Emma Joan Foley

With an intentional focus on the mind-body relationship in dress, emma foley is an american fashion designer aiming to create clothing to be expositional and contradictory of a standard silhouette. Designing to directly question the physicality of fashion, visualizing the complex mental relationship dress evokes for every wearer. Skilled across construction and design disciplines with professional experience in technical and creative design at carolina herrera and proenza schouler.

Exploring extremes of dress, crafting narratives of evolutionary bodies through ambitiously modern silhouettes rooted in historical craft, tailoring, and couture construction principles. Dress inherently coexists with the body, in her work, emma foley seeks to expand that relationship to the mind in a physical and visual way.

Orifice explores theoretically & physically the interplay between body, perception, & physical space in direct connection to dress. Inspired by body schema & the theoretical grotesque. How engrained self image defines a perception of ourselves that contradicts the spatial reality of the body. A body with orifices, 

A body that can be entered & affected,

 Is developed through evolving self image prompting physical adjustments to the way bodies are clothed. The looks explore the relationship between the physical form & the perceived form, defined by historical  & theoretical research, looking to the extremes of womenswear and menswear in the 16th & 17th century, as well as the grotesque form explored in theory & art to inform the collection.