Three piece garment collection (+ photo documentation)
Undergraduate
Masquerading Camp is a three-ensemble wearable textiles collection working to define the "camp" aesthetic, illustrating and reinventing aspects of its rich and intrinsically queer history. The collection explores the ways that camp can be used to to conjure queer visibility and combat anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, directly contradicting the concept of "camp-as-masquerade" — a psychoanalytic theory stating that gay men and transgender individuals masquerade their "true" identities behind flamboyant façades.
The three looks chronologically pull from aspects of camp throughout our queer lineage, spanning back to its origins in 18th-century dandy fashions. The first ensemble takes this aesthetic and contrasts its with modern gay fetishwear, reflecting the ways traditionally masculine attire gets reinvented through a queer lens. The second looks draws from theorist Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp," emphasizing the three pillars of the aesthetic — exaggeration, subversion, and theatricality — through the art of drag. The last piece pulls from queer demonstrations and underground subcultures like the Ballroom scene, reflecting on camp dress as form of unity and protest.
