{"id":73741,"date":"2020-08-07T09:20:38","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T13:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/?p=73741"},"modified":"2022-08-02T14:04:12","modified_gmt":"2022-08-02T18:04:12","slug":"bostonia-feature-designing-women","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/news\/articles\/2020\/bostonia-feature-designing-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Bostonia feature: Designing Women"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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August 7, 2020<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
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\"Amber<\/em><\/p>\n

Amber Vittoria creates illustrations for brands like Marc Jacobs and Adidas that challenge beauty standards<\/strong><\/p>\n

This article was originally published in Bostonia<\/a> and CFA magazine<\/a>. Written by Mara Sassoon. Illustrations by Amber Vittoria.
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Amber Vittoria is dissatisfied with the way women\u2019s bodies are often portrayed in the media\u2014airbrushed, photoshopped, hairless, held to an unrealistic standard. So, the illustrator has channeled those frustrations into her artwork, crafting colorful, abstracted depictions of women that go against the beauty ideals promoted in advertising and on screen. In her illustrations, women\u2019s contorted limbs stretch the limits of a composition, folding into themselves, threatening to burst out of the space they occupy: their bodies are covered in a smattering of technicolor hair, their arms and thighs undulate.\u00a0Vittoria (CFA\u201912)<\/a>, who has collaborated with brands like Adidas, Snapchat, and Gucci and has had her work grace the pages of the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Teen Vogue<\/em>, was recently named to the\u00a0Forbes<\/em>\u00a030 Under 30: Art & Style 2020 list<\/a>. She highlights\u2014celebrates even\u2014what the mainstream media tries to mask.<\/p>\n

Relatable Art<\/h3>\n

For a while, Vittoria was part of that media agenda. Soon after graduating from the College of Fine Art\u2019s graphic design program, she\u2019d landed a job as a web designer for Victoria\u2019s Secret. Part of her role involved editing images, she says, and she quickly became disillusioned.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved everyone I worked with, but retouching images of a very specific type of woman, and not being able to relate to that type of woman, was pretty tough on my self-esteem,\u201d she says. Around this time, she also started to notice the problematic depictions of women she\u2019d see in artwork at museums and galleries\u2014it doesn\u2019t help that \u201ca lot of these painted and sculpted women were painted and sculpted by men.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vittoria quit her job and spent a few years working in a digital advertising agency and as an in-house digital designer for Avon, building up her client list as she did freelance illustrations on the side. In late 2017, she decided to freelance full-time. She was determined, she says, to make work that she and other women could relate to.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important that I\u2019m able to approach every piece from a place of vulnerability, but also from a place of joy. I make sure that while I\u2019m making a piece, I\u2019m having fun, while trying to tell an authentic story,\u201d says Vittoria. \u201cEven if the final output is more abstracted, or very colorful or very bold, I hope the essence of the piece is something that is honest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the full article<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amber Vittoria (CFA\u201912), recently named to Forbes 30 Under 30: Art & Style 2020 list, has built her art around celebrating women\u2019s bodies and highlighting what the mainstream media and airbrushed, hairless beauty standards work to mask. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6270,"featured_media":73743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[],"bu-publication":[192],"magazine-article-category":[],"magazine-topic":[],"news-article-category":[309],"news-topic":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/73741"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/73741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88783,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/73741\/revisions\/88783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73741"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=73741"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-article-category?post=73741"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-topic?post=73741"},{"taxonomy":"news-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-article-category?post=73741"},{"taxonomy":"news-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-topic?post=73741"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=73741"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=73741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}