinese Woman In Film, 20th-21st Century, Andrea Yepez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis aims to analyze the concept of “Ornamentalism,” a term created by Anne Anlin Cheng. In Ornamentalism (2019), Cheng proposes the term—a combination of Orientalism and ornament—as a new way to study Asiatic femininity. Cheng applies the term to a case study of the career of Anna May Wong, the first Asian-American actress to feature in Hollywood films. Throughout her career, which began in the 1920s, Anna May Wong held the status of it-girl and muse to designers such as John Galliano. However, Wong was also subjected to playing stereotypical Asian roles in films and was consistently the victim …

Exploring Women’S Sizing Chart: A View Into Psychosizing, Patience Billingsley

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

The apparel industry lacks a universal sizing system and has created tactics to group consumers under a few generic sizes. The inconsistency in sizing has led to a struggle of consumers trying to find pieces of clothing that are not only their size but fit their measurements as well. An analysis of the sizing charts of 5 different women’s clothing private labels ranging from sizes 0-16 within two major department stores was assessed. The sizing charts within each individual store were evaluated, and then compared to one another. After calculating the sizing differences, an average of both store A and …

Fashioning The Flapper: Clothing As A Catalyst For Social Change In 1920s America, Julia Wolffe

Honors Program Theses

Fashion has been a catalyst for social change throughout human history. Fashion in 1920s America in particular reflects society's rapidly evolving attitudes towards gender and race. Beginning with how corsetry heavily restricted women for nearly four hundred years up until the twentieth century, this thesis explores how clothing has acted as a tool for societal progression following World War I and Women's Suffrage and during the Jazz Age and The Harlem Renaissance. Specifically, this thesis examines how the influence of jazz music and dance that originated from Black American communities led to the creation of the flapper evening dress. The …

Sartorial Semiotics: Constructs Of Gender And Female Sexuality In Post Wwii American And European Cinema, Patricia Cabral

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cinematic costume design functions as a system of visually-perceived, material and indexical signifiers, an effective and compelling language further informed by styling and embodiment. Sartorial semiotics support and inflect role characterization, while equally underpinning or subverting tropes generated by ideological paradigms. The following methodological approaches were adopted in scrutinizing this topic: Roland Barthes’ application of semiotic theories to the domain of fashion in The Language of Fashion, and Laura Marks’ discussion of the dialectics of optical and haptic visualities in apprehending film images in The Skin of Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses.

By examining the costume …

An Examination Of Non-Traditional Bridal Wear And Its Primary Consumer, Erica Thalmann, Kristina Dimaria

Senior Honors Projects

Bridal wear has traditionally been viewed as big white dresses. But as times change, so do brides’ preferences for bridal wear. Jumpsuits, rompers, short dresses, and other “non-traditional” choices are experiencing an increased demand in the market. Unfortunately, brides who seek these options are often not met with a promising assortment. This study examined primary consumers of non-traditional bridal wear. Specifically, we sought to find out whether women who belong to the LGBTQ community choose to consume more non-traditional bridal wear compared to heterosexual brides. The study also examined through which channels (e.g., online, in store, etc.) consumers predominantly purchase …

Breast Dressing: A Critical Review Of Post-Surgical Bras, Adi Sieradzki

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Breast cancer is acknowledged in the United States as a phenomenon. With more than 3 million women either diagnosed or treated for it as of 2019, it is a seminal part of the American healthcare map. However, the market for the kinds of bras and bandages patients have to wear after surgery remains mostly overlooked and outdated. This thesis aims to explore what it means to bandage or dress a breast that has been altered either in combative or cosmetic procedures. Why post-surgical wound care for breasts still mostly looks like a sports bra? How do breast cancer patients rehabilitate …

Relationships Between Dress And Gender In A Context Of Cultural Change, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis, Diana Saiki, Kim K. P. Johnson

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Imaging Exploitation, Complexity, And Paradox In Subaltern Labor Photography, Mahnure Janis

Theses and Dissertations

Imaging Exploitation, Complexity, and Paradox in Subaltern Labor Photography is an expanded cinema performance examining 'cheap' labor in the fast fashion industry through a self-reflexive diasporic lens. The images and narration explores the garment factories in Bangladesh and contains ‘a photographer’s cognitive meta-data’, including ethical dilemmas while taking the images.

