All life on Earth, including the prehistoric ancestors of humans, once came from the ocean. Our goal with this project was to go back to those roots and channel the energies of the ocean into an interesting and different outfit. Life in the deep sea - as in the rest of the animal kingdom - is all about two things: survival and reproduction. Keeping this in mind, the “design problem” was to make a dress based in the ideas of protection and attraction. We set about this by making the top out of leather scales. These scales did three things for our dress. First, they resemble the scales of a fish and give the dress a hydrodynamic feel. They also look like human made armor which works with the theme of protection and defense for survival. Finally, by painting the scales in silver and gold we make the top of the dress very aesthetically pleasing, which is obviously something desired in fashion, but which also shows how scales in the ocean function to both attract and protect. The other bottom half of the dress was more traditional. We had two layers of translucent fabric, the bottom light blue and the top black. We chose these colors because they represent the ocean. Blue for the ocean’s surface, which is blue, and then black for the deep sea - our main focus - because light cannot reach that deep. This project is important because it examines the roots of humanity and looks to create something beautiful inspired by these ideas. Unlike many modern fashion pieces it also actually functions as a dress, so it brings the focus back to actual clothing instead of just being an abstract art piece.
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