Fashion as Armor 4 – Bay

On my previous blog post(blog 3: Natural Armor), I explored bodily protection that has occur in nature, such as, turtle shell, armadillo covering and the colorful skin of a poison dart frog. Nature has its own way of coming up with its own perfect design through evolution, and these following design that I came up with is my perfect idea of fashion as natural armor.

Fashion as Armor 3 – Bay

After I did some research on Asian armor, specifically Japanese Samurai’s armor, I realize that almost all the armor around the world are surprisingly similar. Chainmail, layered metal plates and exclusively for male are abundant in virtually in every armor design around the world, some of the few differences are the arrangement of the metal plates and the embellishments. In addition, the designs and embellishments of the armors from whatever culture were already made to be flattering on human body, for example, the photos I provided in Blog 1 show how each piece was made and tailored to the wearer, so I took the inspiration quite directly and so I want to challenge myself a little bit more so I start looking into “Natural Armor.”

Fashion as Armor 2-Bay

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

After researching about Renaissance and Medieval armors, I took inspiration from contemporary garment patterns and combine them with a lot of prominent features of the armors, such as chainmail, layered metal plates and ostentatiously engraved patterns on metal armors.

These are not final sketches, they still need to be cleaned and colored.

All the photos and sketches was provided by Bay Chaitrakulthong ’19

Fashion as Armor-Bay

Inclusion is one of the reasons why I want to pursue fashion design as my major. When I was young, I was bullied for being fat every single day without fail. One day, I thought that wearing designer goods would make people stop caring about my body. For once, I could fit in, and instead care about what I wear.