As a costume designer I am always in the act of observation. My proposal for the Rome Prize would entail an engagement with the theater of the everyday. Taking a clue from the photographers August Sander, Irving Penn, and Albrecht Tübke, I would like to engage with the streets of Rome as a catalog of personalities as seen through the specificity of sartorial choice (fashion/style), necessity (uniform/occupation), or cultural trends (Italian tradition/immigrant populations). By observing and documenting the diversity of contemporary Romans I hope to see how “type” can be both celebrated, disassembled, and recontextualized. I will compile my findings with photography, materials, found objects, and interviews. This exposure would add to my ever-evolving lexicon of dress as a way to open up my work to alternative perspectives of telling new stories and reinterpreting old ones.