Fashion In Context
Artist Statement | Concept
Fashion is often allowed to run wild, without regard for any reality-based spaces or situations. Many people look to fashion brands as conferrers of status, regardless of what they actually produce. Especially in today’s logo driven culture, a simple LV or double C can have a big impact on how someone interacts with a space and the other people in it. As we’ve heard, there are a lot of inequalities present on campus, especially in regards to wealth and status. It is a harsh reality that some people walk around wearing $1000 Gucci sunglasses while others take out copious loans to be here. We want to use fashion, trends, and logomania to showcase some of this unseen tension and inequality here on CU. By having people navigate everyday spaces like the busy UMC or the cramped Norlin stacks in a comically large puffer jacket covered in logos, we will show the privilege and status that affects many interactions here at CU.
Context | Site Analysis
For our location, we chose the UMC and the Norlin library stacks on campus. CU’s campus is surrounded by extravagant homes, boutique shops, with over-priced rundown housing mixed in. This pattern is mirrored on campus with students; there is a clear distinction between the wealthy and middle/working class students that attend CU and it is personified through fashion. By choosing a college campus, a place where people pay thousands of dollars to attend, we are pointing out the role fashion plays as a class symbol in a space where money is already a source of contention. We chose to incorporate small boundaries, the tight spaces between shelves and tables because the interaction between such a large jacket in a small space will draw more attention and show the absurdity. There not many natural physical features to consider because this is a project highlighting the superficialness of humans, however, the project would work better if the weather was warmer, so the jacket could stand out more. The direct interaction between the jacket and man-made materials, like tables, chairs, desks, and stacks will disrupt the circulation of people moving about their day. The jacket will invade their personal bubble and force bystanders to notice the rich, fluffy elephant in the room.
UMC Dining Area | Crowded with students.
Norlin Library Stacks | Quiet and tight spaces.
Content
The purpose of this project is to materialize the unspoken truth of a large class distinction on CU’s campus and to show how obtrusive high fashion can be. Luxury brands like Gucci and Chanel are synonymous with wealth and when they are branded all over clothes, it is clear that the designer and the person wearing the garment want you to notice. This project is not intended to mock high fashion, but rather point out how out of place it looks in everyday spaces and to acknowledge the fact that many people are willing to pay large sums of money just to flash a logo, especially on college campuses. These logos and luxurious pieces affect how we interact with each other and thus how we interact with the space itself.
Fashion brand and trends that we are capturing in our experience.
Fabrication
Making the jacket was quite an adventure since none of our group members have extensive, knowledge of sewing or garment construction. Thus, we took a more experimental approach, constructing one piece at a time, seeing how it looks, and going from there.
We started from the idea of using pillow cases and sewed four together into a large rectangle. This taught us that the pillow cases were a bit flimsy and difficult to sew, and that it would be hard to make a jacket from out of rectangular pillow cases. Thus, we decided to change course, but we still used the pillow cases to practice spray painting the logo stencils. To make the stencils, we image traced logos in Illustrator and cut them out of paper using the laser cutter. For some logos with holes in them, we needed to connect the hole to the background with little bars using the pathfinder tool. We tried several colors of spray paint and found that although all colors worked, black paint produced the clearest and most visible result. We also learned that it is beneficial to have one person holding the stencils and one person spray painting, and that even a slightly uneven surface like cement produces much hazier results than smooth surfaces like a plastic table top.
Sewn pillow case prototype with test painting.
Testing out spray painting techniques
For our full prototype, we decided to use a simple white cotton. It is pretty inexpensive and provides the most contrast with the black painted logos. It also ties into the idea that luxury fashion often fails to think of practicality, as most people would be worried about getting a white coat dirty. For the stuffing, we decided to use an interesting array of materials. We used a large sheet of ½ inch foam insulation to provide structure to the jacket, foam noodles to take up of lots of volume, and traditional polyester batting to add the outer fluff.
Foam noodles provide the a puffy look. A cheap alternative to using all polyester stuffing.
Foam insulation provides structure.
