Shirting Identities

Customizable Dress Shirt Design & Construction

Overview: This project aimed to create a gender-inclusive dress

shirt by adapting the pattern of a standard men’s blue shirt and incorporating adjustable components. The final garment was

tailored to fit a size 42 PGM female mannequin.

Course: Garment Design & Construction

Instructor: Annica Cuppetelli

Project Duration: NOV 2022 - DEC 2022

Keywords: Garment Design, Machine Sewing, Hand Sewing,

Fashion Photography

Gender-inclusive Design in My Understanding

Gender expressions (femininity, masculinity, etc.) do not reside in the garment itself but emerge

through the wearer—their identity, perspective, and lived experience. Gender-inclusive design,

then, is less about androgyny and more about enabling fluid interpretation and create space for

wearers to define their own meanings.

Patterns

All the base Patterns were traced from the given man's shirt.

The appliqué on the back is intentionally designed to be removable so that the wearer can change the pattern based on their personal preference.

For this demonstration, I specifically chose to do an orchid pattern as it implicitly symbolizes male figures who are gentle and with some femininity in my culture, a good response to the theme of gender identities.

Concept: A dress shirt for convenient customization

My idea here is to design a dress shirt that allows the wearer to present their identities by switching out patterns on the back and adjusting the silhouette with components attached to the base shirt. These include:

Attached Belt to tighten/loosen the waist;
Stripes on the cuff to gather the pleats;
Changeable appliqué on the back.

Process

All the white fabrics are muslin; the blue fabrics and buttons were taken from the provided man's shirt.

Cuff

I tried the left sleeve on after attaching the cuff and found it actually matched the effect I wanted without the strip in my original design. Thus, I decided to stay in the current state and modified my design.