This is a continuation of Real Women Have Bodies Part I and expands on how the short story and the essay I wrote inspired a collection I designed for the Columbia Fashion Show!
On Sunday, November 16th, I showed my collection, Real Women Have Bodies, at the Silk Fashion Show hosted by Columbia University’s Asian American Alliance. The collection consisted of three dresses: “her something blue is her liberation”, “the white swan”, and “the mad woman”.
“Her something blue is her liberation” was inspired by Carmen Maria Machado’s Real Women Have Bodies, a short story I read in my first-year writing class about an epidemic of women who become invisible under the weight of societal expectations and are ultimately sewn into dresses. My piece imagines what it would look like for these faded women to break free, drawing especially on Machado’s recurring water imagery as a symbol of reclaimed autonomy.
I designed a deconstructed wedding dress to physically represent the breaking of prescribed roles. The corset references its historical function of confining women to social and marital expectations, while navy blue chiffon appears to “rupture” through it like water seeping into rigid structures in a Georgia O’Keeffe fashion. The entire garment was upcycled from three vintage wedding dresses as an homage to generational expectations placed on women. I created an unevenly ruched train, unfinished seams, and a train half composed of transparent fabric, reflecting the water cycle and the gradual unveiling of self. Beneath the sheer train, I wear a skirt printed with dye-sublimated text from my essay on the story’s water symbolism. The veil is inscribed with “her something blue is her liberation,” a direct challenge to the bridal tradition of “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” In my vision of the runaway bride, her something blue is the water, the evaporation, condensation, and escape from beauty standards and gendered expectations. All of this reflects my design philosophy: creating through, and for, the female lens, using creativity as a voice for change.
So many aspects of this project were about experimentation and taking risks, not just on a technical level, but personally. It was my first time making a dress completely alone, experimenting with dye sublimation, and tackling the demanding construction of a wedding dress, all while trying to balance my first semester of college. This was also my first time showing my work in New York City.
I created this dress specifically for Silk, different from the other designers’ pieces that were curated afterward, and that intention is reflected in its embodiment of the show’s theme, “BEYOND THE VEIL”, representing the show’s mission in giving a stage to those underrepresented. Despite the runway tradition of a bridal look being the finale, my wedding dress opened the show, serving as the threshold for everything that came “beyond the veil.”
The dress was presented along with two of my other works that I created in high school: a collection I named Propaganda, about sexual assault awareness. Including these pieces in Real Women Have Bodies completed a narrative of my own changing perspectives and evolving understanding of what it means to be a woman.
Seeing my amazing friends step into these pieces brought an entirely new depth to the work. I am so grateful to Helen and Lindsay, who not only modeled the dresses but truly embodied the stories stitched into them. It’s unreal to see something that feels like my lifeline be loved by others. Making the pieces in my room in the Barnard quad has also been transformative. Having my friends, dorm neighbors, and other girls passing through the hallway offer suggestions, and thinking about all the girls who lived in my room before me, turned the process into a kind of shared creation. Their comments, conversations, and camaraderie forever inspire and show me the strength of womanhood that continues to inform my creativity.
Thank you to all who worked alongside me and who gave me this incredible opportunity. Showing my designs here on this campus, at a show highlighting Asian American artists that I was also part of organizing, was a dream come true, and I hope that it’s just the beginning.
