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Introduction to the unit and brief, dissertation guidelines and introduction to alternative dissertations. Started thinking about debates and topics that I’m interested enough in to write dissertation on. As well as considering doing an alternative dissertation.

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Initial interest in fashion business led me to research different topics to narrow the focus, I tried looking into sustainability, consumer behaviour, independent businesses within the fashion industry and how they are affected by things like Brexit. But none of these topics was sparking much of an interest in me and I couldn’t see how a practise-based dissertation would contribute to any of the topics, so I decided to go down a different route. After surfing the internet for some fashion related topics, I came across the idea of clothing representing personality traits. I immediately took a liking to the topic after realising that this is the cases for myself and many other people I know. I began some research into this topic and became more interested in how, which developed my lead question to be ‘How can clothes represent personality traits?’

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Now I that I have a solid lead question I began mind mapping some of the different discussions surrounding this topic the ones I took forward and began researching on were how the clothing worn in different fashion subcultures can represent the members within the subculture’s personality traits or even how the clothing represents the subcultures personality. Remembering the quote “you are what you wear” I thought it would be fascinating to see what different connotations can come from this quote and its initial meaning. Lastly, I wanted to look at how the psychological explanations of personality traits can be used to give reasoning to the lead question. In today’s lecture we had an introduction to the new online library system and also what resources were available to aid our researching process it was very helpful as it gives me one place to source a lot of research, especially research regarding fashion as there are numerous vouge and other magazine archives. Looking throughs these inspired me to create my own magazine style lookbook as part of my practise for the dissertation. I came up with the idea of doing a couple mini photoshoots with a range of diverse people with diverse fashion styles follow by interviews with those individuals to get a better idea of how their clothes represents their personality. I will begin this development during summer in preparations for my third year. After collating a substantial amount of research on the three topics previously mentioned I began creating a PowerPoint presentation of mainly images for formative next week.

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During today’s formative I received some good feedback on my presentation by those within my breakout room, I also got to see some interesting topics that other people were basing their dissertation on. The feedback I received didn’t give me much to improve on aside from needing to research more. I had a break from researching on this day as I had a lot of work that was due in the following week for a project I was doing.

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After today’s lecture about ethics, I began to think about how I would approach some of my primary research more specifically the interviews I will conducting during summer. I began filling out and reviewing the ethics checklist. During the lecture whilst in breakout rooms I discussed some points that were within my formative lecture with Liz. She brought my attention to the idea of clothing within subcultures being uniform and how it may have no relation to who the person wearing it is but simple be a uniform to be a part of their subculture. She also questioned how this could create stereotypes, I found this very interesting and realised that it could work as an opposing perspective to my argument. I will consider this point when further developing my research into fashion subcultures.

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Today I began writing out my diss prep starting with the research review in order to put all initial research and topic ideas into writing. I also planned out the next following days to do other sections of the diss prep to be finished by Saturday and ready to submit before 4pm on Monday.

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07/10/21 - Back to working on dissertation

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07/10/21 - Back to working on dissertation

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Today was my first day back working on my dissertation after the summer break. During my tutorial, I was able to discuss my ideas and get another perspective on my topic. My tutor helped me figure out what area to begin looking into for my research, she recommend I look at Dick Hebdrige's - The Meaning of Style. Subject areas she also recommend for me look into are: fashion media, cultural studies, fashion & identity.

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After my tutorial from the previous week, I looked into some topics that I could extensively research to form a developed chapter. I have decided to stick with my chapter on subcultures as I feel there is enough research to carry that chapter but as for the chapter on the 'psychology behind personality traits' I have decided to change that to 'clothing and identity' as I felt this was more suited for the dissertation. This chapter will discuss how gender, class, social identities, etc... are related to clothing. My last chapter will continue to be an artefact reflection chapter where I will reflect on the process of making my artefact and how it relates to my lead question.

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I haven't started writing my dissertation yet, I wanted to begin with getting all my research together but I was struggling to understand some of the text within the academic sources I had gathered more specifically the Dick Hebidge book. I'm not used to reading text like this therefore what was being said wasn't translating well to me and I wasn't sure how I could use it in my dissertation so for my tutorial this week I decided to ask my tutor to help me work on my analysis and how I can go about understanding the text. I show her a paragraph I was having trouble with and together we broke it down, I took notes on what she was saying, questions she was asking and tips she was giving me. This helped a lot and after the tutorial, I applied the same techniques to some more paragraphs.

