The Wear Project: identity and clothing in relation to costume design and education

When we meet a character in a performance, the implicit understanding is that they have existed until the point where we join their journey and will continue existing after we leave them. Their clothing tells a story, a history to the audience before we hear them speak and before any action takes place. As a Costume Designer and Lecturer, my awareness of costuming as an anthropological practice has led me to explore these principles using myself as the subject of scrutiny. For one year I am logging every clothing combination I go through along with memories, prices, locations and dates, in order to explore the conscious and subconscious clothing decisions I make and the stories, embedded in my clothes, that I am surrounded by every day. What does my wardrobe mean to me inwardly and reveal to my audience outwardly, and how does this ‘me-search’ extend my artistic practice?

The Wear Project will be a visual archive, a teaching tool, and a foundation for further academic research and writing through the questions it raises about storytelling, memory, dress and audience: a personal interrogation generating a critical framework for understanding the dramaturgical significance of costume.