Designing Women’s Apparel: Approaches to Constructing Silhouette to Represent Emotion

Abstract

This study considers visual representations of emotion in the forms of new women's apparel. It employs practice-based research methods, using processes of new apparel design, production and analysis to make hypotheses, design and undertake experiments and demonstrate findings. The research methods utilised within the study bring practice and theory to bear upon one another, two interrogate relationships between form, silhouette and emotion in the design of women’s apparel. Consumer research, colour analysis, historical investigation, prototyping and testing were used to answer research questions. Surveys were employed to gather insights on the extent of emotional recognition in the finished garments in 'Experiment Three: Recognizing Emotion'. Across Section 2, historical references were explored within subcultures to determine the stereotypical connotations associated with shape and form in apparel design. The approach to apparel design included moulage informed by the theory in Section 2 and experiment results. The study contextualises these methods by referring to aspects of existing, related explanations of the experience of emotions and apparel, in other disciplines. Multi-modal metaphor theory, theories of image schemata, and emotive processing provide the related theoretical frames for the study. Embodied cognition is not the topic of the study. However, the study pioneers the use of embodied metaphor within garment design and construction, following a hypothesis by Johnson & Lakoff (2003). The impact of introducing textile semantics within the scope of the study, is an area considered for further study (see Page 330). Finally, the study demonstrates a way in which theories of embodied metaphor and bodily force dynamics can be utilised to explain experiences of emotion in the forms of new women's apparel, as well as suggesting ways in which these can be used in apparel design processes. This was demonstrated in three experiments. The first experiment explored the relationship between connotations, emotion, and silhouette. The second experiment tested social responses. The experiment articulated the bodily force dynamics producing different emotions and the ways in which these dynamics interact with different forms of apparel. For the third experiment I asked a further group of participants to describe their own emotional responses to new garments that I designed to represent specific emotions. The garments designs were derived from analysis of the outcomes of Experiments One and Two. The results from ‘Experiment One: Representing Emotion’ allowed for a greater understanding of how emotion is viewed and constructed, which led to the construction of an experiment response guide code, used as a tool in the design process. Experiment Two: Image Schema and Force Dynamics’ identified the force dynamics on the body that occur in a response to an emotion. Consideration of these as part of a design process aided the visualisation of emotions. The dynamics placed on the body by the garment itself mimics that of the human emotional response. Experiment Three: Recognising Emotion demonstrated that there are key connotations associated with structural features and garments require the accumulation of several to steer between ambiguous keywords denoting emotions. This is reminiscent of the sequence of processes used to ascertain emotions. The methods used in the study can be adopted by any designer, but the outcomes of different subjects adopting the method (for example, practitioners across the gender spectrum), will inevitably be different from the outcomes focused upon women’s apparel undertaken by a woman designer (the author) in this study.