I am a 22 year old male and I spent my Friday playing with dolls. Yes that’s right dolls, and I loved it!
I attended the Fashioning an ethical industry event in Bristol a few weeks ago and was lucky enough to be a part of Lyla Patel of Traid’s workshop.
We were all handed a doll with a generic, basic black dress. At first I felt a little silly dressing up a doll but there was so much fabric and shiny stuff on the table I had no excuse to not come up with something. The end result was a hit if I do say so myself.
The fascinating part of the activity was seeing everybody else’s individual takes on dressing the doll. Each one was completely different from the last. I was shocked to see how everyone could interpret the same dress in such a unique and different manner. The workshop really brought to life Sheena Mathieken’s uniform project who has been making her dress look completely different everyday for the past 10 months.
This made me wonder, why don’t people customise their clothes a lot more in their day to day lives? Imagine some of the amazing creations we would see in a single day.
The reason people may be afraid of looking different could be down to their fears to look less than ordinary. Nobody wants to look different because we are all trying to fit in with one another and most of us use the excuse of ‘I am just not a creative person’.
But when put in a position like I was with the doll activity you realise how much power you have over your look. And how many dynamic creations you can come up with if you just experiment. It just depends on how much you dare to be different.
Image Credit- Freddycat1 on Flickr at Creative Commons
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