Fashion Design Commons^™

From Flat To Form-Asymmetric Curved Darts, Corley Ballard

SPARK Symposium Presentations

This project explores the creation of symmetrical curved darts through pattern manipulation. Using a basic bodice block, the Slashing method is applied to transform traditional darts into fluid, curved lines that contour the body. The design extends into a flared skirt, where waist darts are closed using the same technique to introduce volume and movement, resulting in a cohesive and balanced silhouette.

From Flat To Form- Cowl Neck, Sophie Ellyson

SPARK Symposium Presentations

This cowl neck design showcases the art of dart manipulation and how it can transform one pattern into another. The project began with a basic bodice block and skirt pattern, which are developed into an asymmetrical drop-waist dress. The bodice darts adjusted using the Slashing method and re-traced at half scale, resulting in a cowl neckline with two pleats and a dart. The bodice is then extended to achieve the desired length and asymmetrical dropped waistline. The skirt was developed through draping and hand-pleated to create the intended effect. The addition of 3D flowers along the waistline and scattered throughout …

Dressing For The Descent: Costume Designing Eurydice, Hannah Olivia Schoen

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

During the early spring of my second graduate year, I was assigned to be costume designer for the upcoming production of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice. Eurydice is a retelling of a narrative that had been mostly given spotlight to the male hero in past iterations. Now we as a design team were going to tell the story from Eurydice’s point of view. After doing an analysis and research into details that would give me ideas on how I wanted to present these characters, I was able to present initial ideas to the director at our first design meeting.The design process …

Upcycle Of Used Jute Sacks For Production Of Shoes And Bags As Fashion Accessories, Solomon Gausa Dr., Ruth Adumna Ahmed, Muhammad Sani Yahaya Dr., Dymphna Bakker-Edoh Dr

Jurnal Sosial Humaniora Terapan

The study aims to upcycle used jute sacks into fashion accessories for sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Nigeria. The approach employs innovative design techniques and manufacturing processes that improve both the aesthetic appeal and environmental impact of jute products. To achieve the study's objectives, a design and development research approach was used to support an iterative process. A structured interview guide collected data from fifteen respondents. The study used thematic analysis by coding both open and axial codes, which were selected and grouped according to the objective to reach the final results before interpreting and translating the findings into a developed design …

Closing The Loop In Sustainable Fashion: Recycling Textile Waste And Its Environmental, Social, And Consumer Impacts, Anthony Amotoe-Bondzie

Sustainability Program Posters and Papers

Fast fashion has intensified textile waste, emissions, and social inequities across global supply chains. This study examines sustainable fashion frameworks and the role of textile recycling in advancing circularity. It employes a qualitative integrative literature review synthesizing interdisciplinary research on waste streams, recycling technologies, policy instruments, and consumer behavior. However, advanced recycling technologies offer environmental benefits but remain limited in scale. Nonetheless, rising consumption offsets efficiency gains, while economic and behavioral barriers hinder systemic change. Technological innovation alone is insufficient; circular design, regulatory enforcement, and reduced overproduction are essential for sustainable transformation.

Objective Chance, Convulsive Beauty And The Marvelous Within Fashion, Ellen Silva

MA Projects

Objective Chance, Convulsive Beauty and The Marvelous within Fashion is an exhibition inspired by the early idea of Surrealism specifically how the concepts of objective chance, convulsive beauty and the marvelous are intertwined and represented within fashion in the 21st century. The audience will be able to witness for themselves the use of these themes throughout the Surrealist movement by viewing works of fashion and artwork side by side. Some of the references are unmistakable, but some of them must be viewed with more of a conceptual focus as Surrealism was not only an art movement, but originally a philosophical …

Fashioning The Body Politic: Explorations Of The Political Semiotics Of Fashion In France And England During The French Revolution, Annika F. Gauthier

Scripps Senior Theses

In the midst of the French Revolution, women’s fashion underwent a complete revolution, moving from the multi-layered elaborate gowns of the ancien regime, to light, form-fitting dresses. These gowns reveal the way clothing reflects the political positions of women and the ways the French and the British used clothing to construct national identity and politics. Following research on the political symbolism and role of clothing across France and Britain, this thesis reviews fashion’s overarching connection to politics, revealing its role in the early French Revolution’s conception of women and patriotism, women’s responses to political exclusions, and rival nations’ adaptations of …

The Ai Revolution In Virtual Try-Ons: A Means-End Chain Model Perspective, Ju-Young M. Kang, Ji Young Lee, Dooyoung Choi, Sumin Helen Koo, Jeehyun Song, Youngjin Bahng

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

Leading brands have begun to implement artificial intelligence-driven virtual try-on (AI VTO) technology, which helps reduce returns and increase conversion rates, repeat purchases, and customer loyalty. This research aimed to examine how retail user experience with specific perceived quality factors of AI VTOs influences users’ value equity and downstream loyalty and to investigate the moderating effects of clothing in relation to the self as structure and concern for physical appearance, based on a Means–End Chain model. Data were collected from 509 U.S. online apparel shoppers using a consumer panel. Structural equation modeling and multigroup analysis were used for data analysis. …

“What Is In Vogue?” A Critical Study Of Photography, Psychology, And Power In Vogue Magazine, Hannah Eve Osinoff

MA Theses

Capitalizing on our obsession with beauty and power, this thesis examines, through psychological and art-historical lenses, how Vogue’s use of photography increased the public’s fascination with elitist culture. Using archives and secondary sources, this thesis aims to prove that photography was so powerful that it compelled readers to covet what they did not have. Accordingly, Vogue serves as a key example of how photography informed cultural perceptions of beauty and class. Ultimately, photography has and continues to impact fashion and media, as exemplified by Vogue’s early dominance of this medium and the resulting change in culture.

