Dresslayers

Author: Eva Paterová

Year of foundation: 2020

Brno University of Technology
Faculty of Fine Arts
Product Design Studio
Degree: Bachelor
Year of studies: 3

Depending on the historical and ideological context of the time, the bodies of women in the European society are always wrapped in some way with layered material. These layers and their material are the carriers of the politics and ideology of the body. Whether it be the obsession with chastity and virginity of the Victorian fashion or the more explicit sexual objectification of women in rap music videos, specific types of the female body are gloriously accentuated - the narrow waist accentuating the lush bust and wide pelvis... There are psychological explanations that attempt to describe such a preference as natural, but all these articulations only explain why men are attracted to women of these shapes. Such attempts only confirm the deep-seated domination of male sexuality over the female body. Male sexual fantasies and the virtual bodies they create are a normative raster for real female bodies. This normativity is often reproduced as much among men as among women themselves. For example, the shapewear that is common to wear today is nothing more than a less invasive corset. The dress, which I created from layers of semi-transparent synthetic fabric using a laser tells the story of a body enveloped in packaging. The original unique body is blurred by the raster so heavily that it is impossible to discern where any part of it begins and where it ends. In this state, it shines through more layers and more rasters and cross-sections, slowly transforming its silhouette into something more akin to a virtual body created (designed) by someone's sexual fantasy. I am trying to emphasize how many layers and rasters a woman's body must be developed to be feminine, healthy and attractive. The design of these layers - fashion design - is nothing more than a reproduction of the design of a virtual body designed by a man's fantasy. Just as psychological explanations of this normativity attempt to hide behind vague "naturalness," fashion hides behind an even more vague concept of "aesthetic." I designed the dress not to be aesthetically beautiful, but to show no more than the concept of layering (the seam on the shoulders backwards), grid (the pixelation of a perforated mesh), and the virtual body (the individual cross-sections forming the "ideal" curves of the female body).