The movement of cultural philosophy and engagement from a post-modern, post-industry perspective to a meta-modern vision of self-reflection and self-awareness, has us collectively watching and becoming aware of our actions and their consequences.
– Karen Glass
Based in Reading (greater Philadelphia), Pennsylvania, Karen Glass takes on gender fluidity with her body of work no bias: a double entendrè, accompanied by Ø 2 Shanghai Jacket with Antebellum skirt. As a conceptual fashion artist and designer, her work strives to present social impact through expression of the human condition, primarily through the lens of deep humility and acceptance.
Identity truth is central to a new era of designers and our times. Glass shifts the “design anatomy of fashion” transforming “gender juxtaposition towards gender neutrality” as a means to “explore and reassign gender.” Re-assigning the value of fashion through restorative methods, Glass strikes a new discourse within the boundaries of gender.
Founder of Ø (zerøwaste) GLASS, a platform that creates fashion with little to no waste, Glass has collected a fashion archive of textile artifacts from around the globe, that, in many, have a provenance and historical record. This archive was procured over several decades while working as a creative executive for the specialty retail brand CHICO’S. With her belief that we can live with fewer things of higher quality, her focus is to preserve, conserve, and regenerate where the lifecycle never ends. Influenced by the Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi, she says, “our work and our product—especially the up-cycle—is always incomplete, impermanent, and imperfect; it may be in a state of repair at the beginning or throughout the duration of its cycle, it may be transcending from textile waste to a beautiful new piece, or it may be a finished piece that will be worn and then, one day, go back into the up-cycle process.”
Glass’s use of textiles to their highest utility and value adds a new chapter in the life cycle of these artifacts. As an example, no bias: a double entendrè showcases her ongoing drive for integrating fashion and textile design, cultural aesthetic artifact, and visual art into an integrated art form. As an art form of deconstructed identity, ‘no bias’ expresses the movement from gender juxtaposition toward gender neutrality amidst the cultural movement of eco social values in fashion. The ‘no bias’ work represents the zerøwaste philosophy and upcycling process.
In textiles, bias is the diagonal of woven fabric. Apparel is cut on the bias to achieve, and historically assign, feminine fluidity. Critical gender assignment in fashion apparel is defined in jackets by the cut, shape and size of shoulders in menswear. This applies to the waist in womenswear. There is no bias cutting in this body of work. The gender bias in the garments were transformed to express both the feminine and the masculine.
From the development of an organic farm to procurement of fashion artifacts to managing a zero-waste platform that included a life-work project for women who had survived victimization, Karen Glass has evolved her social practice. She currently advises on business cultural values and added purpose while developing a model for creating value in communities through conscious evolution dialogues (CED), calling herself a “spiritual ecoist”. Glass has also found a deeper spiritual calling serving as an end-of-life coach and death doula work.
Feature image: Karen Glass, no bias: a double entendrè canvas series | photo by T. Christian Gapen
E D G E 