a little bit about class

First off, thank you to everyone who has been reading! It is a joy to realize I have comments and can reply to them. Secondly, I apologize for being absent for a few days - this has been a bit of a rough week for me. But, as the poster with the crown on it says, "Keep Calm and Carry On" (and yes, I want one).

Still feeling a little uninspired, I figured I'd just post about something I've been working my mind around for my experimental design class (so this may be an all-text post, which I hate doing because I never read them myself). But oh well. Our next project (below you've seen the "origami" and "armored" assignments) is "architectural" - but as an extension of the human body. This can be interpreted so many ways, and I love it. Our professor wants us to translate into a garment the way the human body inhabits and affects space, using shape as an influential aspect. I have always been fascinated in the way we so heavily rely on first impressions. As someone who is newly single, it is suddenly on my mind that the way I look needs to accurately portray me to others. But this also applies to the whole world - interviews, meeting new people for the first time, how classmates perceive you ... and in a way, it's a horrible shame. Someone who is pretty is not always nice, and someone who you could be best friends with is not always as attractive.

I would love to think of the project that way - especially touching the matter of self-perception. Every day girls look in the mirror and think, "Ugh, my hips are so wide! My thighs are so fat!" - while the girl across the row in class from them may be thinking, "I wish I had her body, it's perfect". We tend to skew our own images of ourselves to an exaggerated point, and this would be very interesting to convey in fashion - a garment with grotesquely wide, masculine shoulders (I'm thinking of the padded bodies of Balenciaga S08 RTW) - a slightly ugly silhouette, but you have to consider ... if that's the way you see yourself, why shouldn't everyone else have to see you that way too?

It makes you think. I remember walking to class once (well not really walking, but booking it - I was late and I tend to "walk with a purpose"). And these two boys cross my path, and I hear one say, after I've booked it a little further, "I bet that girl's mean". And I stopped dead in my tracks and thought, oh my god, I frown when I walk fast. I have to constantly remind myself now, relax your face when you walk or else people will find me unapproachable.

The exact image that comes to mind about all of this is Lady Gaga - someone who does silhouette exaggeration very well. The oversize metal hips, sharp contours of pelvic bones and shoulders - it's ugly, and I'm obsessed with it. If there's anybody that knows how to complicate the female form, it's her.