Blog 3- Project outcomes and personal development reflection
I am currently exploring the topic of navigating through clothing, where we are looking at the process of costume design and have just finished designing our own costumes for our chosen characters from Hansel and Gretel.
In the navigating through clothing workshops it was made clear that in order to create a costume you need intimately understand the character, but you also need to understand the body that you are dressing and the desired function. By this I mean you would design a costume to sit differently on an opera singer compared to a ballet dancer. As I learnt more about the process of costume design I began to understand that our clothing really is representative of our identity and whether it is conscious or unconscious we made a decision to wear or purchase something and that is a result of our own character. This relates to a text by Lucy Orta titled ‘Questioning identity’ where Orta stated “I hope that the work of many artists is provoking us to look and think about clothing differently”. I believe this stuck out to me so much from the better lives readings because we need to start thinking about clothing as more than a socially expected norm and acknowledge it is a representation of your personality and your beliefs and therefore a more ethical practice of dressing should implemented in your daily routine. It is not to say that all members in society should become interested in fashion but become aware that even unconscious decisions to wear a plain t-shirt and jeans are a representation of them as an individual. Paying more attention to cultural appropriation should be an unconscious thought that should be embedded in our daily routine.
When I was designing my costume for the witch from Hansel and Gretel I firstly tried to understand what angle I wanted to present the witch from. Asking questions such as where she has come from, what drives her to do what she does, how was she bought up. The reason I questioned this was in relation to the diversity aspect of better lives as we all come from different up bringing’s due to our cultures and that has a large impact on what kind of people we become. For me to be able create a costume for the witch and portray her appropriately I wanted to fully understand the cultural background that conditioned her to become the woman she did. In relation to better lives and costume design looking strongly into diversity is especially relevant, fundamentally to ensure that everyone is represented appropriately in the performance.
In conclusion, I must admit that in my opinion my final costume design was not very good but I strongly enjoyed exploring the process and being able to learn about all the thought that goes into making sure a character is appropriately represented. I also thoroughly enjoyed the creative process of practising collaging and working with different textures during the course.