During my senior year of college I took a class called “Good Design: Objects, Bodies, Buildings, Cities,” which sought to explore the meaning of “good design”—as originally established by the MoMA—and challenge our design sensibilities through three creative projects and accompanying academic texts. For this project, each student was assigned a design principle to adhere to when constructing their t-shirt. My design principle was “orthogonal.” My project was featured in the online NYU Gallatin publication Confluence as well as the annual Gallatin Spring fashion show.
The White T-Shirt Project strives to look at the human body as a site for design and exploration, and studies how objects change when photographed. Using a single, plain white t-shirt, each designer alters the shirt based on an individual design principle. The project becomes highly individualistic and personal, as the designer creates many iterations of the T-shirt and works exclusively using their own body as the design subject. This T-shirt is built on the principle of orthogonality, studying the various ways in which right angles can be formed and contrasting that linearity with the natural curvature of the female body. As object and body, the two items appear distinctly separate and disconnected, however, when brought together photographically, object and body are blended together.
Delphine Lazar 