Fashion Design Research @ Fashion & Textiles Museum

Yesterday evening I attended a lecture at the Fashion & Textiles Museum. It was based around Ezinma Mbonu's new book, Fashion Design Research, and she was joined by four other speakers: Erika Trotzig, Christine Yai, Tom Pike and Gemma March, who discussed how they began their research for a collection, and how they prefer to carry out and present their research.

Because it was almost like an informal discussion, it was interesting to learn that they all had different ways that they preferred to work, but there where common points that kept cropping up, that they were all in agreement with.

• Inspiration can come from both a positive or a negative reaction you have to something. Quite often, if you question why you don't like something it can lead onto other things - making you more curious. Curiosity is key to researching, as it draws out ideas different to what you already know.

• Research can never be too broad, but it is important to edit your research down into what will be relevant to your final collection. Think of your work like a funnel shape - with the research at the widest point and the final outcome at the narrowest point.  Sort your collated inspirational imagery, text, sketches, objects, etc. into key areas of shape, mood, colour, texture/fabrics, etc. onto a pin board. Anything left that doesn't quite fit should go (even if you love it - you can file it away to use in a different project).

• From your research, you should have some initial ideas, but to generate more design ideas it is important to keep going back to your research and analyse it. Also look back on what you have done particularly well in past projects and question how you can evolve it. Research isn't separate to your design process, you need to keep going back to it and question it, draw from it, experiment with it. Discuss you ideas with tutors and peers, and make a note of the dialogue.

• Dealing with a creative block: Do something different - take a walk, listen to music, talk to a stranger, go to the library and pick out random books, listen to the news.

When working this year, I will definitely make good use of my pinboard in the visual spider diagram way that was recommended in the talk. Be able to move the images and text about will help me to keep making connections and continue to edit my inspirations and research. Having the board in front of me all the time will help me to keep analysing my research and refer back to it during my design process. I must remember to take regular photos of my inboard too, to record the progression of my work and so I can look back on the changes I have made along the way.

Warner Archive Textiles Fair

Last year, I had a great day at the Textile Fair run by The Warner Textile Archive in Braintree, and I was not disappointed this year either!

Not only do they have lots of traders with stalls selling fabrics, textiles, yarn, and books. But they always have a good selection of free talks from experts in their field. I attended all of them and a free store tour (Inside the archive itself).

The talks included:  

The production of Burnished Indigo in minority south-west China - Martin Conlan

Batik from Java - Diane Gaffney

Textile Conservation in Practise - May Berkouwer

WW1: Fashion in Conflict - Katy Conover

I made some great contacts. May Berkouwer has invited me to visit her lab/studio in Sudbury during June, Katy Conover has given me her email address and has offered to help me with my dissertation and I also introduced myself to the Archive's Archivist, Katy Wigley, who I am in talks with to hopefully get some work experience at the archive itself. All in all, a productive day - and right on my doorstep!

Dissertation Preperation

Our lecture today was aimed at preparing us for our 3rd year dissertation. Interestingly, the advice we were given in the lecture from Dr Jeremy Spencer (delivered to the yr 2 art students as a whole), differed somewhat from the advice given in our seminar (delivered to our yr 2 fashion and textiles class afterwards).

Dr Spencer was keen to advise that our dissertation is meant to be an argument and that we need to write with a purpose, and that the title should always pose a problem that your dissertation should solve. There was also some really good tips about dissertation structure.

In our seminar Jackie gave us some good tips too. The difference between an essay and a dissertation,  where to get ideas for deciding on what your dissertation will be based on, and how to make a start.

She was keen to emphasis that we should write about something that we love and are passionate about, and that it doesn't necessarily have to pose a problem.

I know that the 3rd year will be really hard work next year, and I will struggle to balance my uni work with my family life. So I MUST use this summer - not just for internships and work experience, and giving my house a much needed sort out - but write the 1st draft of my dissertation, collate a decent sketchbook of work for my pre-collection and have done a few experimental toiles. This way, I can start the new term on a role.

