Meg Fletcher
A Body In The Act Of Becoming
How can we successfully connect with our true selves when there's social conformity to put our best selves forward outwardly? Understanding what is real or fake within the images we are fed, we're putting up a mirror to compare our lives against it. Visually, 21st-century fashion imagery displays fabricated 'perfection', an object of materialism - much like a desired garment. When we judge our physical bodies alongside our image-conscious culture, theorist Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology reminds us that the lived-in body exists beyond the body as a spectacle. The body is the medium through which we live life, experience the world, and articulate our sense of self.
This generates research examining the human form that celebrates the body's depths and beauty as well as the unrealistic restrictions of the perfect image. The silhouette reflects the natural body through a warped distortion of sheer drape that plays on shadows, volume, and surface area - antithetical to the mainstream. Flowing chiffons will allow the body to move freely with transparency whilst a camouflaging pattern covers whole garments, further distorting the eye from the true form beneath. Utilising this idea states that the relationship and experience between the wearer and their silhouette are not up for misinterpretation through the sharing of images.
Juxtaposing this is the 'classical body of official culture', which encompasses our illusions of reality into hard-shelled, over-exaggerated shapes of fabric maché, which are translated into fashion alongside corsetry, leather techniques and lingerie hardware. These pieces translate our mental cage by keeping the body elongated whilst restricting easy movement. Here the silhouette will follow the curvatures of the lived-in body, but increasing the number of restrictive body parts as the collection goes on makes for an alienated version of what we once idolised over.
The growth of these insecurities begins with the lens of a camera and ends with the lens of our eyes. Somewhere through social and cultural entanglement, we now see the composed image as truth.
This collection will express the Jekyll and Hyde effect this train of thought has on how the body is viewed. Injecting personal experiences on the topic, I will align with the brief scenario – 'The story of everything'. Continuing with the exploration of self-reflection, The Body in the Act of Becoming seeks awareness and understanding within our 21st-century bodies.