Body Double

The diptych, consisting of the garments in Serial Killer and the short film Body Double, is a commentary on the psychological mechanisms involved in the type of consumption that enables the environmental catastrophe of textile waste.

The subconscious mental processes that come into play when the boundaries between our sense of self and the clothes we buy become diffused, are similar to the way in which one’s sense of identity and autonomy can be compromised by the confusion of one’s own identity with that of a romantic partner. Diego posits that this enmeshment, coupled with our loss of self and insatiable search for external validation, are what perpetuates the cycle of dissatisfaction and, it follows, compulsive consumption.

Body Double (8 min) playfully intertwines these aspects of our psyche, layering the same voice over script onto differing image sequences, aiming to use confusion in the viewer as a recourse to suggest this overlap.

Composed of a kimono top, tobi pants, and an extra-long scarf, Serial Killer was crafted using approximately 20 pieces of athletic uniforms and a velvet skirt. The use of uniforms underscores the irony inherent to fast fashion as a homogenizing phenomenon: the more we aim to distinguish ourselves from others through the identities commodified by fast fashion, the more we look like everyone else.

The largest single donation of garments received through the UNCOVERING Fashion project consisted of Maggie L. Walker athletic uniforms -a veritable mountain of non-degradable polyester. In treating this stigmatized textile as a precious material by coupling it with velvet -a fabric historically associated with luxury- as well as by employing painstaking patchwork and hand-stitching techniques, there is an attempt to call into question the connection between value and disposability.

The choice to incorporate uniforms from this iconic Richmond high school is also a love letter to a city that Diego only recently made her own, and that she feels has blessed and welcomed her in unsuspected ways.

As a whole, the diptych aims to invite viewers to acknowledge their responsibility as consumers in the environmental catastrophe and, by the same token, recognize how in our individual choices lies the collective power to effect change on a large scale. In a word: agency.

Body Double is part of an ongoing collection of genderless designs created from the doubling up and re-assembage of serialized garments. Serial Killer is part of Diego’s larger body of work involving documentary and experimental filmmaking. She enjoys working with multiple layers of meaning and within diverse mediums at the service of research centered on self-making practices at the intersection of fashion and politics.