Zenith

Introduction

The Zenith project is the an opportunity to dive deep into an unexplored topic, and to create something with that discovery. It is the final project of Senior year, and is meant to allow you to put all that you have learned into practice. We can choose any topic to explore, making it a project that will definitely interest us. It is meant to span over two months, and we are supposed to plan it all out by ourselves. At the end, we present it to our classmates in a celebration off all that we have created.

My project

Due to other commitments this year, I had very little time outside of class to work on my project. This however, did not inform the topic of my project, nor the complexity or intensity, because I am small-minded. I decided to make a prom dress for my friend, inspired by historical english dresses from the 1500’s. This was based on my research into these dresses during my last theatre show, where I made projections based on them. I struggled to get this done in class mainly because I was unable to acquire fabric outside of class until a week before the project was due. This created a situation where I had to finish the project in a week, which was very gross and draining. It really hurt to complete, but I ended up finishing, and my friend Matilda was able to wear the dress both in my presentation, and as her prom dress.

Process

To start with, choosing the colors for the dress proved to be a problem. My model didn’t have very strict preferences, but the ones they did have created a constraint where I had no idea what color to make it, but I also didn’t have any direction. I ended up with too many colors that didn’t match, which resulted in me resewing and replacing the skirt multiple times.

In terms of design, I wanted to blend modern with historical, making a removable pair of sleeves that would allow the dress to switch between the two aesthetics. I ended up choosing green and pink, but accidentally bought purple, but that ended up working out well, as the theme of our school’s prom was Tangled, and this dress felt very Rapunzel, but mostly Pascal.

I struggled a lot with pattern making as well, since I decided to make all of the patterns from scratch. I had to do a lot of fittings with my model, and I had to resew the pieces a couple of times. It was really gross. I will not make things without patterns for no reason again.

I plan to study theatre design in college, which would include costume design and construction, so I am glad I did this project, as it gave me practice for that journey, but I also wish I had chosen something much simpler to do, as I did not have the time to complete this without it taking a strain on my mental health. But it all ended up working out, as Matilda did really like the dress.

Final Result

I am decently happy with how it turned out, but slightly disappointed that I decided to put so much emphasis on the historical side of the design, as that didn’t really end up coming through, since the dress needed to fit into a modern context as well. This meant that the historical stuff took less focus in my mind, and in the time crunch, some of it got lost. I also gave myself way too little time to complete this. It caused me to stay up too late, and I was rushing till the last minute. It does look very good on Matilda though, and I’m glad she got to wear it, and that I got to make her a prom dress, which is very surreal.