Designing A Human-Centric Rigid Body Armor For Female Police Officers: The Implications Of Fit On Performance And Gender Inclusivity, Sarah West

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The lack of availability of female plates for police officers is an issue that has not been analyzed. Female anthropometry is uniformly different from male anthropometry. Currently available hard plates are flat. These plates may decrease coverage while increasing feelings of poor fit, discomfort, and poor mobility for both male and female officers. The plates designed for males offer the possibility of female officers experiencing feelings of gender exclusion. This research project explored the current perceptions of male and female police officers in Arkansas across the dimensions of fit, comfort, and mobility in the context of hard plate body armor. …

Getting Dressed And Being Dressed: A Constructed Autobiography Of Identity, Jana Jarosz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This written and visual capstone project examines how feminist theories surrounding the construction of a gendered subject are related and situational to the narrative of a lived body experience within a layered context of clothing. It opens up a discussion concerning the negotiated space between an individually-empowered, subject-in-process and the boundaries of social expectations outlining gender and cultural identities. The thesis introduces the concept of using an automediality framework to connect the material culture of clothing to still and motion imagery with text as a way to encapsulate and illustrate the fluid nature of becoming. It concludes by suggesting that …

Sins Against Our Soles: The Morality And Hygiene Of Nineteenth-Century Women's Shoes, Nicole Rudolph

Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Our understanding of the Victorian woman has long centered around the idea of the “Angel in the House,” made famous by Coventry Patmore’s 1854 poem. This mythical ideal to which a middle-class woman should endeavor can be found in endless numbers of nineteenth-century texts and has become an oft-referenced concept in modern historiography. Representations of the attributes of the ideal woman circulated widely in society, pictured in etiquette books, medical journals, and especially advertisements. They were an ever-present reminder to women of the social norms governing their roles and life trajectories. As consumers, women were responsible for the presentation of …

Constraint And Control, Patricia Ayres

Theses and Dissertations

I have long considered themes of the body. Drawing on my knowledge as a fashion designer, I bring materials and hardware from the fashion industry into my artwork transforming and rendering them non-functional. My sculptures relate to stories of isolation, separation, and confinement. The following pages will analyze how the United States penal system controls, constrains and restricts the body through physical and psychological wounds. Furthermore, they will examine how the Catholic Church controls people’s minds and behavior through a ritualistic belief system.

Bodylore And Dress, Amy K. Milligan

Women's & Gender Studies Faculty Publications

Bodylore includes the ways in which the body is used as a canvas for inherited and chosen identity. Bodylore considers the symbolic inventory of dress and hair, addressing a range of identities from conservative religious groups like the Amish and the Hasidim to edgy goth and punk devotees. The body is scripted in portrayals of race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, and politics, including such topics as tattoos, piercing, scarification, hair covering and styling, traditional and folk dress, fashion, and body modification. The central bodylore questions are whether individuals choose consciously or subconsciously to engage with their performative body, as well …

The Classical Versus The Grotesque Body In Edith Wharton's Fiction, Joshua T. Temples

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In her landmark works The House of Mirth (1905), The Custom of the Country (1913), and The Age of Innocence (1920), Edith Wharton responds to earlier depictions of the classical, pure Victorian and Edwardian woman. Wharton's "inconvenient" women overturn popular stereotypes. Subsequently, they are barred from their social groups, but they are independent, unlike the complicit and obedient women of the classical body, most of whom ascribe to the trope of the "Angel in the House." The grotesque seeks to undercut the unrealistic expectations enforced by the classical through its embodiment of progression and humanity, and Wharton is drawn to …

Fashioning Desire At B. Altman & Co.: Ethics And Consumer Culture In Early Department Stores, Tessa Maffucci

