Do You See What I See? Using Ethnographic Methods to Inform Functional Design

All people wear clothes, but dressing is an activity taken for granted until balance and synchronized movements required to do so are lost due to illness, injury, disease, or surgery. Ethnographic methods were used to map the use scenario, examine the clothing context and its meaning to people through field observation of therapy sessions and patient routines with personal support workers (n=46), and interviews with therapists, care workers, and patients (n=34). Results reveal patients\u27 experience related to clothing, disability, and functioning as well as the psychological aspects of clothing. Findings include design recommendations to mediate difficulties people have when dressing through consideration of fabric choices, garment silhouettes, circumference of garment openings, garment fasteners, dual waistbands, pockets, loops, and visual clues to guide garment orientation and product development opportunities. Results of the study may impact fashion designers, specialized product developers, design educators, and rehabilitation therapists

Uncloaking the Anxiety behind Professional Dress

Achieving a university education is one of life’s greatest milestones, with degree requirements complete; students expect their stress will subside. However, transitioning from student life to career track entails negotiating a whole new set of different stressful conditions. This research provides essential insights into the lived experience of preparing to dress for professional workplaces, wardrobe decision-making, predominant stressors, and how this translates women’s identities

Evening Dress - Joan of Arc

This dress was inspired by Joan of Arc, the tragic heroin from the Middle Ages. Joan was a girl, a soldier, and a savior who played a major role during the Hundred Years War leading her troops (Bartlet, 1859). However, despite her patriotism and great achievements, she was captured and sold to the enemy, the English, for heresy and perjury, when she was only nineteen years old (Thurston, 1910)

Disability, Identity, Sameness & Differentness: First Impressions of Clothing

Individuals with disabilities have aspirations to work and foster their independence like everyone else. Enduring images of disability as tragic, pitiful, negative and helpless promoted for charitable fund raising purposes (Taylor, 2008: 33) have made it challenging for people with disabilities to represent themselves as positive and able. This paper explores, through interviews and observations of people who are paraplegic/quadriplegic using wheelchairs and websites of specialized clothing, how the material culture of clothing is a barrier encountered by those who use wheelchairs relates to their success in the job interview process. Additionally, it considers the availability and access to aesthetically appropriate, functional clothing for those with a disability, i.e., adaptive clothing that allows people to achieve an aesthetically normative professional style of dress while still incorporating functional elements that facilitate independence in the workplace. Three different roles that clothing plays in the competitive job interview process are revealed

Designing Coordinated Separates: Use of Inspirational Sources in Apparel Classes

Ready-to-wear apparel design development typically begins with trend forecasting publications. Teaching students how to interpret such information and translate applicable elements is challenging. In the design assignment reported here, apparel students were introduced to the process of inspiration through the iconic collection of colour blocked knit dresses created by Yves St. Laurent (1965). Students initiated their design process with a painting and/or historical artifact from a local art gallery or museum with the aim to create women\u27s daywear comprised of coordinating separates (jacket, pant, top). Each piece was to be made up in different, but coordinating fabrics. Use of at least one printed, embroidered or woven multi-coloured textile was mandatory. Students kept a design process journal to document their use of inspirational sources, colour, fabric and concept development. Examples of student work that highlight details incorporated on fabric surfaces, through silhouettes, proportion, balance and focal points are presented

Unlocking Embodied knowledge for Better Design: An Introduction to Co-generative Mapping

Clothing may be used to enhance well-being, yet for women size 22 and up, function is typically prioritized over aesthetics, and plus-size bodies are restricted from participating in normal fashion culture. This project explores a new methodology called co-generative mapping as a means to extract embodied knowledge from participants in order to collaboratively develop clothing that better meets functional, expressive, and aesthetic user needs. In this methodology, participants engage in body-mapping exercises to identify clothing needs, and participate in hands-on idea-generation activities designed to unlock personal lived experiences that may not be expressed as easily through traditional research and data collection methods. This research is the first phase of a larger project, wherein a series of three-dimensional dress forms will be produced based on participants\u27 body scans, and utilized in the production of better fitting and better designed plus-size clothing

Community Co-Design: From Magic Squares to Magic Dresses

This project joined elementary, secondary, and postsecondary students with a textile museum, community cultural centre, and provincial science centre to collaborate on textile design and printing, as well as garment design, creation, and exhibition. While the design process centered on the concept of the magic square, each contribution was independent and progressive, and handed off to the next group like a baton in a relay race