Ara Jo - Spring Summer 2012

The work of Ara Jo is a huge inspiration within fashion and textile practice as she challenges common perspectives of what we define fashion and also how the body is represented through clothes. Although she only graduated from Central St. Martins in 2009, Jo is already popular with celebrities such as Lady Gaga and this is not surprising due to the uniqueness and innovative style of her designs. Ara Jo has been a constant reference over the last year when looking at ideas of restriction and body image in design and the image pictured from her Autumn/Winter 2009 collection shows a small part of an amazing collection. Jo's designs use the fabric to experiment with the abilities and restrictions of the human body and how clothing can effect this. They explore ideas of exposing and revealing the body, which is a prominent issue in society today with the emphasis that is based on perfecting the body and one's consciousness with the figure.

Ara Jo's most recent Spring/Summer 2012 collection furthers these ideas and tackles, not directly but it is clear that this is the intention, the problems with the negative influence that celebrity lifestyles are having on self acceptance and body insecurities. The collection is said to be based around celebrity lifestyle and appears at first almost a celebration of it, however the names of the pieces with negative connotations such as 'the overdose jumpsuit' suggest that the collection is attempting to raise awareness about the destructive sides of such a lifestyle. One could say that this is a very brave, yet positive statement to make considering the problems in society with the obsession with celebrity and attempts by young people to imitate them, with disastrous consequences. The concept suggests that attempting to achieve this 'perfect celebrity body' by drastic methods is dangerous and that self-acceptance is much more important.

The garment shapes themselves are also very innovative and inspiring, true to form for Ara Jo. There is contrast between very revealing garments and designs that challenge ideas about the shape of the body, as shown above. The colours are very bright with bold prints and type that are said to 'scream 'look at me''. This sense of arrogance that some celebrities have also adds to the negative influence that they have over young people. Celebrities are becoming increasingly arrogant, convincing themselves and everyone around them that they should be, and look like them. This is confirmed by the title of the collection – “The Super Egos”. P. David Marshall's ideas about our own self acceptance and how these relate to the influence of celebrity suggest that the body is seen as something to be altered to fit into the normative range of what is considered beautiful. This means that we do no longer compare ourselves to other human beings, but to edited, media enhanced images of human beings, that are not at all accurate depictions of how a body should look.