Pockets, uniforms, hoodies
Columbia GSAPP Adv VI | Spring 2021
Studio Critic: Hilary Sample
Study in collaboration with Joel McCullough
How can apparel be used as a symbol of independence, identity, and agency. Clothing is architecture for the body, creating a space, a shelter that travels with the individual. Apparel, thus, is a medium of engagement and experience. This study dives into the history of various apparel elements, patents, and manufacturing histories that have become spatial, consequential, and political.
Pockets: The history of women's pockets, is deeply tied with politics of privilege, property and private space. 18th century women’s pockets were private spaces they carried into the public. The erasure of pockets in the 19th century limited their abilities to navigate public spaces with personal items. By the 20th century, the pocket revival rose with feminism, suffrage, and WWI. Women began working in jobs traditionally held by men and women’s fashion began to include trousers, workwear, overalls etc.
Uniforms: Historically, the evolution of maintenance uniforms has been associated with labor. From innovations in workwear like overalls, to the discovery of fluorescent paint for safety, or recent fashion design elevating NYC sanitation uniforms, maintenance apparel has gained a platform of innovation, care, and pop-culture recognition.
Hoodies: Thinking about the history of the first patented hoodie, it was designed for and entrenched in the labor community, providing warm, work apparel. Later it was brought into pop culture through hiphop and black pride in the 70’s and 80’s. However, present day it has been appropriated by rich, white tech consumerism, while young black men have been murdered and overly policed for looking suspicious in “quote in quote, a hoodie”.
