From November 2022 to January 2023 the Seneca Canadian Fashion Diversity Project at the Seneca School of Fashion mounted an exhibition of the fascinating and innovative practice-led research of Seneca fashion professor, Philip Sparks.
These garments are part of a larger corpus of research by professor Sparks that includes performative engagements, body measurements, and creation of prototypes and models that deliberately disrupt the conformist structures imposed by traditional fashion, design, and manufacture.
Sparks uses practice-based fashion research to explore both individual as well as larger issues around form and function within the designed fashion object. For example, as he notes:
“200% is a shirt with its pattern enlarged to two hundred per cent of my own shirt size to create more of a long gown than a shirt. Despite its outsized form, I did not want 200% to become too comfortable for the wearer, so I made it from a very fragile cloth with very little cohesiveness. This meant that one had to be very careful trying on and wearing the piece as a finger could easily puncture the cloth. Many visitors told me that this piece reminded them of trying on their parents clothing as a child. […] Some of the pieces looked at restricting movement as an issue with fit. Abduction, meaning “moving away” (Marieb 2011, 214), is a shirt made with the arms attached too low. Abduction is designed to prevent the wearer from lifting their arm away from the body. As guests tried on this piece, new ways of wearing it were proposed, as a cape, for example, instead of buttoned closed as a shirt. This reinforcing that everyone’s experience of fit is different, and my intended meanings are not always interpreted as I had planned Abdomen and Neck are both shirts where one part of the shirt was enlarged. In Abdomen, a front section of the shirt was enlarged by two hundred per cent and gathered back into an otherwise regular white shirt. This was a play on enlarging a part of the body that I am usually conscious of minimizing. Abdomen presented several ways of being worn. Many people suggested that it could be worn when carrying a child. Neck was made with a neck opening too big, exposing most of the chest abdomen and navel. It was meant to question the concept of appropriateness in clothing, but most guests simply thought of the shirt as a new type of jacket instead.”
Sparks elaborates on this concept of the individual vs. the conforming mediation of anthropometric data:
“One individual with a jacket that cannot be buttoned closed may complain that it is too loose, and tell their tailor that it needs to be taken in. Another individual may complain that a very boxy jacket is too tight, and needs to be let out. As a tailor and clothing designer for almost two decades, I have made the crafting of garments that fit perfectly my primary goal, studying anthropometric data in a desperate search for a good standard and working tirelessly to flawlessly clothe individual bodies. I have witnessed first-hand the positive effects this can have on a person. Through my craft, I have had the opportunity to help clients heal from the pain of a physical injury or health issue.”
Regarding his research process, Sparks notes that:
“I looked to historical tailoring texts from Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, and France for insights into our past ideas on finding fit and, in them, I found historical records and theses on anthropometry, or the geometry of the human form. Anthropometry is defined in the Gage Canadian Dictionary (Avis 1983) as “the branch of anthropology that deals with measurements of the human body” (48). Anthropometric data is often published for use in various design fields including tailoring, industrial design, and architecture. This is a practice-based and qualitative research project that challenges the use of quantitative data on the human body, as it is applied in fields where this body is considered.”
Sparks states of his research:
“Missed Fit has been a journey, one with many tangents and false starts, an academic continuation to a career-long question on how to find good fit. I started my research with one question: has the human form in Western civilizations changed physically over the last two hundred years? Certainly, lifestyles and occupations have changed. In Western culture, there has been a trend towards a more sedentary workplace and home life, but has that affected the shape and proportions of the human form and how Western culture perceives the concept of fit? I thought that the issues I faced as a custom tailor in finding the resources I needed to fit individuals reflected a need to update quantitative data on the human body. I found early in my research that it was my reliance on this quantitative data that caused the problem in the first place.”
And relates this to his work as an educator:
“it is my hope to continue this research and publish a text that can be used by teachers and students who rely on applying anthropometric data in order to help them open up their methodology. In fashion education, the traditional way of teaching patternmaking is to have students start with an existing developed pattern in what is called a sample size, usually suited to a tall, thin model. But I believe that the experience of fitting a variety of bodies is essential to making them better designers, cutters, patternmakers, and fashion professionals.”
This research enagaged with larger issues Sparks in his work:
“This exploration hinted at new and exciting ways to explore fit, but still did not answer my question of how to best draft for an individual. This brings me back to the anthropometric data that I was so interested in when I started this research. Has our anthropometric data changed across time? Surely our lifestyles and occupations have changed, but have our bodies changed too? […] My personal experience of working with pattern drafts (both historic and contemporary) have led me to the conclusion that they don’t accommodate individual bodies. For example, if I am tasked with drafting the pattern for a jacket and the client has a waist circumference that is larger than their chest, this is a challenge as most drafts published assume a smaller waist to chest ratio. As a tailor, I am more often than not faced with a body that doesn’t conform to published standards. […] In my practice, I have not yet measured an individual whose measurements conform to any of the many charts I have gathered.Mechanical fit is specific and inherently provides for the right amount of looseness. The amount of ease or looseness required in the fit of a garment, however, is always up for debate.”
In conclusion, as Sparks notes: “the wearer imparts meaning to clothing”, and this groundbreaking body of research expands on this by examining meanings and messages that are communicated through both design and manufacture. The exhibition encourages students to think in a deeper way about how their design decisions will impact the end user as well as how the fashion product itself is shaped by parameters external to the designer and the pattern draft.
A Suit Made Not to Fit
The following images are from A Suit Made Not to Fit, a Sparks research project which features many subtle details that create the experience of not fitting in. The stand that the suit is displayed on is made from a mould of the designer’s own body, as a way to exhibit the garments that emphasizes a personal experience of fit.
Philip Sparks. Missed Fit (Installation Shot: 2104 Dundas Street West). A Suit Made Not to Fit. 2019. Toronto. Photo: Kristy Boyce.
Images, created in collaboration with photographer Carlyle Routh and makeup artist/hair stylist Robert Weir, highlight the struggle of trying to move the body to fit in to a full ensemble that was made not to fit. Philip Sparks, Carlyle Routh, and Robert Weir. Photographs of A Suit Made Not to Fit. 2019. Toronto.
The following SFRC article explores this project in greater depth:
Sparks quotes From the article: Philip Sparks. “Missed Fit” Fashion Studies Journal Volume 3 Issue 1 Article 4. 2020.
https://www.fashionstudies.ca/missed-fit
& the MRP: Sparks, Philip. “Missed Fit.” OCAD University, 2019.
Philip Sparks Bio
Philip Sparks has been working as a tailor and designer for almost two decades, incorporating an art practice focused on textiles, photography, and installations into the production and exhibition of his collections. During his career, he has worked in-house in the wardrobe and design departments at the National Ballet of Canada, The Canadian Opera Company, the Stratford Festival, and Soulpepper Theatre. His clothing and accessories have been carried at retailers including Holt Renfrew, Hudson’s Bay, and La Maison Simons. Currently, Sparks continues to further his research into the anthropology and anthropometry of tailoring while producing custom garments and serving as a professor in the School of Fashion at Seneca College. Missed Fit was an exhibition of his thesis work in pursuit of a Masters in Design from OCAD University.
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Professor Sparks describes his business as a bespoke tailor here:
The Seneca Canadian Fashion Diversity Project is made possible by a both a grant to fund the student researchers, as well as institutional support for dr. Mark Joseph O’Connell.