2024 Theses Master's

What Fashioned You? in New York City

Aiba, Renka

Fashion is a flowing movement between the body/internal and the society/external, experimenting and practicing, adapting to the appropriate form for each day. However, “Fashion” as a noun emphasizes contemporaneity and is the power structure and capitalistic industry that is devised in Europe and exported all over the world. Moreover, “Fashion” denies forms of temporality other than contemporaneity, it makes other acts of creating the bodies in the world outdated and/or traditional.

On the other hand, the verb “fashion,” means “to make, construct, or create (something) usually with careful attention or by the use of imagination and ingenuity.” The verb “fashion,” the act of creating the bodies includes all temporality and geography in the world. This project aims to question the term "fashion" and experiment with the different forms of "fashioning" our bodies from various races, genders, body types, and backgrounds.