Paper Fashion

Paper dresses were a phenomena during the 1960s.  Paper dresses became extremely popular for advertising everything from Pop Art to political campaigns and are symbolic of the liberation of women that occurred at the same time. Not only were women liberated from the dictates of highly structured clothing, they were achieving new levels of liberty and personal freedoms in the workplace and at home.

And although corsets never existed in paper format, they are one of the most controversial items of clothing ever worn by women and therefore of interest to me. Corsets are both beautiful and an instrument of repression.

By creating paper fashion in miniature, I am emphasizing the preciousness and fragility of these garments. And by using packaging material, I have layered in an additional reference to domestic responsibilities.

The only paper dress at full scale is The Map of a Life dress which was created out of  found maps that my mother had collected on her travels. I styled the dress based on one of her favourite dresses.