In contemporary fashion practice, clothing is often approached as an aesthetic product or consumer good. In reality, the role of clothing as a carrier of identity is more layered and less straightforward than is generally assumed.
This research explores the extent to which menswear can function as a visual portrait of personal identity, while also making visible the limits of that translation.
The graduation project REBIRTH forms the practical context. Seven men from Limburg with diverse backgrounds and personalities serve as the basis for this project and are simultaneously its examples. For each person, the research examines how identity can be analysed, interpreted and translated into design choices in clothing.
The method combines identity analysis, material research and a research by design approach: designs function both as outcome and as research instrument. The aim is not an objective representation of identity but rather an exploratory investigation into what sticks and what may be lost in such a representation.
The results show that clothing can approach identity but cannot fully capture it. A structural tension emerges: translations that are too concrete quickly move towards costume design and reduce identity to a readable but oversimplified symbol, while translations that are too abstract risk losing their legibility for the viewer. Both extremes weaken the intended communicative force.
Moreover, the process proves difficult to scale. The intensive, person-specific approach this research requires runs counter to the realities of commercial fashion production. This raises questions not only whether identity can be translated into clothing, but also whether and how such a way of working is sustainable outside an academic context. Does it need to be legible to everyone, or does it remain my interpretation of these men?
This research does not deliver a definitive method. It makes clear that translating identity into clothing is a process structurally characterised by interpretation, limitation and ambiguity. These limitations are intrinsic to the medium which at the same time offers space to play with and portray identity in a wide variety of ways.
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