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A few days ago I began writing my first chapter on Subcultures, after working on how to analyse I applied the technique to a few other paragraphs and that how I began writing this chapter. There was no tutorials for this week but there were workshops available, I went to the workshop on analysis, just so I can get more techniques on how I can do this as it was my weakest point. the workshop help me understand how to analyse a piece of text and integrate my sources, the workshop also covered comparing, synthesising, evaluating and applying. After this I felt pretty confident to continue writing and getting the first two chapters done for formative next week.

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I manage to get the first chapter completed but only half of the second one was done for formative, I wasn't able to finish it because I had another deadline for my course project two days prior to the dissertation formative so I had taken more time to work on that. Nonetheless, I was happy with what I was able to submit and ready to hear the feedback in two weeks time.

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I haven't worked on my dissertation for some time now, I have been really busy working on my course project which is due in a couple of days so I have put all my focus on that for now. I also haven't been able to begin making my artefact due to this but since I have done more than half the word count for formative I should be fine with completing my dissertation during the half-term.

I also received my feedback today and also attended my last tutorial with my tutor and we were able to discuss my feedback. We had a really interesting conversation about some of the things I had mentioned throughout my dissertation and she had said how my dissertation could easily be just written if I decided to explore the dissertation topic some more. We also talked about some topics I could introduce and look into, this made doing a written dissertation more appealing to me as I found these topics very interesting.

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So I have decided to change my mind do a written dissertation, the ideas I had for my artefact didn't quite go to plan and after my last tutorial I had realised there could more to say regarding my lead question. I did take a little break after submitting but course project but now I'm back to doing more research on the new topics I plan to discuss in my dissertation. These topics are the commercialisation and criminalisation of subculture and how subcultures are relevant to todays society and how organisational dress takes away from clothing and identity. I do need to find a new topic for my third chapter as this is currently my artefact chapter.

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20/12/21 - Working on my chapter one (Subcultures)

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20/12/21 - Working on my chapter one (Subcultures)

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After researching over the weekend, I am now adding more writing to my first chapter on subcultures, the section of this chapter looks into the commodification, commercialisation and criminalisation of subcultures. I have been able to gather some great qualitative research both academic and non-academic sources.

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27/12/21 - Working on chapter two (Clothing and Identity)

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27/12/21 - Working on chapter two (Clothing and Identity)

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I have finished chapter one and now I'm working on chapter two. the first section of this chapter is about gender and I had completed that for formative so I decided to talk about social class and social identities for the second section and organisational dress for the third section. Diana Cranes book 'Fashion and its social agendas: Class, gender and identity in clothing' was very helpful within this chapter.

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I still haven't decided what my third chapter will be on, I have been juggling between two topics, which are 'cultural clothing and ethnic identities' or 'costume design and identity'. So I decided to visit the Victoria and Albert Museum to see if this could help me gather some research for cultural clothing and ethnic identities, the museum was great and I managed to get some good examples but they weren't good enough.

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03/01/22 - Working on chapter 3 (Costume Design and Identity)

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03/01/22 - Working on chapter 3 (Costume Design and Identity)

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After some consideration and research, I have decided that the other option for this chapter would be too similar to my first chapter so I chose to base this chapter on costume design and explain the importance of clothing when creating a fictional character in a movie. I decided to use three iconic actors as examples, they are Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn.

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Having finished my final chapter it is now time to write my introduction and conclusion. I left my introduction to last because I wasn't sure on the direction my dissertation would go especially since I originally started doing a practice-based dissertation and had much less to write about. By doing it last it meant that I would be saving myself from having to go back and change it every time something changed or something new came about.

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As soon I had finished writing I had proof-read the whole dissertation and also got a family member to do the same, once I had gotten the all-clear I began fixing the structure of the dissertation, completing the list of illustrations page and Harvard referencing all my sources then adding then them into the bibliography. Now that everything is done I am ready to submit ahead of time for the deadline tomorrow.