As a Costume Technologist, I have leveraged a knowledge of fashion history to create costumes that allow an audience to identify characters according to societal ranking, represent a culture and time period, communicate political atmospheres, group affiliations and to convey gender and sexuality.
As a woman, I have used these same skills to establish identity, to align myself with movements and ideas, to convey my credibility and individuality through culturally and self-imposed fashion.
As an educator, I am in the unique position to ignite curiosity about elements of dress and more specifically how those elements can and have been used to oppress, elevate, distinguish, or obscure.
I seek to convey to my students the power that they individually have to express themselves through fashion, to consider the choices others make with an open mind, to think critically about the visual cues it offers them, and to use all of these skills to create a broader awareness of self and society.