Dressing up : discovering the ambiguous line between fashion and costume

Abstract

‘Dressing up’, investigates the ambiguous line between fashion and costume fields. Indepth qualitative emails and an accumulation of secondary data are presented to deconstruct the world of clothing and develop a better understanding of how society interacts with different clothing. The gathered information fuelled an artistic drive to create a collection of digital images which make an audience question whether costume and fashion are opposing poles of a binary, or a part of an axis. To understand clothing’s the fashion and costume duality, theorist’s writings, such as Lurie, Barthes and Calefato’s are reviewed. Their understanding of clothing as a language is discussed, in juxtaposition of theories of how clothing may be restrictive or freeing. Woolf (2002), argues that clothing, feeds ‘The Beauty Myth’. This beauty myth restricts its wearers, especially women, to act and live a certain way which does not allow them to live to their full potential. On the other hand, individuals such as Rain Dove, the non-conformist American model, view clothing as a means of expressing their beliefs and rebelling against society. Whether Dove’s clothing is fashion or costume is a very personal question, which boils down to the opinion of the reader. The theoretical discussion is linked to Schiaparelli’s Fashion designs, Vogue fashion photography and Sontag’s (1977) critical review of photography. To present these ideas within the photographic field, Jeremy Grech, a performer who dresses in a pirate like manner. Was selected as the persona for the photography. A pirate like coat was sewn and photographed on top of a variation of his own outfits.