Worn Shapes is a three-look garment collection that aims to combat negative body ideals in the fashion industry through a historic fashion lens. The collection focuses on distorting understructures from the 16th-18th century as a metaphor for our modern body shame. Historically, when dramatic understructures were in vogue, a viewer would understand that the wearer’s body did not naturally take that shape underneath. Yet, the shapes worn were reflective of the body ideals of the time. Nowadays, understructures are still worn, think shapewear, push up bras–women’s body ideals are ever-changing. Worn Shapes will take understructures and distort them to echo the shapes of the natural feminized form, body parts we are told to hide away, instead, stripping them bare and becoming the only shape worn.
Accompanying the collection is a fashion film, where each look has its own vignette, showcasing behaviors that can be a side effect of body shame. The models’ anxieties escalate to a breaking point, leading them to destroy their surroundings. This symbolizes that freedom from body shame does not come from altering one’s body but from changing one’s environment—the media consumed, the people around you, and, most importantly, your own thoughts.
