RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SHAPE/DESIGN/COLOUR AND DECADE

How and why the shapes of dress vary?

Is there a relationship between design and technology, design and social values, and design and taste?

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HIGH FASHION AND STREET FASHION

How high fashion styles are simplified and adopted by the masses?

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PAST AND CONTEMPORARY FASHIONS

How designers adopt former fashion styles and transform them into contemporary styles?

What defines the "fashion sensibility" of an historical period?

Why  can I tell that a dress is not contemporary even though, its shapes, cut, and fabrics are used today?

How will these dresses be used today and by whom?

How they were used then and what has changed?

Why are we interested today in wearing "old" dresses? 

Have these dresses evolved to the categories of costumes?

TENTATIVE THESIS

Each dress represents a broad fashion concept or ideal that defined an era. The fifties' dress represents femininity, sophistication and delicacy; the sixties/seventies' dresses represent women's liberation, fun and certain tackiness. 

I want to explore how this "essential" features of fashion are articulated and how they change. Right now everything is possible in fashion.. Why, then, these dresses still look outmoded, if almost all their elements can be found in many different fashion collections?

PRIMARY SOURCES

I have not looked extensively at Canadian Fashion catalogues, such as Sears, Eaton, and The Hudson Bay Co., and pattern making kits, such as McCall's and Simplicity. These can be found at the Toronto Regional Library and through the Internet.

The company that manufactured the dress made in Switzerland still exists, they might have some archival information.

I do not know if this dress is representative of a "Switzerland style," if so,  I need more information about Switzerland fashion history.

PROPOSED STAGES OF RESEARCH

FEBRUARY
WEEK 1	Gain more knowledge of Canadian Fashion history and Canadian Social history. How it differed from North American and European fashions. Who were the fashion's icons ,and what were the main historical events that influenced fashion?
WEEK 2	Gain more knowledge about psychological aspects of fashion. Why we dress, how we dress? Make direct connections with the dresses.
WEEK 3	Technology and fashion. How the construction of clothing has evolved?
WEEK 4	Shape, design and style. How our perceptions and preferences of shapes have changed? Why?

MARCH
WEEK 1	Explore the language of fashion. How do we communicate ideas about how to look fashionable? How the dresses analyzed were verbally expressed ,and how they would be communicated today.
WEEK 2	Patterns of consumerism in fashion. How do we make choices as to what to wear?  Where and how do we take inspiration from when we make our own clothes? Why and how we buy second hand/vintage clothing?
WEEK 3	Analyze more dresses, if possible.
WEEK 4	Formulate final thesis and general outline. Organize material accordingly. Choose illustrations and pictures.

APRIL
WEEK 1	Write Paper ( average of 2 pages a day)
WEEK 2	Write Paper (average of 2 pages a day)/ Edit Paper (two days)
WEEK 3	Design Website/Post website
WEEK 4