Senior Project Reflection

My senior project was an in depth seminar and lesson plan designed for and presented to
Mr. Daviss modern world history students. The focus of the lesson was twentieth century
fashion, which I feel is very important to their curriculum due to the fact that these students learn
primarily about the twenty first century in the Modern World History classes. The Best
experience of the project was designing the digital collages which incorporated a mixture of
photographs and GIFs to help draw the attention of my audience and engage their creativity in a
fresh and interesting way. From my understanding and experience, many teachers do not
incorporate the digital collage format into their presentations in fear of distractions from the
actual subject. Despite this, I found out that students actually found the concept of weaving
digital collages into presentations to be refreshing and invigorating.

During the course of my time that I spent preparing for my senior project, I have learned
plenty of new things. I went decade by decade, searching for trends and styles that were
influential during the time periods discussed in my lesson. I discovered mod fashion to be
particularly interesting, especially the rise of the British supermodel Twiggy and her effect on the
ideal of standard beauty during the mid twentieth century. I have also collected information on
the influence of music on the fashion industry; the rise of jazz, punk, and grunge have had a
profound influence on the twenties, the eighties, and the nineties respectively. Many people think
that the fashion industry is very shallow and vapid; however, the information gleaned from my
research has shown me otherwise and has given me an in depth look at the fashion industry.

Another thing that I found fascinating that I unearthed through extensive research was the
effect of war on the production of dyes in the twentieth century, During wartime (such as WW1
and WW2), there were significant shortages in dyes, leading to a majority of clothing being
colored in neutral, darker tones. These tones reflected societally imposed views on the concept of
traditional masculinity and were worn by a gargantuan amount of women entering the workforce
as their husbands went off to fight in the wars abroad. These colors and the military inspired
masculine silhouettes and cuts of that time reflected the rise of the contemporary feminist
movement and the voices of working women across the globe. This project truly made me
understand how almost every aspect of life finds some connection to clothing and fashion; this
made me look at other students in a very different way. I noticed how much people took clothing
for granted. Clothes arent just things you put on your body; clothes are symbols of strength,
power, war, weakness, love, class, gender, sexuality, industry, time, environment, and society in
general. Clothes are powerful tools of self expression, coupled with conformity.

The part of the senior project that stretched me the most was the actual assembly of the
slides. I originally wanted to just create slides full of digital collages without any words
whatsoever, but I realized that student would have to be taking notes during the presentation in
preparation for the assignment that was supplemented alongside the presentation. I decided(after
a long period of internal debate and deliberation) that I would have extra slides to go along with
the collage slides featuring bullet points and sentences describing the images to place the images
and GIFs in context without and extreme, full depth verbal analysis of each photograph and GIF.
I felt really conflicted during this learning stretch since I had to assess my own experiences as a
student, I realized that I personally worked better when there were words on the board when a

teacher was lecturing so I could take notes as he or she spoke. I implemented my own
background into the presentation to achieve a more effective and desired look.
Completing my senior project has made me become more confident in my abilities as a
leader, I realized that I can create something for other people to benefit from as well as
something that simultaneously benefits me. I learned so much from my research and I hope that
knowledge really helps me succeed in the fashion industry due to the fact that I hope to pursue a
career in fashion. I used to be nervous speaking in front of large crowds, but now that Ive
spoken in front of a class full of teenagers, I feel a little more comfortable talking in front of
larger groups now. Now that my senior project is finally over, I feel extremely relieved. All I
have to do now is present and then Im done. Working on my senior project has been a truly
wonderful experience and I am so thankful that Santa Susana High School offers students the
opportunity to familiarize themselves with a chosen subject and develop a project from their
research.