Survival of the Fit

An apocalypse is any cataclysmic or catastrophic event; usually one that greatly changes a world or its people. 

In my capstone project for my final year of fashion design school, I sought to understand why humanity finds so much fascination with apocalyptic stories. I learned that we don’t find fascination in those apocalypses, but we find comfort. The project was research-based, and to illustrate my findings I digitally designed my own apocalyptic character that respects the common tropes of the media they belong in. I’ve built the cornerstone garment from their outfit in Clo3D, to see it through to its theoretical production. This character and their clothing are reminiscent of the dreary beauty we recognize in apocalyptic media, injected with technical knowledge in an attempt to marry the worlds of character design and fashion design. This is Survival of the Fit (Vol. 1).

To begin the project, I made several moodboard-like mind maps to explore the different aspects of my topic I wanted to research and what the focus of my project was actually going to be. These mind maps helped to guide my research into the categories of the real-world apocalypse, the fictional apocalypse, and fashion in the apocalypse.

My research was also guided by three questions: What defines an apocalypse? Why does humanity find fascination in the apocalypse? How can our clothing help us survive the apocalypse? Mini artistic case studies on The Last of Us' Ellie and Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games helped put what I was learning into action. "31 'Best' Apocalypse Movies" list credit to M. Shields' article on Looper.com.

While at a glance apocalyptic fashion doesn't seem functional, it is realistic. While it doesn't make sense to the audience or the player, who it thinking ahead to the end of the world, it makes sense given the context that the characters of that world likely haven't had time to think at all. Usually, we're seeing main characters in what they were wearing when the world ended...

I considered the world my character might live in and how it might be falling apart around them by making abstract art pieces inspired by the multiple types of apocalypses I had learned about in my research. My chosen apocalypse was a zombie-infested frozen wasteland.

I think it's interesting how there are so many realistic types of apocalypses, then we have zombies; the closest thing to supernatural as apocalypses get. Personally, I think zombies really find their fit in video games. You can kill them mercilessly because they're no longer 'people' even though they look like us. The violence we express on zombies in video games is cathartic, and complicated.

Early explorations of the functions of clothing and my character's cornerstone garment. The rest of the character’s outfit comes from their past and their present environment. My original theory was that their coat had been chopped apart to make arm and leg warmers out of the sleeves as the temperature increasingly dropped.

My final character design illustration. I wanted my final character to reflect both the tropes of apocalyptic media and the kinds of people who normally aren't represented in apocalyptic media. This was especially important to me because zombies can symbolize xenophobia and ableism, and they express our desire to ‘clean up’ the world. I wanted to push back against that with my project.

I had built in Clo3D once before, so the process of working with new features like the Pressure and Elastic tool in unconventional ways was both enjoyable and frustrating for me. Working with hardware was new for me as well, since I hadn’t used the Button or Zipper tools before.

My final cornerstone garment modeled in Clo3D. Seeing the clothing without a model or wearer underneath gives it an abject quality, which is reminiscent of the empty, ruined cities you get to run through in so many apocalyptic video games.

While there are still features in Clo3D I want to learn, I’m incredibly satisfied with how the artistic aspects of this project came together to represent the research I did. This project has fostered a new love for character design, and deepened my interest in fashion and in apocalyptic stories.

Somehow, apocalyptic games make the depressing wastelands of past societies beautiful and enjoyable; they became escapes from our own apocalyptic realities.