Create Healing

Edited by Ruby Phan

Participated with Narith (Alex) Vuy, Bianca Criscuolo and Katrina (Kat) Cherk

Clothing is a fundamental part of human communication, as one’s choice of clothing can reflect important aspects of one’s identity. Traditional fashion therapy services typically only focus on the individual’s experience wearing certain clothing, however, Create Healing not only focuses on the effect of wearing the garments but also the psychological effect of making them.

Create Healing attempts to personalize the teaching of garment-making skills to each participant, and in doing so, provide them with the space to find empowerment through the tactical aspects of making in hopes of allowing them to feel control over their creative and emotional expression.

Create Healing Project Archive

I found recreational therapy, like art and fashion therapy, become an effective way for people struggling to speak openly about their mental illnesses and cope with them. Create Healing was created for my fashion system thesis project. This system was developed into a fashion therapy service that empowered and enabled people living with mental health concerns to cope with it through clothing.

Create Healing was developed through my own research with 3 test pilot participants and outside sources. This was first inspired by an experiment on SoulPancake, a Youtube channel, that was in collaboration with Pamela Hayes, an art therapist, on whether art therapy can heal the soul. This was further developed by researching the practice of Youh Jung, an art therapist. She provided a lot of free online resources of different art therapy activities through her youtube videos, online blog, and podcasts. I was able to incorporate both SoulPancake and Jung's exercises into this project. An interview with Dr. Dawn Karen, a fashion psychologist, was then conducted to understand her practice. Simultaneously, she did a psychological analysis on some of the garments that my participants hold dear. Her insights, book and youtube videos helped back up my practice in this project.

Create Healing was test-piloted with three different participants: Bianca Criscuolo, Katrina (Kat) Cherk, and Narith (Alex) Vuy. Below are videos of their individual Create Healing experiences and explore their respective journeys.

Participant Bianca's Journey

Edited by Ruby Phan