Gender is a social construct. Created by culture and social scripts, we lend our lives to their limitations, seldom questioning the predetermined roles ascribed to men and women. As a social construct, gender is upheld by a bevy of formal and informal institutions that reaffirm the gendered dichotomy; one of these is the institutions of dress and appearance. Be it personal aesthetics, political values, or even class, we unknowingly code language into our appearance. Our clothes have immense rhetorical power, subtle and unconscious in communication but powerful in shaping our impressions. We make judgments and assign gender based on appearance.

My collection, Embodying Feminism, is a critical examination of how fashion can be used as a vehicle for feminism. I was initially inspired to create this collection after observing that current gender-neutral fashion is skewed toward a male perspective. While menswear, such as pants and button-downs, are acceptable for all genders, male-identified bodies in womenswear, such as skirts and dresses, create social disruption. This collection is my visualization of gender-neutral fashion—one that gives equal consideration to both masculine and feminine aesthetics. Using theory from Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir, Catharine McKinnon, and Audre Lorde, I aim to deconstruct ideas around gender neutrality, fusing together design details from both womenswear and menswear in one cohesive line. This gender-bending collection takes the ideas posited by feminist theorists and reinterprets them into clothes, creating physical manifestations of theory— something that is not only ever-changing but also abstract.

Additional research about the intersection between fashion and feminism can be found here.

EMBODYING FEMINISM — FALL 2019 — MOOD BOARD