Starting Point: The Tapestry of 'Redefine Your Shape'
This tapestry piece marked the very beginning of my major project — a vital starting point that helped me physically and conceptually piece together my ideas. It began with a white shirt, onto which I printed an advert-style image with the phrase “redefine your shape.” The image itself showed that same shirt wrapped unconventionally around a mannequin, disrupting the traditional way garments are expected to be worn. That subversion was deliberate — a quiet rebellion against the structured, conformist ideals fashion often imposes on how we’re meant to present our bodies.
Around that shirt, I began sewing together patches of fabric that I had printed with my paintings of women’s bodies — each one abstract, vibrant, and full of personality. These painted forms celebrate diversity, rawness and imperfection. Sewing them into a flowing tapestry allowed me to bring all these voices — all these bodies — into one united piece. It felt symbolic of community, of collectivity, of stitching stories and identities together to say: we exist, we are visible, and we are beautiful in our difference.
The Tapestry of 'Redefine Your Shape'
The act of making this tapestry was both grounding and generative. It gave me a chance to visually test the combination of fashion, body image and printed artwork — to see what happens when fashion advertising is flipped, challenged, and reclaimed through the use of art. It also provided a tactile, physical anchor for my project — something to build from and refer back to as my work developed.
By taking this tapestry into natural landscapes to photograph it — soft fabric against harsh rocks and water — I wanted to connect the vulnerability of the body with the resilience of the environment. The contrast reminded me that bodies are natural, cyclical, and shifting — not fixed in idealised forms.
This piece was more than just a creative experiment. It became a symbol of resistance and redefinition, establishing the tone for the rest of my campaign. It allowed me to explore how garments can carry not just messages, but movements — and how fashion can be used to disrupt, reimagine, and reclaim how women’s bodies are portrayed.
Wearing My Work – The Printed Body in Motion
This outfit represents another key stage in my project — an important moment of bringing my painted female forms off the page and into the physical, wearable world. While I was in China, I took the opportunity to create garments using fabric that I had digitally printed with my original oil pastel paintings of the female form. The result was a two-piece outfit and matching bag that turn my art into something mobile — something that exists not just to be viewed but worn, inhabited, and embodied.
Each piece of the outfit carries the same themes I’ve been exploring: the visibility of women’s bodies, the rejection of perfection, and the celebration of difference. The use of red, pink, and mustard tones throughout was intentional — these colours have consistently run through my campaign and visual language to express warmth, strength, and individuality. These are not neutral clothes — they are bold and unapologetic, like the bodies they represent.
What makes this outfit significant to my project is the way it allows fashion and activism to merge. By literally wrapping the body in these abstract, expressive forms, I’m questioning who gets to decide what’s appropriate, what’s beautiful, and what the female body should look like. It’s wearable resistance.
The Printed Body in Motion
Photographing the garments in a natural landscape — laid across stones and water — creates a poetic contrast between the softness of fabric and the hardness of the environment. It reinforces the idea that the body, like nature, is shaped, stretched, marked and ever-changing — and that clothing should honour that rather than conceal or correct it.
The process of making this piece while abroad also reminded me of the global nature of fashion and identity. Creating it in China gave me new insight into production processes, but more importantly, it pushed me to consider how bodies and beauty standards are represented and challenged in different cultural contexts.
This outfit is more than just clothing — it’s a conversation starter. It brings my visual campaign to life, reminding viewers that the body is not a fixed canvas to be judged, but a living surface to be celebrated.