INTO THE WILD

My thesis started from a book I read over the summer named “Madness and Civilization” by Michel Foucault. The concept of my collection is about celebrating madness and allow abnormal to have a little freedom. I want to create a mysterious and dark atmosphere to portray madness from my perspective as well as creating these “villain like” characters. I focus on researching madness from characters in old horror gothic movies. I looked into movies such as Dracula, Bride of Frankenstein, The man who laughs, Sleepy Hollow, Jekyll and Hyde etc. Looking at the costumes and how these characters are presented in the movies, it’s interesting to see that the characters with insanity are often the villains or the bad guys in the story. In my opinion, villains usually come with great charms. Sometimes we are obsessed with the villains because they are fascinating. Different from how madness is restrained in reality, these characters are beyond norms as they are celebrating their madness and unusual, ignoring the rules of the society. They are usually portrayed with two-sides. The characters often have a very elegant and appropriate appearance while deep the other side is insane. they challenge the norms and let the madness free. In reality, we are afraid of people who do not follow the general rules as we regard them as a threat and scared of the abnormal. But looking back to the history, there were always a little madness involved if we want to make big changes to break the rules.