Livia Overton

Vanity Gambling is an exploration into overconsumption and the creation of an idealized image passively consumed by strangers on social media and dating apps. This collection is a means of displaying capitalistic fantasy through the lens of obsession, possession, and bondage. Inspired by the careful fabrication and silhouettes portrayed in Elizabethan portraiture, each look aims to inflict the feeling of haughtiness, unapproachability, and insincerity. 

This collection portrays fashion not as a product to obtain, but as a viable form of propaganda with which we cohabitate, fall prey to, and tame. Garments are conceived to interrupt routine, designed to upend the senses and alter interaction in the same ways that digital interaction can. Distorted proportions, exaggerated silhouettes, and tactile detailing evoke the sensory overload of addiction and the numbness that it drags alongside. Garments overwhelm the senses or seek to mute them entirely. Obsession becomes a tactile language, urging to restrain, to perfect, to fulfill the whims of an invisible voyeur. Let’s see what withdrawals are felt after giving up this addiction to vanity gambling."