I have a few ideas mingling around in my head about what my dissertation might be about, but nothing firm in mind. It will very likely be about historical clothing, and I am more interested in working class women and the making of textiles and clothes. For example, I often pick up hand made vintage aprons and pinnys at car boot sales, and they all sit in a suitcase under my bed. When I look at them, I wonder about the woman who made and wore it, there is something evocative about them to me. This might be a good social and cultural thing to look into and I could probably look at it from a feminist angle too.

Lee Lapthorne Lecture

Lee Lapthorne was our guest speaker today. I first met Lee in Yr 0 of this course, when he tutored us for two studio modules.  So it was really interesting to learn in more depth about his career and the invaluable advise he had to pass on.

Lee Lapthorne's Print Designs

Lee has an MA with distinction in Textiles, has his own range of high-end scarves and bow ties, and has produced hundreds of catwalk shows for Britain's biggest design talent including Zandra Rhodes,  Jasper Conran, Peter Pillotto and Gareth Pugh with his company Doll. He has also launched an independent international platform that bridges the gap between on and off schedule designers: On|Off


Some of the key advice that Lee gave us was:

• Focus on what you, as a designer, are good at - it is good to have a knowledge of all things, but you must be a master of one.  He gave us some examples of designers that have built their name up slowly, but had staying power, as they did one particular garment especially well. Christopher Raeburn is known for his parka jackets, Palmer Harding for their cotton shirts.
• Costing and target customer - If you are going to make a scarf that will have to retail at £400+ to cover the cost of materials and labour, you need to consider what sort of customer will be able to afford to spend that much, and then market your product towards them.
• Branding & Marketing - Lee sited the young british design J W Anderson's website as a good example of branding for his target audience.
• The importance of persistence and serendipity - Lee spent a long time ringing and emailing large companies, and sending the examples and images of his designs. But because he also wore his designs to meetings, often industry key figures noticed them and asked them where he got them from. He was finally motivated to launch his scarf collection when a Selfridge's member of staff asked where they could by his scarves.

Lee's lecture has really made me consider what sort of person I want to be designing for, how I can brand my 'label' and the importance of wearing my own work. This will really help me when considering the direction I will take in my 3rd Year.

The Voice of fashion & Textiles

It is often implied that fashion is a conspiracy to distract women from more important issues such as politics and society, therefore confining females to a more inferior social order than males. This suggests that fashion is frivolous and unimportant. What this opinion fails to recognise, is the the important role that fashion has to play in social an cultural order.

I while back I watched an interesting programme on channel 4 with Greyson Perry called In the Best Possible Taste . It explored the 'taste' of the different social classes in Britain and how they dressed and decorated their homes 'spoke' and betrayed their social status. Similarly, I found the book Watching the English by, anthropologist, Kate Fox very interesting. It explores the behaviour of the English and identifies the 'tell signs' of social class not only through behaviour and language, but through what a person chooses to buy or wear or drive.

What we wear says so much about us before we even open our mouths to speak our views or believes, quiet often someone has already formed an opinion of us. For this reason fashion has often led cultural change. From the 1920s 'flapper' to 1990s 'rapper'. Sub-cultural groups have often made a point of moving away from mainstream fashion and trying to dress differently- to identify themselves as different from the mainstream society, only for their style to be copied by followers, and then, ironically, by the mainstream fashion.

We also dress for different occasions, it is widely accepted in the UK that you would wear a suit to an interview, particularly if you are a man, or something smart if you are a woman. If you are attending a funeral, it is usual to wear black, and if you were attending a wedding as a guest, it would be a faux-pas to wear white. However, these codes of fashion are different depending on what country or culture you are from. In india, a bride would wear red traditionally, and white is the colour for mourning.

