Inspired Yet Pragmatic: An Exploration of Anne Bissonnette's Creative Design Research

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Have you ever worn your research? With degrees in Science, Fashion Design, Art History, Dress History and Museum Studies, Dr. Anne Bissonnette has gained multidisciplinary and embodied insights on clothes, her main area of expertise. Whether exploring the past or sustainable practices for a better future, she pushes boundaries of knowledge and offers practical solutions. This culminated in the 2024 Costume Society of America’s Betty Kirke Excellence in Research Award – a prize never before given to a juried creative design in the organization’s history and one that spurred this exhibition of her solo and collaborative work.

 

This project considers the relationship between academic research and personal experiences and principles. It adapts a 2024 methodology by Sophie Wood that aims to explore subject, object and the subject-object assemblage to find “diverse frames for valuing clothes.”[1] Here, Bissonnette is the subject and the garments are the objects of the study. Through semi-structured interviews and garment analyses, we explore how multi-layered subject-object interactions – such as research, design, making and wearing – can affect an individual’s experience of dress. You can watch interview segments using the labels’ QR codes. The pieces on display represent over two decades of Bissonnette’s creative design research that allowed her to learn through the making process.

 

Bissonnette’s eclectic corpus covers a variety of interests yet remains wearable. Pieces such as the chartreuse coat and Novel Pourpoint draw from 18^th- and 14^th-century construction, respectively. Others use historical artifacts, graphics and pattern design techniques. Many aim to provide physical and psychological comfort to the wearer, like in the Canadian Greatcoat and Museum Dress, both of which are also geared towards sustainable fashion design in their reuse and zero waste efforts. Many pieces reflect combined areas of inspiration, as in the award-winning Zero Waste Thinking: Portrait Tunic and Palazzo Pants. To learn more, access the juried abstracts for some of these pieces provided.

 

Janna Ehrenholz
Anne Bissonnette, PhD

 

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[1] Sophie Wood, “Reflections on blending garment analysis with wardrobe interviews,” International Journal of Fashion Studies, 11, no. 1 (2024): 45 and 53, https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00102_1.