dapperQ Presents Dress Code
This runway show at The Brooklyn Museum examines clothing as a coded language and one of the first visible markers of our identities, inviting you to consider the way garments uphold or challenge rigid stereotypes about gender.
Such a great starting place for pondering and conversation. My size gives me opportunities to dress across all sorts of boundaries — into boys’ clothes, children’s shoes, some men’s wear… It used to feel very important to me to insist on my full-grown female status, and I spent a lot of time getting clothes to support that look. As I grow older, I love the freedom of a more androgynous look where form and function suit my own taste and daily needs.
I love to play with and break codes related to dressing. It’s one of life’s pleasures.
I was once a UK size 6 and could wear anything. Much as my 17 year old daughter does now. Over time various health problems and their medications have left me plus sized. I find that my taste in clothes, such as your design choices, have not been a problem for me. However without the addition of a mask I can’t hide my double chin. It is amazing to me how people not only judge you on by clothes, many thinking I am a little eccentric, but on your size and shape. This leaves me to feel that trying to get away with both, style and size, sometimes isn’t worth the effort, and that makes me sad. I would like to see something written about your type of style on bigger women. Now that would really be an insight into peoples rigid stereotypes!
I believe that style is an expression of personal identity therefore size, age, shape are not relevant to me when I think about getting dressed. Also there is no other person who can look like me. That is not to say there are things I want to minimize such as my upper arms and you with your chin, but I see it as a creative challenge rather than a negative. I can only post how I chose clothes that express who I am. I encourage you to think not about size but about identity. What kind of woman do you want someone to see when they look at you. Then choose clothes that convey this.
plus size ladies, try thrift store oversize men’s suit coat tailored to fit you like a boyfriend shirt with a tight A-line skirt it will love all of your curves and so will you. tailor your clothes to fit you and your budget.
You are, of course, completely right. No one should fixate on their size over the clothes they wear to express their personality. Having been every size under the sun from UK 6 TO UK 26, now UK22, I can safely say I have never stopped being me. I never feel more alive than when I am wearing my most creative clothes, I feel like a child playing dress up and I can’t help but to feel pure joy. I don’t, for the most part, actually care what people think they see when they look at me, I neither want nor need their approval. What does make me sad is how other peoples reactions to size may stop some being their authentic selves. Having that first hand experience of being up and down the sizes I can say that, In my experience that some people, quite a lot in fact, can be so negative it’s almost as if they feel outraged or threatened, to see their views on size challenged. I would like someone, somewhere to look at that, how OTHER people in our society are so conditioned as to how a plus sized women should dress .