Monsters in the Wardrobe

Final design Having to do work at home while home schooling my youngest(7 yrs old) and having our other 4 children at home it has been a challenge so I had to down scale my end design. I've designed a hoodie because they are already a very good gender fluid garment but given it my own monster look. The hood has a detachable screen printed mesh that will be the monsters eye and neck. I have stuck with the tentacle arms because they're fun. Because they will be tentacles I wanted to add suckers rather then eyes. The trousers will have slashes then scale fabric under to should the monster underneath.

Design Four This design is a long jumper that has long tentacle arms with eyes all over them. It would then have large screen printed lips on the front. I passed on this design because again it might look too costume but I really like the arms.

Design Three When I thought about gender fluid fashion and that not every man would be comfortable wearing a skirt unless it was of course a kilt. I then thought about a skort so this is my idea to start it being comfortable for everyone to be ok weather it be trousers, dress or skirt. I will look into this more as I grow as a designer  I added a shirt with pointed shoulders then for fun a tongue and eyes tie. 

Design Two This design is a fluffy jumper with a large eye ball on the shoulder and a large 3d lips on the waist. I have also designed a simple pleated skirt, I didn't want to add too much onto this design because the main feature would have been the lips and eye.  I really like this design but I was worried that it would look too costume. how can I take this forward but cut out the costume aspect?

Trying out different suckers when trying to come up with the idea of  suckers I wanted to try to use things I had in the house. I tried a variety of balls but this felt too children's crafts.  I then looked into how I could make the suckers realistic. I started by playing around with fabric but it wasn't easy to manipulate and because of time split between home educating my 7 year old and working on my final project this was hard. I finally decided to have a try at felting the suckers. this was the best way because I could manipulate the wool to look like the suckers I had in mind. These are the final suckers on the fabric I chose for my final garment.

Final Project  A few pictures of my final piece. The mesh is screen printed. I designed this so the mesh could be detached and reattached when needed.   "Monsters In The Wardrobe" This piece is made from fabric and utilises screen printing and felting techniques. The piece is a response to my children's experiences of gender non conformity. I have a trans gender child and a non-binary child. Both children have had terrible and negative experiences regarding their gender identity and the clothing conformities which are pervasive in society. Having to dress in clothing which defines them as a gender they do not feel they are becomes traumatic and eventually the clothing in the wardrobe became monsters to them. The piece explores the idea of owning the problems that haunt you and turning weakness into power.   Gender specific silhouettes and colour pallets were explored as this was central to removing the gender from the garment.