A Community Affair: An Exploration Of The Queer Community, Nightlife, Performance Art And Their Adjacent Qualities, Tatiana M. Castro

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This thesis explores the importance and roll of community in queer artwork, such as drag and burlesque and retroactively also all the work that I create. This paper aims to express this importance by exploring my personal relationship with building community. By interviewing performers selected through a customized-for-savannah voting process, I allowed the community to directly influence my thesis, as well as directly referencing photos of the hands of community members as a continued motif used throughout my work to represent community. This culminated in a two night thesis performance and installation  exhibition that explored performance and how its environment …

The Politics Of Style: How Black Fashion Redefined Identity In The Civil Rights Movement (1950s-1970s), Ava Saleh

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

This paper explores how fashion served as a powerful political tool during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s-70s, tracing its evolution from the polished Sunday Best to the Afro and militant style of the Black Panther Party. By examining respectability politics, the rise of the Black is Beautiful movement, and the Black Panthers’ visual strategies, this research explores how clothing and style reflected shifting approaches to resistance. It argues that Black Americans used fashion to challenge Eurocentric standards, reclaim heritage, and express pride, leaving a legacy of empowerment that continues to influence social movements.

Archival Fashion: Commodification, Education, And The History Of Halston, Arianna Miller, Kayna Bowman

Student Scholar Symposium

No abstract provided.

Brands & Virtual Personas: How Virtual Influencer Types Impact Brand Awareness, Carol Calderon Ambelis

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

As social media continues to shape how consumers interact with brands, virtual influencers (VIs) have emerged as a new type of digital celebrity. While previous research has explored how VIs contribute to brand image and awareness, there has been limited attention on how different types of VIs, both anime-like and human-like, affect consumer perceptions across different markets. This study examines how these two types of VIs impact relatability, aspiration, and brand awareness, with a focus on the differences between luxury and mass market. Using a within-subjects experimental design, this study recruited 574 participants with social media experience using MTurk. The …

Tailoring Black Style And Its Powerful Pieces: From West Africa To The U.S. West Coast And Everything In-Between, Gabriel Capellan

Occasional Essays

Introduction:

On September 19, 2025, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art Museum (MET) with some of the Bronx African American History Project team. The people in attendance were Graduate Assistant, Anthony Rosado, and Undergraduate Assistants, Serena Velasquez and Emma Garr, wonderful people, I tell you. After the tour, we ended up at the American art exhibit and had podcast conversations about history for what felt like both hours and very brief minutes... We went to the MET to see a particular piece that was in the Superfine: Tailoring Black Style exhibit curated by Barnard professor, Monica L. Miller …

Closing The Loop On Textile Waste: Policy, Technology, And Consumer Behavior In Sustainable Fashion, Anthony Amotoe-Bondzie

Collected Student Papers

Textile waste has become one of the most visible consequences of the fashion industry’s linear production and consumption model, where materials are rapidly extracted, transformed, consumed, and discarded. This paper critically examines how sustainable fashion can move beyond isolated recycling efforts toward a more integrated circular economy framework. Rather than treating textile waste as only an end-of-life problem, the study analyzes it as a systems issue shaped by overproduction, weak product design, limited recovery infrastructure, fragmented regulation, and consumer habits that normalize short garment lifespans. The paper argues that closing the loop on textile waste requires coordinated interventions across policy, …

English King And German Commoner: An Exploration Of Sixteenth Century Clothing And Identity, Bradley Moore

The Ozark Historical Review

There is perhaps no other external article which is more closely tied to one’s sense of identity than clothing. With a quick glance, one can readily gauge a person by their dress. So too, in the sixteenth century; clothing was used to construct identity, and in some cases to deconstruct it as well. This paper seeks to explore how identity and clothing are in many ways, inseparable. Concepts of religiosity, gender, nationalism, and “the other” were all intimately tied to dress and fashion. During the sixteenth century, perhaps even more strongly than now, clothing could be read like a book …

Sustainability: Buzz Word Or Future Of Fashion? Measuring The Feasibility Of Outright Sustainability Among Fast Fashion’S Biggest Agents, Ryan Miller

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

Abstract

The fashion industry is currently experiencing unsustainable rates of pollution within its supply chains. The rapid increase in demand for short lead times perpetrated by large-scale retailers has led to hazardous practices negatively affecting both the environmental conditions and working conditions of producing countries. With this increased pressure, relationships between brands and suppliers have become untenable. Limited transparency and imbalanced power dynamics at the hand of the industry’s leading retailers require restructuring in order to build more sustainable and equitable supply-chain practices. Further, governmental regulation is currently limited in its capacity to enforce sustainable business practices on a global …