NYAB Event - Anna Kathleen "Earth+Beyond"

Anna Kathleen "Earth+Beyond"

The Gallatin Gallery

This event has ended.

As a designer I am interested in clothing the living body, that is to say the body that works and feels and interacts, as opposed to the body merely on display. In doing this, I am not only concerned with the physical body but also with the body as a social entity, constantly in relation to the culture that surrounds it. We represent ourselves through our clothing as a figment of our society —with or without our consent. I am ultimately inspired by the social and political implications of the choices we make and the clothes that we wear, how a garment can influence not only the wearer but also the spectator. How we conform to or disrupt the system is up to each of us as wearers. As a designer, I have an opportunity to give a voice and a face to social sentiment.

This collection centers, for me, on the seemingly inescapable identity of the clothed body as either masculine or feminine. I wanted to imagine a clothed body without these distinct categories, an aesthetic that was truly outside of the gendered society we live in. I wanted to imagine the implications of such an aesthetic, how it might transform existing social relations between people. But in order to truly move beyond these confines, I believe we must move beyond ourselves; a body without gender is alien to our worldly conceptions of identity. It is with this truth in mind that the collection transforms beyond earthly limitations of gender and in hopes of discovering a new relationship to the human body: a relationship outside the body, an extraterrestrial bodily relationship.

Anna grew up in the mountains of Colorado and moved to New York City in 2007. She studied fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Fashion Theory at Gallatin where she graduated in May 2012. She has designed for Catherine Malandrino, Christian Cota, and Li & Fung.

www.anna-kathleen.com