Dare to Wear: Glass Dresses by Diana Dias-Leão

Diana Dias-Leão' exhibition is display of beautiful but deadly garments. Featuring 14 glass dresses and two barbed wire corsets, the display demonstrates Diana Dias-Leão’s glass making skills and her experience of working in the fashion industry.
Not made for practical wear, this collection of couture sculpture is designed to create discussion and debate about issues around beauty and body image. The artist believes that anorexia, bulimia, self harm and body dysmorphic disorder are connected with issues relating to image and lack of confidence.
Through this collection of inspirational dresses Diana wants to convey the message that: “Even though the image is glittering, it is the person inside who is priceless.”- Walker Art Gallery


I visited this exhibition today and thought it would be a good source of inspiration and research for my own work. Although the garments are very aesthetically pleasing I feel some of them didn't quite hit the mark on what they aim to say. Diana is obviously very talented in glass and creating garments and creates the pieces using body casts in plaster then applying the glass to them. Most of the dresses I found a little too kitsch and pretty to convey the message they are intended to. The message is supposed to portray to young women that although the dresses are beautiful its whats inside that counts. While viewing the dresses I didn't read this message clearly at all until I heard the artist in her own words say it. 


One of the dresses conveyed this message alot better than the others, the grafifty dress which contained phrases such as "Sequins were orginally flat gold used to display wealth" and how "light reflective surfaces used to be belived to ward off evil". out of all the garments this one was much more an art piece rather than a garment to me. One of the other dresses appeared tosimply be cotton with sequined, beaded detailing, It was not as brutal looking as some of the sharp glass pieces. It looked perfectly comfortable to wear, which to me bypassed the message which is that although the dresses are beautiful, to wear them would be painful and uncomfortable. 

The exhibition was also not in the greatest space...tucked away in a dark room at the far end of a gallery full of history pots, and ornaments, hardly to be noticed and could barely be described as "on display". Perhaps thats just me being overly critical though. 

Also The hangers look as if they were cast in plaster, I quite liked the look of it, I doubt I have time to do that though. I feel that if I use the hangers in there usual shop-bought state its going to be distracting.


I need to really think about it.