Strong woman, a concept of femininity

Abstract

This thesis explores the notion of femininity through the author’s creative work. The objective is to study how a conception of femininity impacts the design process. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part presents the author¬’s trip to Kielce, Poland in August 2016 and analyse how the observation of the local women defined a conception of a strong femininity. The second part ex-plains the author’s design process.

The trip to Poland was motivated by the intention of the author to understand why the former Eastern bloc has become so trendy in the past recent years. The trip offered the opportunity to grasp the hyper-genderization of the Polish youth and to apprehend the Polish woman. What can characterize femininity in South of Poland ? How these observations encouraged the elaboration of a concept of a strong woman ? How a vision of femininity can be translated into a collection of garments ?

Literature analysis and field observations has been used to form the research background of this thesis. The production phase was guided by the elaboration of the authors concept of a strong femi-ninity. The results of the thesis are the personal author’s definition of femininity and its application in womenswear design which succeeded in the creation of 23 garments.

The collection was presented in the annual fashion show of the Aalto University School of arts, Design and Architecture, the Näytös 17, in May 2017.