Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
As a fashion design student with career interest in design and costuming, I decided to design and build a Ready-to-Wear collection for my senior thesis. The steps to build a collection include: concept research, initial concept sketching, create a moodboard and colorboard, select textiles/sourcing textiles, finalize sketches, create technical flats, patternmaking and draping, testing and swatching design details (such as embroidery, seam and construction details, finishes/trims), sewing mock-ups/toiles, and finally construct the garments in the fashion fabrics. Due to my collection being featured in the ASU Spring 2022 fashion show there were some additional steps I took to finalize this collection including: model sourcing, fittings, alterations, and hair and makeup conceptualization for the show. I began conceptualizing this collection in the fall of 2021 and began sewing in January 2022. The ASU fashion show was March 26, 2022. I found inspiration for this collection from my love of tattoo art, specifically by the history and imagery of American Traditionalism tattoo art around the turn of the 20th century. As an avid fan of tattoo art, I have become more appreciative of tattooing as a pure form of art and the elements required to have a well done American Traditional style tattoo. Such elements include: contrast, shadows, clean line work, as well as perception/silhouettes. This type of classic tattoo art also involves heavy symbolism, mostly derived from animals and the ocean. An additional concept I am applying to my collection is corsetry, specifically in the style of the early 1900’s. This time period is cohesive with the tattoo era I am focusing on, as well as it is the era that corsetry began to include decorative elements in addition to being for structural and shaping purposes. I began to have an interest in corsetry from my love of complicated construction, as well as costumery. I feel like corsets as an outer layer is a great way to incorporate costumery into a traditional Ready-To-Wear-Collection. I have decided to apply tattoo art in multiple ways to my collection- the first within my colorways. American Traditional tattoo art at the turn of the 20th century only used black, green, yellow, and red ink. I plan to utilize these colors in the corsets only. The modern and classic silhouettes utilized in the base clothing will be in various shades of browns and tans in order to represent skin tones, therefore the corsets are the “tattoos” on the “skin”. The tattoo art will be applied further within the corsets, as I will be using the classic imagery/ symbols as decorative features on the corsets- done possibly with beadwork, embroidery, and paint/ screen printing. I hope to mostly utilize natural fiber-based textile for their sustainability purposes, such as wool and silks. However, any synthetic materials will be sourced from deadstock in order to still hold myself accountable to sustainability.
