I have designed a line of perks unique to this kickstarter to fund my new endeavour to make my business completely size and shape inclusive moving forward. Keeping within that theme, I have designed a gold enamel pin and embroidered Canadian made t-shirts exclaiming that “Every Body is Good.” I will be giving away these items with different tiers along with other perks as a thank you for helping me achieve complete inclusivity in my business of ready to wear clothing and costume design!
This kickstarter funding:
An Inclusive Master-Pattern Folio
Generally within the world of ready-to-wear fashion and costuming, one “ideal” model’s measurements are scaled up and down for each size, as if these proportions can be universally applied to a diverse customer base. This practice of “grading” patterns is rooted in fashion-industry standards of what constitute “perfect proportions” for models, who are usually small and fall within a narrow range of measurements (between 5’8” to 5’9” tall with measurements of 34-26-37 for female models, and between 6’1” to 6’2” tall with measurements of 39-34-39 for male models). As a result, only a small group of people fit well into ready-made clothes, with large sectors of the population left feeling alienated for not conforming to arbitrary fashion-industry norms.
Having struggled with gender and body-image issues myself, I find this practice to be at odds with my core values, particularly my desire to be as inclusive as possible in my work. I never want anyone to feel like they do not fit. I don’t want to make clothing for models, I want to make clothing for people. Whether it is a costume in a play or a custom made piece, everyone deserves to feel comfortable and attractive in their clothing. While some of us are string-beans, most of us are apples, mangoes, and pears.
As a professional designer of costumes and custom apparel, I regularly construct pieces for a range of body shapes and sizes, normally making tailor-made patterns for specific performers or individuals. But making custom garments is an expensive and time-consuming process. In order to make clothing and costumes that are more economically accessible, I have to be able to more efficiently construct ready-made garments that are wearable by a wider range of people, whether on the theatre stage or on the street. Master-pattern books containing “foundation patterns” or “blocks” have been used for centuries by tailors and dressmakers in building garments, but there has yet to be a modern pattern book developed for costume and apparel that takes into consideration diverse body shapes and sizes. Working with a range of real-world individuals, my objective in this project is to create a contemporary, inclusive master-pattern folio that will be useful in my own work, specifically in developing costumes that can be worn by different performers across multiple productions of a given play, and in designing an inclusive and accessible ready-to-wear clothing line.
A future project might include producing a digital version of my inclusive master-pattern folio and making this available to a wider group of creators, I am asking for support in developing this first for use in my own work because, as an independent costume and apparel designer who works on a contract basis, I don’t have the time or financial resources to develop a master-pattern folio of this sort. In the long term, however, being able to work from a folio of scalable base patterns for different body types will enable me to increase productivity in my current theatre work and give me the ability to more easily produce inclusive ready-to-wear clothing lines that now lay dormant in my sketch books. www.kickstarter.com
