The Gentlemen's Blouse is a reimagined menswear shirt transformed into a sculptural blouse. Made entirely from recycled dress shirts, this piece explores intellectual elegance through restraint, clarity, and purposeful reinvention.
Men’s dress shirts are one of the most commonly donated items at the Salvation Army. They receive such a large volume that many never make it to the sales floor. This abundance highlights how quickly everyday garments move through the cycle of use and disposal.
How might we make use of the overwhelming surplus of men’s dress shirts in thrift stores in a way that brings new value and meaning to overlooked materials?
These sketches represent my early exploration of silhouettes, construction lines, and collar variations for the Gentlemen’s Blouse. Each concept studies different ways of engaging with classic menswear elements, seams, plackets, collars, and shoulder treatments, while keeping the proportions cropped and structured. Working through these variations helped me clarify which details felt essential to the final direction and how to express a balance of structure, simplicity, and intentional design.
For this project, I drafted the entire pattern from scratch using my own measurements. Building the garment from a blank block taught me how to shape fit, control ease, and translate body dimensions into clean, intentional pattern pieces.
