Inspired by childhood memories of playing dress up, 'Child's Play' is a ready-to-wear collection that explores the social norms and rules embodied in clothing. This collection blends contrasting elements of classical tailoring and lingerie with bold colours and silhouettes. Deliberately camp and irrational, the collection aims to poke fun at and ridicule the many reasons we dress. Through the use of calico and spot and cross patterns, this collection chooses to emphasise the materials and techniques of the making process, rather than discarding them before the final step. By playing with the idea that these clothes don't just happen to exist but are rather the result of a culturally constructed and deliberate design process, the collection aims to highlight the similarity between constructed patterns and garments and the culturally constructed norms and social rules of dress. This collection is all about the bizarreness of the rules of dress, and how some ideas and norms can stay within our cultures and practices for so long that we begin to forget why we follow them. These garments are deliberately nonsensical and camp, reflecting my confusion towards these social rules and practices that we so strongly cling to, highlighting the many rules behind dress and construction while simultaneously deconstructing and lightly mocking them.
