For my first dress, Forest Fire, I wanted to portray the horror of such an event without shying away from the devastation, but still revealing the beauty of nature. The relevance of the forest fire is especially important to the United States today with the current travesty of the California forest fires last year. I used bark from my own backyard to create the corset bodice. I added leaves to the top to show the lush forest and vegetation that has not yet been touched by the fires. As the eyes works their way down the dress, you start to see the destruction caused by fire. I layered tulle to show the variation of flames and colors within a fire. The deep black center of the skirt that symbolizes the final stage of a fire, one where nothing is spared. On the back of the skirt I have small flowers that are burned at the edges. This is to bring the idea of what a forest fire would do to all the beautiful nature in the forest.
This dress was designed with the intention to showcase how oil spills affect the oceans and the organisms that rely on these marines. I constructed the silhouette of this dress in the mermaid style, clearly trying the bridge a connection back to the sea. The dark and oily feather neckline was designed to dramatize how oil plagues animals within and surrounding the ocean such as birds. I strove to replicate what it would look and feel like to be covered and trapped in an oil spill. The dress has an ombre up the bottom of the skirt to demonstrate how oil is rising and spreading throughout the ocean. I attached the additional feathers to the bottom to emphasize the debilitation of a bird caught in the spill. The cape attached to the back also shows the spread of this oily and greasy mess that humans infect upon our oceans.
My air pollution inspired dress showcases the infection and spread of contaminated air that humans put out into the atmosphere every day. I decided to represent the atmosphere by using bubble wrap to construct the dress. The dark and tainted bubbles on the dress show the polluted air as it makes its way from our man made mechanisms and factories and into our environment. The dark air rises and centers on the collar of the dress which shows the effect air pollution has on the lungs of all organisms that breath it in. I wanted to create this dress with a sense of a subtle but overwhelming power over the viewer. This I believe is the best way to represent this huge environmental problem that cannot necessarily be seen. I achieved this by using neutral and light shades but creating a complex and overlapping set up for the form of the dress.
The main motif that I wanted viewer to get out of this piece is the gory and devastating truth of why some animals have become endangered. I decided to make a dress by patching up several different types of animal skins to represent the way that humans use animals for their own selfish gain. I sewed it together with a red piece of yarn to make the imagery more dramatic as to see like I haphazardly meshed together the remains of these innocent animals. The dress shape is simple but this provides contrast to the drama of the piece and its message.
This art piece was created with the effects of deforestation in mind. Whilst researching this particular environmental problem, I can across the overarching theme of barren wastelands with no growth or life of any kind. I have shown this in my dress with my use of color and design. I used a dead, sheer brown fabric over top of a sandy tan fabric to show the lack of life that occurs in these afflicted areas. I also decided on a simple long form to show how far and fast forests can be affected by this human caused disaster. The orange caution tape was used as the belt as a symbol for how humans and companies mark which tree they will cut down.
For my piece on ocean trash, I wanted to use recycled material that you may come across in the ocean or on the beach. For the most part this includes plastics like the bottle caps used for the top, plastic bags seen at the base of the skirt and the water bottles used to shape the skirt. The main focal point of this dress is collar created out of six-pack plastic holders. These pieces of plastic are infamous for choking small sea creatures like turtles and birds. I wanted to bring this human caused pain that the animals experience back on the wearer and show them being choked by their plastic waste instead. Every aspect of this dress is to show the world just how much negative impact they can have on the environment that so many rely on.
The design for the melting ice caps dress is based directly off of what it looks like when glaciers melt and float away. The top shows large, dramatic looking icicles and as the dress goes down. The ice starts to melt away and become smaller pieces and less apart as happens in real life. I wanted to create a dismal and hopeless feeling with this dress. Of course there are things we can do to help slow this environmental problem down, but it is happening fast and time is running out. For this dress I used all recycled materials. I had a difficult time deciding whether or not I should use styrofoam since it is so detrimental to the environment. But I can across styrofoam that was destined for the dumpster and decided this would be a better use of the material.
This dress is meant to merge art and design with the idea of waste and trash. I wanted to show all the trash we accumulate and just throw away, thinking it disappears. This, however, is not the case and on the dress I showcase just a few of the items we dispose of on a daily basis. The skirt show the aluminum cans and trash bags that we burn through as a culture and the top is full of various trash substances that we don't even give a second thought to. The idea behind this design is to creatively bring these problems and hidden waste back to the forefront on the public eye. This way they can see how much trash is disposed of and how consumeristic and wasteful our society can be.