This photography collection captures my senior fashion collection thesis, "Dress Code Violation," to bring attention to the biased treatment of women for their appearance and expression. Aiming to critique unfair parts of implemented limitations, such as dress codes, as well as shed light on 'dress norms' imposed by society, which have grown outdated and subjective. My inspiration is these unfair dress norms -- taking the normalized negativity surrounding women, to build a creative everyday collection. My collection aims to uplift women and show them that they have the right to express who they are.
To heighten this photography collection to grow beyond my fashion collection imagery, I made scans of dress code rules and statements that aligned with the ideology that I critiqued. I printed them on transparency paper and overlaid them over my fashion collection images to show that no matter what resistance is displayed these mindsets and overarching ideas will always be on top of different opinions
I took portraits of my four models, and printed them into polaroids and wrote down the reasonings why each ensemble would be deemed inappropriate - symbolizing criminalized mugshots and what they did wrong.
I made my own dress code violation slips to hand out to the audience during my presentation for this collection. I damaged and roughened up one and scanned it and printed it large scale, to symbolize the frequent practice of looking down on or negatively on women for how they are dressed, and there being repercussions.
