Chia-Jung Chen

BA (Hons) Fashion 2020

My final collection explores the human body's understanding of beauty, highlighting the issues around perceptions of ideal beauty and questioning, 'what is the perfect body?' I like to explore themes like gender or social perceptions of beauty in my design philosophy, exploring artists who focus on body image, such as Sally Hewett and Karoline Vitto.

I researched the movie "Fat Girl 2001",and considered the stereotypes of fat in society. The film's costumes acted as initial inspiration and I began to investigate pajamas and suits. Sally Hewett and Karoline Vitto both use their own bodies as inspiration, highlighting an deven clelbrating imperfections which I developed in my own work to include bruising, spots, and wrinkles in my textile development work. Using Photoshop, I developed print designs for both Digital print and Screenprint and developed shape and proprotion within my garment designs evolving exaggerated body shapes from my research using elastic bands to create wrinkles, lumps and bumps in my designs which elevated pre-conceived inperfections of the body to something of beauty.