We started with the sleeves because we thought it would be easier to give the jacket a really wide footprint that takes up lots of space than to rely on massive volumes of fluff to take up space. The sleeves consist of four panels of puffer: 2 smaller panels for the inside and outside, and 2 massive trapezoidal panels for the front and back. Each individual panel was made by sewing the bottom seam and then working up the sleeve sewing the parallel seams that separate the individual sections of puffer. Once all of the parallel seams were sewn, we would pin one of the perpendicular side seams and sew it closed, being careful to leave a large seam allowance to connect the panels later and to evenly distribute all the extra fabric used to create the puffs. Then we would slide in the puffer materials, pin the individual compartments closed, and sew the other side seam. Once the four panels were completed, we would pin the ample seam allowances together and hand stitch the seam since the puffer made machine sewing impossible beyond the individual panels.
Fletcher in a pinned up version of the sleeve before spraying and sewing.
Four panels make up the sleeve.
Sleeves painted and pinned to go into sewing.
Inner and outer panel sewn with filling.
With the sleeves completed, we sewed them together with extra fabric at the top so that the sleeves would rest on the back of the neck. The other main component of the jacket is the back, which consists of several wide sections of puffer at the bottom and two smaller sections at the top that connect to the sleeve piece. We made the back following the same procedure as the sleeves, starting at the bottom. With the back pieces sewn to the sleeves, it became clear that it might be difficult to get the jacket to stay on the wearer, so we made two extra features that help keep the jacket attached. First, we made a long thin section of puffer that attaches to the back piece and ties around the wearer’s waist like a belt. We also used extra painted fabric to make a longer and wider section of puffer that wraps around the back of the neck and drapes around the front to attach to the bottom of the back piece. This puts even more logos on display and looks kind of like a collar which helps to make the jacket more recognizable as a jacket.
Finished Sleeves | Sewn and Painted
Overall, our group thinks that this is a successful proof of concept because it achieves the extreme look that we set about to create. The jacket is comically large, measuring approximately four feet wide by three feet deep by three feet tall. Even on really big people, the jacket is clearly ridiculously large. The jacket is also covered in recognizable logos from the luxurious brands that inspired its creation.
Fletcher in the finished puffer coat.
Interaction
We started out modeling the jacket ourselves, moving from the UMC to the library. The purpose of this trial run was to help us understand the responses we would receive from on-lookers, so we could incorporate into the experience for other users. Wearing the jacket was interesting because although people were clearly reacting to the jacket and our presence, few were bold enough to actually ask us about the jacket or what it meant. Instead, we caught multiple people taking photos of us and the jacket, presumably for social media platforms like Snapchat or Instagram stories. This showed that if nothing else, the jacket was definitely having an impact. We also experienced a lot of people double-taking to get a second look at the jacket as they walked by, as well as lots of awkward moments in which people quickly averted their eyes once we made eye contact.
Even though most people were subtle in their interaction with us and the jacket, several were more forward. One person yelled “Gucci” while walking outside, indicating that people recognized the designer logos. One couple clearly giggled when they first saw the jacket and then came over and asked if they could take a picture. Finally, one person respectfully came up to us and asked what the jacket was meant to be. Before giving our spiel, we asked what they thought the jacket meant. They said that they thought that the jacket was commenting on materialism and how everything is branded nowadays, and went on a somewhat passionate tangent about a conversation they had recently had with their friend about luxury fashion. Of note is that this person hadn’t even heard of the recent college admissions scandal that has recently made wealth on college campuses very controversial, and still had a very strong reaction to the jacket.
In terms of moving about in physical spaces, we also had some interesting interactions with the jacket. It quickly became clear that doors were an issue, with almost all doors being too narrow to walk through normally and some were even a challenge to get through sideways. In the library, several people had to wait while we navigated the small vestibule on the West side of the building. Even though some people seemed amused by having to wait, others seemed moderately annoyed that they were being delayed. Moving in busy areas, most people made room for the jacket and gave us a wide berth, making it feel like people didn’t want to get too close to us. In tight spaces like the UMC tables or the library stacks the jacket repeatedly bumped into things and made it difficult to move without knocking things over. Finally, the sleeves made it difficult to grasp things like door handles or water bottles, making us very prone to dropping things while wearing the jacket.
We designed a small hand-out to guide future users through the interaction and to gather feedback on their experience wearing the jacket while moving about CU. The guiding questions are based on our own experiences and are designed to help them recognize how their own reactions are based on the reactions of others.
Handout for others to interact with the coat and truly feel what we mean by Fashion In Context.