Diana Jung Kim

By: dianajungkim

Apr 19 2010

Category: Fashion

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I found my poodle skirt! This was made very quickly for a 1950s themed party. I had to learn (and am still learning) to be ok with making things “good enough”. John Baldessari said, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing badly.” I did not understand this for a long time and vehemently disagreed with it. But while I don’t completely agree with the statement still, I understand it better now.

With my work, I have always tended towards obsessive perfectionism. This would mean I could only make a handful of works a year, which is impractical since I am going to make a living from my works. It is also cerebrally frustrating to have hundreds more good ideas than executed projects.

When a project is conceived as very large, it is often put off until one has “more time” to devote to the details. Usually “more time” never comes, and a project dies in conception. Then one ends up spending life dreaming greatly and doing little. To do something with less than ideal materials and conditions is still doing something, and there is value in the practice of doing actions beyond the armchair. Baldessari’s quote is declaring that imperfect action is more valuable than no action.

What value is that? For one, I’m going to find out if there is truth to the idea that “the more you do, the more you do”. All my less than ideal art projects might just be physical practice, making me more efficient, and also putting me in the habit of moving my hands every day without worrying about doing it wrong. Secondly, when I am at the end of my life and looking back, rather than sketchbooks of wonderful ideas that were never made, I’d like those sketchbooks to be accompanied by all the physical products that were attempted, made, and made well enough to serve their purpose. If I make hundreds of things, 10% of those are bound to be awesome. If I make a few dozen things, maybe only a couple handfuls will go down in the annals of history. Life will also be more fun when I’m wearing the things I made that are “good enough” rather than quietly pondering the amazing things I could have made instead, if I only I dedicated more time to it. But I socialize, I bake, I read; if I hope to have a real life and be an artist at the same time, I have to make more things without being paralyzed with overthinking. The masterpieces will come, guaranteed, and will flow out with less mental frustration, if my making is an automatic process unrestricted by something as banal as the availability of ideal materials.

So to initiate myself into the “good enough club”, I made this poodle skirt which only had to be serviceable for one party. This should not keep me from someday making a perfect poodle skirt for myself, but this is a good placeholder.

The black fabric is felt, which was chosen so that I would not have to finish any edges. The pattern is a half circle skirt, requiring only one seam. I believe authentic poodle skirts are a full circle, but a half circle was more economic and eliminated a seam. The waist needed a single stitch line along the edge to keep the waist from stretching during wear and to eliminate the need for a waistband. I used a centered zipper rather than my favored invisible zipper because it saved a lot of time. The poodle image was found by doing an image search on the internet for poodle skirts. When I found a poodle image I liked, I literally traced the outline on paper directly on the computer screen. I enlarged the outline with a hand drawn grid – old school. I feel more comfortable with my hands than a computer. 2 pieces of t-shirt fabric was fused together at crossgrains to make something thick enough to cut without curling.The poodle image as traced onto the fabric and cut and held down onto the skirt with glue. Glue. I almost never use glue, especially for fabric projects. I would much rather sew, for aesthetics and alterability, but time was not a luxury. The leash is cheap acrylic yarn. Glue would not hold it down, so now there’s visible glue marks on the skirt. No matter. The yarn is couched down with a machine zig-zag stitch. That’s it. Totally good enough for one party. And still cute enough to wear out after.