Sabbatical

This fall semester, I am fortunate to have been granted a sabbatical. So instead of teaching at Mesa College, I am conducting research on my sabbatical topic; a study of Ethnic Costume. I have several goals in this research, some of which are:
• To create a series of drawings/schematics of world costume garments so that students could recreate the garments, or use them as a starting point to design a more fashion-forward version.
• To develop an annotated bibliography of books related to the study of ethnic costume.
• To organize a visual database of costumes, from photos taken during my study, and various travel-study trips I have taken in past.

At this point, I have spent time in costume collections and/or costume libraries in Santa Fe, Chicago, San Miguel, Mexico, Toronto, and now Germany. I am so excited about what I am doing.

As I have lots and lots of United miles, I am lucky to be able to conduct research in Europe, so I am currently in Germany, and have just visited the Black Forest to view a major collection of pieces. I will talk about these in another entry in this blog. Tomorrow, I go to the Swarovski Crystal headquarters in Austria, and then on to visit a two women tailors/designers who creates traditional costume. I then head on down to Italy, where I will hunker down for some writing and reading research time.

I will share with you, interesting things I find, while doing my research.

Susan