Here is my 200-word statement for the essay which I will submit later on in the year. The 200 words sum up my initial thoughts and ideas on what I want to research and the reasons why.
FASHION AS A DISGUISE
Stills taken from google images of the film Das Experiment
Recently I watched the film ‘Das Experiment’ based on the infamous ‘Stanford Prison Trial’ where 20 men were stripped of their own identity and made to dress as either prisoners or guards. I found it fascinating to see how their behaviour drastically changed simply by the connotations of the uniforms they were dressed in. At the ‘Aware: Art Fashion Identity’ exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, artists also used clothing as ‘a mechanism to communicate and reveal elements of our identity’. I have therefore begun to research fashion as a disguise and show how the clothes we wear influence and portray a message to those around us. We all have a set genetic make-up, history of our lives, and I am intrigued to find out whether we can alter and shape our identities through the clothes we wear. Gillian Wearing’s ‘Sixty Minute Silence’ piece examines the authority of clothing, by presenting a video of police officers standing impatiently for a photograph and the fidgeting that develops, erasing associations of status/power. When in disguise one can invent their own persona, be who they want to be, say things that they wouldn’t normally say. Fashion can be used to hide imperfections, distort, distract, or enhance our personalities. Some may argue that fashion is a way to present our inner self to the world, thus rather than a disguise it is an outward display of our true or desired self. Consequently I will discuss these views and with the aid of contemporary designers consider whether fashion is a disguise or a form of self-expression.
Gillian Wearing, Sixty Minute Silence, 1997.
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