Student Art: Wearable Art

I love assigning wearable art projects!  It's a great way to get students to think about both form and function in their construction of a piece.  It can't just be visually interesting, it also needs to function in a very specific way.

For this project, students drew an adjective from a hat.  They were then tasked with creating a wearable "headdress" that illustrated, without words, their adjective.  I specifically used the word "headdress" instead of "hat" to get students to think beyond the basic.  This was also a good opportunity to explore examples of wearable art across a variety of time periods and cultures.

The culmination of this project was a fashion show.  Students were told not to share their word with anyone else in the class.  During the fashion show, they tried to guess each others words.  Students were graded on their ability to effectively communicate the word as well as on the function and wearability of their piece.  

Binary.  Paper mache, paint, makeup, thread, ribbon.


This artist chose to work with a mask structure, and she spent hours molding the paper mache to a glass mannequin head to get the right form.  I like that she chose to deal with race issues in her interpretation of binary.


Capricious.  Cardboard, fabric, clay.

I like that this piece took on a life outside the realm of hats.  It was about two feet tall and when worn on the artist’s head, it was simultaneously sinister and funny, representing the word capricious perfectly.

Modest.  Paper mache, paper towels, wire.

This student went through a lot of ideas in her sketchbook before coming to this representation of modest.  The use of brown, recycled paper towels formed the exterior of the hat.  I like that she chose to keep one side open and to include a paper towel flower as a way to play with the opposite of modesty.


Romantic.  Wire, crochet, plaster, satin.

For this artist, the word romantic made her think of romantic novels of the Elizabethan and Victorian eras.  She did research on women’s hats and chose this shape as the basis for a crocheted hat.  The brim is made of wire covered in satin with a small veil, and the red flowers were made from plaster.