For my third and final look the brief is “Avant Garde”, a high fashion look themed around “Sin”. To create an Avant Garde look, it is important to have a look that can be described as “over-the-top”. This aspect of fashion is heavily influenced by the makeup, hair/wigs (often styled abnormally) and accessories, which means that the look overall needs to have been thought through thoroughly. Avant Garde fashion is very unique and extravagant, which makes it a very interesting concept for me to work on because it involves heavy designing of a lot of things- it was a challenge I was very happy to take on.
Sins are religious symbols that show people of faith what not to do in life. There are seven deadly sins: gluttony, greed, envy, sloth, pride, wrath and lust. Sins can be perceived in many different ways and it is really up to a single person to decide how they want to label the sins and to what extent the person thinks the sins show up in every day life.
I chose to create a look based on the sin of Gluttony because I had a full look already planned that fits this look really well- I planned this look over a previous two week holiday because I thought that this would be for an ungraded portfolio look, but there was a change of plan in the academic plans so I used the idea for my final project.
I later adapted this spider diagram to include more ideas for a few more of the different sins, I had four in total including my gluttony idea. This didn’t change my original idea, but showing other ideas is a target of mine form my body paint assessment:
My Gluttony look will be a “Cake Monster” special effects makeup. Some of my own inspiration comes from some images I saw on Pinterest:
I was very drawn to this image because of the subtle, angelic aesthetic. It was the image that I first saw that inspired my humanoid cake monster, but I did not want to directly replicate this aesthetic. I found a second image on Pinterest that had more of an uneasy and mysterious aesthetic:
This image reminded me of the “Monster High” franchise, which became my third source of inspiration.
The “Monster High” franchise, created by Garrett Sander and illustrated by Kellee Riley and Glen Hanson became my inspiration for the fashion aspect of this brief because each character has their own unique and fun design.
Here are some examples from the characters’ page on Monster High Wiki.
https://monsterhigh.fandom.com/wiki/Spectra_Vondergeist_(G1)
https://monsterhigh.fandom.com/wiki/Mouscedes_King_(G1)
https://monsterhigh.fandom.com/wiki/Luna_Mothews_(G1)
https://monsterhigh.fandom.com/wiki/Draculaura_(G1)
I like how each character has a specific colour scheme and design that relates to the monster/ creature they are based on while also being very fashionable. “Monster High” has heavily inspired the costume aspect of my “Cake Monster” look and I feel confident that I can complete a very good look to a high standard if I practice enough. In the fashion industry, my Gluttony inspired “Cake Monster” look would fit best into fashion magazines that advertise more alternative brands and styles.
A heavy piece of inspiration for me was seeing the Selkie Fall/ Winter 2025 Collection. This collection had the perfect aesthetic that I wanted to include in my work with costume and wig design, I found these images of some of the collection on this website:
https://us.fashionnetwork.com/galeries/photos/Selkie,71065.html
I really liked this look and it encouraged me to add more 3D aspects such as ribbon and bows to my wig and costume.
With this look, I want to achieve a look far more complex than I have done before. I want to push my abilities in terms of costume and wig design- as well as making sure that I test new makeup techniques such as illusion makeup so that my skills improve.