Design ideas

Design development, artefact
This week we have been focusing on developing the ideas for our fashion artefact. I found this quite hard, because I already knew what I wanted to do, to go back and think about the design and other possibilities made things more confusing.
I have decided to make a body cast, with a specific shape revealing part of the body. I have working on the exact shape to make my piece this week, by using a paper template and trying out the cast using paper Mache. This had given me a good idea about how I need to make the shape to make the best possible outcome.
I am going to try and decorate my paper Mache cast and see how it turns out, this will also help me to finalise what patterns and images I am going to have on my final piece.
I still have some photos to take for some research, I want to use strong emotions and have a specific stance and pose for each of them which are easily recognisable, and then I want to build these poses into my final image, and maybe look as though the image is telling a story or a journey of emotions.
I am also inspired by the work of Tim Walker, his photo’s are very fairytale like and they easily tell a story. I hope to try out different poses and use different props so that I get my image just right and it conveys they message that I want it to.
I want my Image to say;

DO NOT STEREOTYPE ME

WHO WE ARE, AND WHAT WE WANT TO BE

HOW THERE IS A MIX OF PEOPLE IN SOCIETY – BLAND

THE EMOTIONS AND ATTITUDES OF AN EMO


I have to find the best way and the best message to put across, and also consider what looks the best but does it convey the message, so there are quite a lot of things to think about.

At home

A week at home

This week we have had reading week, and I was quite looking forward to going home having a nice relax and catching up with some old friends. After the very busy and stressful previous term all I wanted to do was have some fun and have a good time, because I didn’t really get much of a chance to do much else in the past few weeks.

However, where I had not done a lot for our project fashion, art and culture, I felt the need to catch up and have actually spent most of the week doing that. I always feel the need to have everything done right away and I do not like to leave things that I know I will have to do in the next few weeks or days. Therefore, I got started on that, with my research and I feel that I have enough background research now. I looked into all the different subcultures, and found exciting visual images and pictures from each of them. I also found out about their attitudes, beliefs and value systems, and what makes their subculture what it is. I have chosen which subculture I am going to use for my piece and now just need to look at this more in depth and find out some new and interesting things about it.

I want to start taking my own photographs, using the word emotion as the title.
I want to learn about different people’s feelings and emotions and how this leads them to do different things and take different actions.

I want to use this information and put this into different shots in different stances to see what emotions are conveyed. I want to try taking some photos in the style of the EMO subculture. Using black and white images and having one section highlighted in colour. I think this is quite effective photography style and one that I may wish to use for my final photo.

Also this week I have started looking into what question I am going to use for my critical studies essay. When we first got the list of questions one really stood out to me as the one I wanted to do, but when I went back and looked over them there were about 2 or 3 possible questions.

I have now chosen the question, which relates fashion, clothing and gender. This has always been something that I have been interested in and I think having a personal interest will make this more approachable and will be a lot easier for me to write. I have started making some points on the sorts of topics that I want to write about and have started doing some research from different websites talking about the role of gender in fashion. I am hoping to start writing this essay in a couple of weeks, once the fashion art and culture project is really up and running and I can take my focus away from that. Hopefully it will only take a few days to write, so if I can gather all of the information that I want to use by two weeks time that should put me in a good position to finish writing that and have enough time to work on my other piece.

Final Line Up

Hand in!

The deadline.
This week was the deadline for our project, creative design practises. I am so glad that we have finally handed it in now. It was a real stress with that project because there was so much to do in such a short time. It was good though because it gave us a taste of what things would be like in industry and how fast paced things move at.
I felt that I have learnt a lot of new skills from doing this project, approaching things from a different angle and definitely having to use my organisational skills to get everything done on time.
The actual design development process was one that was new to me, having to think about how the garments you are designing would be constructed and what they would be made out of was quite hard to do at first, because I just wanted to design things that looked different and funky, but not think how, or if they could actually be made.
After a few design sheets it did get easier, I felt that I could think about the construction more and I found myself actually getting more ideas this way. One thing that I would change, is I would sample my ideas as soon as I had them, I felt that sometimes where I had so many ideas that I wanted to get down on the page at one time, I was leaving sampling to a bit later, meaning I could have just designed a whole range of garments and they may not even work or lay/hang in the way that I thought they would.
I think that in the future I would also like to do some of my sampling in the materials that I would use for my collection, Just to get a better idea o the fit and how they would be against the body. Using calico gave me a rough idea but I feel that the real materials would give a better outcome.
The final line up was something that I enjoyed doing and I am really pleased with how mine turned out. I had based my project on circles and had taken inspiration from board games, so I decided to include these themes into the layout and the title of my collection. I had the outfits in a semi circular shape, so they went around the page and not just across. I also cut my samples into circles to continue with the theme. I named my collection round-about, incorporating both the aspect of fun (which you get from board games) and the idea of things being in circular shapes.
When choosing what templates to use and how to dress them, I had to think really carefully, to make sure that they fitted with the shop that I was designing for and they were appropriate for the collection. I felt that I did this quite well, and that my collection would fit well into the shop.
I think overall the strongest parts of my project were the design development and the final line up. I wasn’t too happy with my research, I felt that in the short time that we had to do it, I had rushed things slightly and the presentation and images were not of the best standard. However overall I am satisfied with my project.
This week we also had to discuss our design proposal for Fashion, art and culture. I have decided to base my project on the subculture of EMO, and I want to explore the emotional and the dark side to this subculture. For my final piece I either want to make a body cast so that I can show how different people could transform and become part of this group, or an all body garment revealing parts of the skin, showing the difference between what makes us, and what we want to be.
I intend this week to carry on researching, into different photographers, artists and sculptors to see if I can find inspiration from their work. Also I will experiment with materials and other objects to see if I can gain other ideas from this as well.
I am looking forward to this project as there is a lot of freedom and we can pretty much be as creative as we want, so hopefully the end piece I will be pleased with.

Picking my outfits

Final line up
This week I have been working so hard to refine my designs for my project and figure out which are the best six outfits to use for my final line up.
I have chosen the three colours for my collection; Purple, Orange and a bold pink. I kept to a limited number of colours, as this fits with the theme of block colours, and also then there is more possibilities for different outfits within the range, and links everything together nicely.
To figure out my final line up, I went through all of the designs that I had done previously, and re drew all of the designs that I felt were the most successful and out them together on one page, so I could see which I felt went together, and which ones out of these were working the best.
I needed to make sure that my range had something for every occasion. Trousers, dress, skirt, jacket, top and vest, I felt that these items were necessary for a good varied range.
For my fabrics, I am using a cotton jersey, to give garments movement, and for evening wear I am using satin, to give a high class look but not for much money. I feel that these fabrics fit well with the brand that I am designing for, and I have seen the use of these materials in the topshop ranges before.
I have now picked the outfits for my final line up, and now just have to render it in a way that reflects the audience that I am designing for. I am trying to think of names for my collection, I want something to do with board games as where that is where my original inspiration came from, or something to do with circles, as also the garments all have a circular or rounded theme.
This week we also had our last lecture for fashion, art and culture before we start on research and designing our ideas.
Looking at all of the inventive products and designs from different designers has really inspired me, and I can now think of doing something really creative and out there.
I want to do something that shows revealing identity and belonging to part of a subculture, but then also showing the side of how society and subcultures all link together.
I think revealing identity, could be teamed with revealing the body, and I think that this idea could do something very interesting and will be really good if it turns out well.