Betsy's Paper on Postmodern Dress

So I found the notes from last week's meeting and then spent some time organizing all papers and what-not into a thesis binder. good job, kristin. step by step.

Last week Brad gave me a copy of his wife's paper on postmodern dress. Reading the article, I see how it was a valuable piece of help in my pursuits. First of all, seeing how the paper is structured and how the study was conducted: Besty interviewed 15 students from DHA (apparel, i think, all of them), 2 rounds of interviews totalling about 3-5 hours each. In her methodology she explains how the questioning went, and why things were kept both open-ended and specific.

Using the students at the U was smart for a few reasons; mainly, B had easy access to the sample group. Also, the sample group, as fashion students, were likely to be very willing to talk about fashion issues and make thoughtul responses to B's questions.

The paper's layout follows a familiar pattern, but is neater and cleaner than some I have seen working with TH. Almost formulaic, it is my next intention to map it out, sort of deconstruct the outline of it and possibly begin to use it as a working template for idea generation. (will need to cite B for this).

The introduction section was the most relevant to my work. Like my earlier ideas, B starts by loosely defining a design term (postmodern), briefly stating the interesting phenomenon she's going to examine and why it might matter, introduces some established design theory, and finishes with her purpose statement....A road map for (my own) success?

Later, in the Lit Review, she speaks of emergent viewpoints, much like my idea of themes. She also talks about "visual evidence" of postmodernism, as examined from non-apparal works, like architecture, art, and literature. This is parallel to my visual data gathering of photography, film&video, apparel, and text related to tango as dance, but could also branch out to explore "interactivity" from various angles, not just design. hmm.