The Sport of Dressing

The Sport of Dressing is a capsule wardrobe following my personal journey transitioning out of being a high level synchronized swimmer due to chronic illness. In both worlds, being hyper-aware of the body is extremely important. I realized how heavily this interacted with how I dress last year when I was struggling to get dressed for class during a particularly bad flare at the beginning of the quarter; choosing clothes that looked nice but felt comfortable with the pain and inflammation in my body felt like a performance. This inspired a deep dive into how chronic illness influences how myself and other people in my life with chronic illness relate to clothing.

One point that arose in this research was the importance of pockets. I don’t personally like to carry bags because the way they put weight on my body is fatiguing, and there are certain pocket locations that I won’t use for the same reason. So I researched several pocket locations, mapping out how weight is distributed on the body for each type of pocket, and personally tested multiple ones along the way. Another point was the importance of everything having either stretch, or the ability to adjust sizes, so that the garments can avoid unnecessary pressure on pain points varying from day to day.

As I further developed the concept I started thinking about how I can incorporate anti-inflammatory elements into the clothing, and the most effective way I found to do this was through medical grade compression. So each look incorporates compression in different parts of the body for different benefits such as reducing inflammation, dizziness upon standing, and increasing circulation.

To further incorporate chronic illness, I created a repeat print derived from microscopic images of the lymphatic system, where I most often feel symptoms. I created this by hand sketching, then digitizing the print to convert it to a repeating tile in Photoshop and fill in gaps. In the final looks, The colors and style lines are derived from hands, which to me represent the grace of synchronized swimming and epitome of the tactile sensations in the body present in both synchro and chronic illness

Ever since I can remember I have thought about how everything around me was made: how it fits together, and why the way that they’re made makes them work well. When I learned to sew at six years old, I quickly learned to apply this type of thinking to garments. Rooted in my lifelong love of construction and patterning, everything I create is designed to function well for the wearer. Inspired by my own relationship with clothing due to chronic illness, I often find myself applying this principle through adaptive design and greatly enjoy researching the needs of the wearer and how principles from athletic and outdoor-wear may be applied to daily-wear garments.