Politics and Fashion

    Today, we have started the new project of Politics and Fashion. Politics within fashion has been a major influence in many events and eras, for example work wear for women in the 1920's and various labels creating clothing for the royal family and influential leaders within the government. With these individuals, first impressions are always a major influence on the public with how they present themselves and in this case, elegant and powerful. Not to mention, more recent designers and campaigners such as H&M for AID's Campaign or Karl Lagerfield's Chanel protest for feminist's. I have started off by carrying out open-minded research, being both primary and secondary. I began in the library and started searching for women in the 17th-18th Century who were particularly notorious in the government within Britain. Surprise, surprise, there were not many influential women in this time era, as women were seen as house wives and were not even considered to have a role in power. This led me to doing further research from online libraries and galleries who had more information on this topic. I began by looking at key figures in the government within the 17th-18th century and came across all the High-Lord Chancellor's, Dukes, Baron's and much more. In regards to women of this era, they were merely only the wives and child-bearers for these men to produce new generations of upper-class aristocrats. Nonetheless, I managed to come across Duchess, Georgiana Cavendish; known for her notorious love affairs and led her life as a political campaigner as she was connected to key figures within parliament. Another woman I found was, Olympe de Gouges. Gouges was a French Revolutionary feminist who challenged male supremacy; she was passionate to achieve gender equality, however she ended up being arrested and later executed in 1793 for seditious behaviour.

    I have definitely carried out a lot of research for this era as I find it fascinating how women were expected to be (housewives, child-bearers, slaves). Furthermore, carrying out this political topic represents a great message for feminists within that era to show how powerful women could have been if they had more influence in power. My initial idea for this project is to create a womenswear collection for a political power attire and I am going to evolve this from the traditional clothing for High-Lord Chancellor's within the House of Lords. The next stage would be to look at fabrications for these robes and try adjust it to the female body, but try not to make it look to feminine as I want the womenswear collection to look very structured and powerful. In addition, I was thinking about trying to make it look more feminine by researching traditional embroidery patterns within these eras and perhaps highlight the clothing with strips of my primary-created pattern.

    It was difficult to find primary research for this era as I believe that male publishers felt criticised and offended by encouraging women in power, thus I have had to research predominately male power within parliament. However, this makes me feel stronger towards this project as I can really enhance the political power attire for women and make them feel independent and powerful. I really hope that I can push my potential for this project as I feel really strongly about my opinion for women in power.