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We live in an age of fast fashion. Clothing is produced in greater volumes than ever before and the lifecycle of each garment keeps getting shorter and shorter. Many items are manufactured to be worn only one time and then thrown away—as disposable as a cup of coffee. There is much to be learned about our current fashion ecosystem by looking into the past. Beyond the garments themselves we must understand the larger historical and sociological context in which these articles of clothing were produced. How does the shopping environment shape the buying habits and fashion trends of an era? …

Dress And Womanhood Of Ancient Rome, Eliza Burbano

Honors Theses

Fashion transcends its own role of imagery, as it becomes the medium through which individuals express their place in society. Fashion history would not consider the ancient world as part of the history of the discipline. Nevertheless, the function of dress in ancient cultures like that of Rome has definitely helped shape social hierarchies that are still present today. Clothing structured Roman society deeply, just as class, race, and sexuality did. Scholar Kelly Olson (2002) defines the function of clothing as part of a sign system. This study argues that dress in ancient Rome goes beyond this idea, in that …

Yale Joel, Tina Leser, And Factory Fashions: Rethinking Women’S Roles In The 1950s, Emaline Maxfield

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

In postwar America, women challenged tradition by continuing a trend started in the Second World War, asserting their presence in the workforce both physically and visually with the advent of Tina Leser’s designs. Leser’s designs reached the everyday woman, and Joel’s photographs reached the average American, bringing greater awareness to the ongoing question as to women’s role in society. Both Yale Joel’s photographs and Tina Leser’s designs take part in the changing definition of femininity. Yale Joel’s photographs for LIFE Magazine illustrate how women were encouraged to negotiate a more modern yet also traditional identity, demonstrating the nuances of this …

Wearing Memories: Clothing And The Global Lives Of Mourning In Swaziland, Casey Golomski

Anthropology

This article situates a cultural phenomenon of women’s memory work through clothing in Swaziland. It explores clothing as both action and object of everyday, personalized practice that constitutes psychosocial well-being and material proximities between the living and the dead, namely, in how clothing of the deceased is privately possessed and ritually manipulated by the bereaved. While human and spiritual self-other relations are produced through clothing and its material efficacy, current global ideologies of immaterial mortuary ritual associated with Pentecostalism have emerged as contraries to this local, intersubjective grief work. This article describes how such contrarian ideologies paper over existing global …

"Her Correspondence Is Dangerous": Women In The Fashion Trades Negotiating The Opportunities And Challenges Of Doing Business In The Chesapeake, 1766-75, Kaylan Michelle Stevenson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Contemporary Clothing Issues Of Women Who Are Post-Mastectomy, Carol Beard

Dissertations

The intent of this three-paper format dissertation is to examine three topics germane to the clothing requirements and clothing acquisition of women who are postmastectomy. Each paper’s focus resides within a broader theme of addressing a population that has specialized clothing needs. While each study is independent in nature, they build on each other. The first paper describes the demographics of the population and how those demographics and treatment path for breast cancer provide a different framework for reaction to the retail offerings currently on the market. The next paper focuses on the association between demographics and treatment path of …

Natural Hair Styling: A Symbol And Function Of African-American Women's Self-Creation, Juliette Bowles

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The Wearing Apparel Of The Women Of Westmoreland County, Virginia, 1700-1775, Nancy Lou Oberseider

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The Voice Of The Phi Sigma -- 1923 -- The Soprano Voice: Woman's Number, Phi Sigma

The Voice of the Phi Sigma

This item is part of the Phi Sigma collection at the College Archives & Special Collections department of Columbia College Chicago. Contact archives@colum.edu for more information and to view the collection.

Ua94/6/2/14 Domestic Science Notebook, Annie Reis

Student/Alumni Personal Papers

Domestic Science notebook kept by student Annie Reis regarding fashion design. The notebook includes her sketches of clothing and costumes as well as information regarding beauty, self-image, body types, accessories, hairstyles and children's clothing.