FUTURE FASHION
ARTIST STATEMENT
When I see the women around me I see myself. I see strength and fragility, courage, pain, hope. I see hours spent in wardrobes pulling out clothes together, discussing outfits, moods, moments, life.
I see us growing old, older, and patterns repeating. Getting greyer, rounder, less worried about the outside world, and more selfish with our time. I see colours and fabric we were too afraid to wear when we were young. I see us wanting to be seen - standing tall, bringing joy to the world.
… but that's not always how it is, or how it’s been.
My 20s coincided with the decade of fast - fast fashion, fast food, fast farming, fast growth - combined with the opportunities and challenges of social media. It wasn't so long ago that I looked into my wardrobe with complete dismay, a combination of beautiful and basic clothes hanging neatly, waiting to be worn. Yet each day, I would dress in a similar uninspired and unsatisfying way, unable to remove the pressure and confusion of how I wanted to dress, all while consuming more stuff and adding more noise to an already overwhelmed mindset.
Australia is the second largest consumer of textiles in the world. On average each person buys 56 items of clothing a year, most of which end up in landfill.
FUTURE FASHION is an art project that explores the connect between people and their clothes.
Memories that were once sewn into the cloth that envelop our bodies and live with us through the journey of life, are now replaced with a carbon copy that is likely made of fabric that is not only toxic to your skin, but also the environment when being made and as it lays discarded in landfill.
These images aim to inspire women to challenge conventions and redefine their personal style, inviting viewers on a visual journey into a future where style knows no age limits and creativity has no bounds.
If you walk away from this moment with one thought - I hope every day you get dressed, you imagine not only the person you are today, but who you want to be well into your future. Taking time to reflect on your values as you buy new clothes - asking yourself how much value do the things around you hold and at what cost?
And also…
Do you have a good relationship with clothes?
Could the clothes you are wearing today translate into an outfit for the older self you aspire to be?
How often does the fear of other people’s judgement influence the way you dress? Do you seek approval from strangers or family?
Publicly accessible exhibition - INI Cafe - November 2023 - January 2024.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND LIMITATIONS.
“There are four main categories of diversity in fashion I consider across my work: age, gender, ethnicity and size. In this case, each image represents a woman or women who are visually older. Something that became apparent early on when using AI was that most of the resulting images were Caucasian, even though ethnicity or race wasn’t an instructive term. There is also no body diversity, with the majority of women generated being smaller or similar to the average size of an Australian woman. To balance this, I gave specific instructions and have had varying degrees of success. I understand that AI draws reference from existing photographs created and within its resources, so this lack of diversity may also comment on the broader lack of diversity within this space. While I hope this grows and changes, I’m optimistic that by inputting, pushing, selecting and favouriting images of older women, I’m helping to affect the future outcome for age diversity in this space and inspire other creatives to do the same.
6,500+ images were created to produce the 115 works currently available as part of this project. Not all AI is created equal.” Liz Sunshine.