Do you ever just think a little too much about mass production?
Umbrella Term
This is my the graduate Fashion Design BFA thesis collection from Parsons School of Design
Concept
Umbrella Term explores the transition from student to professional, questioning fashion’s position between art and design within systems of production and consumption. Repetition is the central theme of experimenting with artistic practice versus the functional mode of production. The umbrella hat is the overarching form of the collection, repeated across 4 looks that delve into the educational experiences that precede the development of these learnt skills into labor. 1, 2, 3, 4, 50 jumps to the repeated nature of design, with the final item a production of 50 fans. The making of these fans becomes an endurance artwork and personal experiment with the mass of reproducible designs; the outcome of the profession of a designer, compared to the one-off production by artists.
The consumption of the work is also part of the experiment. At the final stage of this collection, past its role in the educational space, it will be presented in a gallery and sold as artwork. However, the consumption of the collection goes beyond the commerce of commodity fetishism, distancing people with money by purchasing. In pockets of community, these pieces become gifts shared amongst queer friends, and collective pieces of art by local drag artists. In these spaces, these pieces escape the capitalist requirement for the selling of my labor and allow my art to be shared rather than consumed. This collection aims to test these boundaries of art, design, production, and commerce as I close my journey of learning about these practices into practicing them myself.
Designing to Produce - #50 Production Order
Supply, demand, obsession, 50 fans are everything I love and hate about design. The utilitarianism of a single reproduced design. This piece is an endurance test, a reality of the consequences of a job in design. It’s a commodity you can buy from me, but also a gift between friends.
This piece demonstrates an organized production process from buying wholesale raw materials, to the physical repeted labor, to the final sold product.
