week ten: sculpting...

Cami James (RMIT 4th Year 2009 final collection, Oyster magazine)

This specific body piece is minimal yet forceful in impact. The detail confined to the molded torso grabs your attention through its light reflecting properties, highlighting its polished finish. It creates a new form for the body, accentuating its original form by extending out to a new degree.

It underlines the concept of the 'hard body', much like Issey Miyake's molded plastic bustier, 1980, as it imitates the body yet displays a hard powerful shell on the wearer. It explains the relationship between the body's form and the garment directly in contact with it. Reversing the idea that clothing clads or conceals the body, this piece replicates the body, exposing it like a second skin compiled of plastic. This bustier created by Cami is dramatic with its reflective surface and sinuous curves can also be appreciated as a sculpture with its own form and function.

I am drawn to this concept, intrigued by its potential response to stretch fabrication, and wish to possible it explore it in the remaining weeks of the project. The consideration of depth and dimension is all part of construction preparation and process in context to both corsetry and stretch fabrics, therefore I aim to illustrate the parallels between the two.

(above images from http://www.nodiscount.com.au/blog/page/4/ viewed 17/4/10)

week ten: corsetry...

A corset is a garment worn to mold and shape the torso into a desired shape for aesthetic or medical purposes. In recent years, the term "corset" has also been borrowed by the fashion industry to refer to tops which, to varying degrees mimic the look of traditional corsets without actually acting as one. While these modern corsets and corset top often feature lacing and/or boning and generally mimic a historical style of corsets, they have very little if any effect on the shape of the wearer's body.

The most common and well-known use of corsets is to slim the body and make it conform to a fashionable silhouette. For women this most frequently emphasizes a curvy figure, by reducing the waist, and thereby exaggerating the bust and hips. A shorter kind of corset, which covers the waist area (from low on the ribs to just above the hips), is called a waist cincher. A waist cincher (sometimes referred to as a Waspie) is a belt worn around the waist to make the wearer's waist physically smaller, to create the illusion of being smaller.

A corset has the influence to command the awareness of those around. It highlights the centre, the core of the skeletons frame. It protects the cluster of importance within the body, becoming a supportive armor. The chosen shape of a corset determines its power over the body. It most classically creates the hourglass figure desired by females, accentuating aspects of the form as to better shape. It ultimately crafts a smooth, reduced waistline which contours are rounded off to the hips.

(Above images www.iainclaridge.co.uk/. ../babyphat_dm.jpg, viewed 8/5/10)

week nine: dolls...

A study of the basic physical aspects of the female body was essential in order to comprehend its full influence on the way that I design. Focus is placed upon definite components that construct and shape a defined silhouette. This absolute profile of the female figure discloses a sense of command, suggestiveness and splendor, all in the one frame.

The Female body shape is the cumulative product of a woman's skeletal structure (build) and the quantity and distribution of muscle and fat on the body. There are, and have been, wide differences on what should be considered an ideal or preferred body shape, both for attractiveness and for health reasons. These have varied among cultures and at different times. As with most physical traits, there is a wide range of normality of female body shapes.

Human beings and their cultures have perennially focused attention on the female body as a source of aesthetic pleasure, sexual attraction, fertility, and reproduction. The female body occurs in a range of shapes. The female figure is typically narrower at the waist than at the bust and hips, and usually has one of four basic shapes: banana, pear, apple or hourglass. The bust, waist, and hips are called inflection points, and the ratios of their circumferences define these basic shapes. Usually, the bust area will depend on the person's weight and height.

Alteration of the body shape

Various strategies are sometimes employed to temporarily or permanently alter the shape of a body. At times artificial devices are used or surgery is employed. Breast size can be artificially increased or decreased. Breast Prostheses or padded Bras may be used to increase the apparent size of a woman's breasts, while minimiser bras may be used to reduce the apparent size.

Historically, the greatest efforts have been made to reduce a woman's waist line. Boned corsets were used for several centuries, but during the twentieth century these were mostly replaced with more flexible foundation garments. Where corsets are used for waist reduction, it may be temporary reduction by occasional use or permanent reduction by people who are often referred to as tightlacers. Liposuction is the common surgical method of reducing the waist size.

Padded control briefs or hip and buttock padding may be used to increase the apparent size of hips and buttocks. Buttock augmentation surgery may be used to increase the size of hips and buttocks and to make them more rounded.

Women simply aspire to amplify and intensify their natural physic to craft the ideal body. I intend to simply emphasis its form by honoring its imperative fundamentals. This will be carried out through the arrangement of colour and fabrication to mold and highlight features.