My Practice - What I'm actually doing with my MA

Now although I think I've touched briefly upon my thinking and ultimately, the subject topic I'm focusing on as part of my own personal research for my MA, in passing across a variety of past blogposts, it recently came to my attention that I'd not exactly explained why and what I'm doing with my MA and my own practice work as I've solely touched upon a lot of my group project work across the breadth of my most recent blogposts. So, I thought id dedicate a blogpost exactly to that, so then I can not only continue to talk about the processes behind my group project work, well for the remainder of this term, but also give you an insight into my own personal research.

So why and what is it exactly I'm doing with my MA? Well for those of you who don't know, I specialised in Fashion Design and Marketing within my undergrad degree, and although I knew I wanted to do my MA, over the summer whilst I had some spare time on my hands, and wanting to continue to grow my skills within manufacture and design even further, so as they didn't "dry up" as such, I decided to set up a small instagram business @jessicalpepperdesigns, and started to design and make various pieces of clothing, including in-particular lingerie.

It was during my sample processing, after posting an image of a basic tie strap and back triangle bra, that one of my followers personally contacted me stating that if I could make bra's like the one pictured, in sizes for people with DD+ size boobs, she knew I would have a lot of interest, as her boobs were a G and she struggled for anything that wasn't a t-shirt bra. It was then that my MA research idea started to form in my mind without me even necessarily knowing it yet.

In term 1 of my MA, when tasked to write my project proposal, ultimately doing what it says in the name, to a propose what exactly my project would consist of and how I was going to execute this through my practise, I realised that in actual fact I wanted to research and investigate why bra's for women with both bigger and smaller boobs than "average" weren't as pretty as the bras which you could buy for the deemed "average" bra cup size, which, in the UK currently is a 36DD. Was it because of manufacture issues, fabric issues, the demand for bigger and smaller than average sized bra's not being as high or because of the stigma that lies within the fashion industry regarding just bigger sizes of lingerie and fashion in general?

Considering my own strengths and weaknesses, as, as part of my project proposal, I wanted to actually manufacture a collection for bigger and smaller busted women, to prove that it can be done, and like my research, after term 1 generally stated, the reason behind the gap within the market was primarily due to the stigma which the fashion industry has with size and body image in general, I decided to not only focus on trying to solve this problem within lingerie but also within womenswear in general, particularly when considering the underwear as outerwear trend. Therefore my current proposed question as it stands for my major project, which I'll start after Easter, is as follows;

Why hasn’t/doesn’t the Fashion & Lingerie Industry design anything more than basic lingerie and clothing, when considering the underwear as outerwear trend, for those who are bigger/ smaller than the “average” size?

•       Manufacture?

•       Fabric?

•      Consumer Demand?

•      Stigma within the industry?

Currently, I'm still under going a lot of research including both secondary and primary, doing questionnaires, focus groups, interviews with people in the industry and consumers, along with design work of both underwear and outerwear as well as fabric sample making, in preparation to start manufacturing, I hope, a 3 outfit collection for my Major Project next term.

I guess what I really want to achieve from my MA project is just to enable followers, like the one who initially contacted me regarding the sizing gap within the lingerie industry, to be able to have these pretty, feminine bra's available to them no matter what cup size they are, because, at the end of the day, don't we all as women deserve to feel pretty in the skin we're in and highlight this through our lingerie and fashion choices?

Jess xo