On Friday, graduate student Camilla Morrison will debut her Costume Technology and Design Thesis, “Dreams Are Nightmares Too,” in LSU’s Studio Theatre.
Her thesis explores feminine emotion and the challenges that many women face through clothing designs.
While Morrison said this work in particular is autobiographical, she has also taken influence from the lives of other women. She said she loves hearing other people’s stories and her confidence in the honesty and transparency of her work is what pushes her concepts to the next level.
When constructing the garments, Morrison used a lot of recycled materials to create and alter her vision. She said her vision came to life with all sorts of materials, emboldening the creativity of her final product.
One of the designer’s models, physical theatre senior Hannah Gudan said she feels she embodies her selected couture for the show through symbolic implication.
“I talked with Camilla about it, and the piece is about weight that we carry as women, especially other people’s weight and their issues that we try to take on or care of,” Gudan said.
Morrison describes the specific piece designed for Gudan to model as a layered, internal emotion displayed on the external surface.
“Some of these things are heavy in different places, some of these are light and they flow in different places,” she said, explaining her incorporation of different fabrics and designs.
Morrison found herself gravitating toward a lot of mixtures that viewers might not think or necessarily expect, whether it be color, texture or pattern, Morrison said her designs are like life in the way no one is similar to another.
“Your experience with something may be different than my experience, and that’s where the inspiration for this project came from,” she said.
Morrison said all of her garments cater to a specific set of storylines and interests reflected in the layers that make up and surround them. While the piece is about gender experience and the challenges of being a woman today, she wants the entire audience to relate to it.
“I’m hoping that the audience can come in, and no matter if you identify with a specific gender or if you don’t at all, I’m hoping people will be able to identify with the experience and see something in these pieces they can relate to,” she said.
The designer said her work is reminiscent of early Jean Paul Gaultier, with elaborate but feasible designs, and floats between purely material driven and utilitarian. She said her work harnesses the fabric in a cosmic sense, letting the shape of the wearer and their story build a relationship that cannot be duplicated.
“Dreams Are Nightmares Too” begins at 5 p.m. Thursday in the Music and Dramatic Arts Building.