This research shows that menswear can function as a medium for approaching identity but not as an instrument for concretely capturing it. The central question, how menswear can function as a visual portrait of personal identity, must be answered with a qualification that the research itself has brought to light: every portrait is simultaneously an interpretation, and every interpretation is a reduction.
The translation of identity into clothing is unstable. It depends on the subjectivity of the designer, the cultural codes of the viewer and the context of wearing. None of these elements is fully controllable. This does not mean that the attempt is useless quite the contrary. Precisely because clothing is incapable of mirroring identity but always interprets and distorts it, it functions as an interesting medium: it makes visible how we understand, simplify and attribute identity to others.
The seven portraits confirm this insight. Each design partly succeeds in making a quality or tension visible, but simultaneously falls short in another respect. Christoph’s closure is legible, but his softness may disappear. Olayinka’s layering is perceptible but risks fragmenting. Bryan’s duality is present but dependent on references that are not universal. In every case something is gained and something is lost and that balance is never fully in the designer’s hands. Consider how everyone has their own taste and style, their own frame of reference, the environment in which they grew up or now live. So much is at play.
The theoretical frameworks of Barthes, Goffman and Butler have sharpened this research. Together these perspectives make clear that translating identity into clothing is not a technical problem that can be solved with a better method it is a structural property of how people, clothing and meaning relate to one another.
The research by design method has in this respect proven its value not as an instrument for arriving at certainty, but as a way of working with uncertainty. It is a method that asks questions by making, and finds answers by starting again. That makes it well suited to artistic-academic research, but limits its scalability towards a broader design practice.
The value of REBIRTH by JJAYCE lies not in offering a transferable method, but in articulating a way of looking: a design sensibility that takes identity seriously, never fully claims it, and always approaches it with a degree of openness. That sensibility, more than any system or model, is what this research ultimately creates.
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