Fashion is not only important socially, but politically too. Josiah Wedgewood designed an anti-slavery medallion that could be worn as a pendant or ring, or set into a snuff box.  "At length the taste for wearing them became general, and thus fashion…was seen for once in the honourable office of promoting the cause of justice and, humanity and freedom" Thomas Clarkson, founder of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Wedgewood had exploited fashion as vehicle for political change.

The turbulent century: Social cultural and political change 1920-1990

1900-10: 

Education Welfare, Suffragettes formed in 1903, social status, liberal party, labour party formed, Selfridges founded in 1909, Charles Frederick Worth, Paul Poiret, Bloomsbury Group founded in 1910.

1910-20: 

Titanic 1912,women’s role in society in terms of work and vote, Coco Chanel, clothes became more practical, WW1, Land girls army, Cars and Planes, 1910 sewing machine invented.

1920-30: 

Jazz music, alcohol, cigarettes, Art Deco, Dada, Surrealism, Women given the vote, Flapper girls, women working, 

1930-40: 

First Televisions in homes, Wall street crash, Holiday camps, WW2, Women working in mens roles.

1940-50:

WW2 ends, NHS, Rock and Roll, Austerity Olympic games in Britain.

1950-60: 

Festival of Britain, Queen Elizabeth II, The Cold War, Beatniks, 

1960-70: 

The Beatles, England wins World Cup, Mini-Skirt, Swinging London.

1970-80: 

3-day working week, Vietnam, Thatcher, Andy Warhol, Flares, Free-love, Missoni

1980-90: 

Gay rights, Fall of Berlin Wall, Falklands, Live Aid, Power suits, Club culture

1990-2000: 

Death of Princess Diana, Spice Girls, Designer Logos, Internet, Mobile phones for the masses.

Fashion & Feminism

2013 seemed to be the year of new feminism, so called The fourth wave, with  Laura Bates, 27, and Her Everyday Sexism Project,  Caroline Criado-Perez, 29, leading the campaign for women to feature on bank notes,  the No more page 3 petition, and students began banning summer hit 'Blurred Lines' on many UK campuses - to name just a few campaigns.

Up until 2012, I didn't really think all that much about feminism, but reading Caitlin Moran's 'How to be a Woman' change that.


“These days, however, I am much calmer - since I realised that it’s technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism, you wouldn’t be allowed to have a debate on women’s place in society. You’d be too busy giving birth on the kitchen floor - biting down on a wooden spoon, so as not to disturb the men’s card game - before going back to quick-liming the dunny. This is why those female columnists in the Daily Mail - giving daily wail against feminism - amuse me. They paid you £1,600 for that, dear, I think. And I bet it’s going in your bank account, and not your husband’s. The more women argue loudly, against feminism, the more they both prove it exists and that they enjoy its hard-won privileges.” 
― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman


The Telegraph article, Is Fashion a feminist issue, after all?, discusses that with feminism getting a new 'makeover' this year, is it time that we stopped excusing the fashion industry for glamourising the portrayal of exploitation women and girls?

"So here we are, in an artificially sweaty swamp where S&M is viewed as fashion styling, and "porn-chic" has seeped so far into mainstream culture that tiny girls wear high heels and halter necks and hoards of teenagers go out in clothes that used to be the preserve of prostitutes. It's fashion, isn't it? Ergo, it can't be pornographic.

The really whacked-out aspect of all this is that often the women promoting these images - the editors, the model and photographer agents, the show producers - dress like nuns."

- Lisa Armstrong, Is Fashion a feminist issue, after all?

As the mother of a 10 year-old girl, I am acutely aware of the negative portrayal of women across the media spectrum: 

music videos, celeb mags, fashion adverts/shoots, newspapers, the rise of free internet porn, it's starting to get really scary, It's like we have regressed a half century. Is there any wonder that some young men have such little respect for women, and some young women have little more respect for themselves?  Long live the fourth wave as far as I'm concerned, lets make feminism the new fashion.

Fashion & Psychoanalysis

Another difficult subject tackled in this weeks lecture was psychoanalysis in relation to visual culture. A therapy invented by Sigmund Freud, who believed that people could be cured of their anxiety and depression by revealing their unconscious thoughts, which are suppressed within our dreams and fantasies, and blocked by a natural defence mechanism of the brain.

An even more complicated sub category of this theory is the Oedipus Complex, a highly controversial theory which analyses the sexual desire that a boy might have for his mother read here for a better explanation than I can give!

It also suggests that although men are attracted to women, they also feel threatened by women. This is why the portrayal of women in the media tends to lean towards the idea of women as objects of desire for the male gaze.

Fashion advertisements often use the female form in a submissive way, the woman is attractive, but not threatening as discussed in this article featuring D&G's controversial 2007 ad-campaign.

Craft in Fashion

“Craft has never been more important than now, as an antidote to mass production and as a practice in which the very time it takes to produce an object becomes part of its value in a world that often moves too fast.”

Caroline Roux, Acting editor, Crafts magazine

When I visited the Valentino exhibition last year my favourite part of the exhibition was downstairs, where you could look in detail at samples of the different construction techniques used to create certain elements of Valentino's dresses. The workers in the atelier sew everything by hand, spending hundreds of hours on a single piece. So many hours, so many women and they never use a sewing machine, they hand sew everything. Apparently the women were bought  a sewing machine once and it sat in a corner, unused!

Fashion is often seen as frivolous, and with the fast and cheap fashion that is on offer to consumers today, it is easy to forget the huge amount of work that often goes into the couture collections  that march down the runways at the fashion weeks.

The article 'Craft Works' in Vogue, Oct '13, highlights the astonishing amount of work that goes in to producing individual detailing on the garments designed by the likes of Vuitton, Bottega Veneta and Erdem.

Vuitton F/W '13-'14- feathers trimmed with 

scissors and hand-sewn onto tulle 

image via www.vogue.it

Botegga Veneta F/W '13-'14 - Silk and wool 

bonded onto day dress to create watercolour-like patterns

image via www.style.com

Erdem F/W '13-'14 - Window pane tweed woven with neon PVC 

and ostrich feathers attached to thread narrow enough to go

 through a loom.

image via www.style.com

I am 'guilty' myself of buying cheap fashion, and I believe there is a place for it, as I think that fashion should be accessible for all walks, not just the elite. However, I do place great importance on craft in fashion - luxurious fabrics and beautiful artisanal details elevate a garment into the realms of a piece of art, not just to treasure but to showcase on oneself.

Semiology

The first lecture of the year 2 has raised it's ugly head and as set the tone for the year ahead - complicated! It was quite a lot to deal with on the first day back, and quite a lot of it went over my head, but I think the main things that I came out of with was this:

Semiotics is the study of signs, A sign is a recognisable combination of a signifier with a particular signified.  

•  signified: the concept a tree
•  signifier: the sound or spoken word 'tree'

• All things have a symbolic meaning - things or images are the signs.
• Culture is the giving and taking of meaning between people - people create meanings.
• Words change between languages and cultures, but concepts remain the same.
• The meaning of a word is dependent on the word being in a system. e.g. traffic lights: Red means stop in a set of traffic lights, but only because it is in a system next to amber and green - it only means stop when in this system. Out of this system the meaning disappears.

Following the lecture, we were able to put this theory into practise in relation to fashion. In groups we had to deconstruct the a fashion magazine advert featuring a white shirt, each group had a different ad, and the task was to identify what connotations the advert was trying to project to the reader about the shirt/brand through both subtle or overt signs used in the advert, including: written text, pose of model, surroundings. It was surprising how different the connotations were, for the same item of clothing - a white shirt, a classic wardrobe staple.

Critical & contextual presentation preparation

Next wednesday we have to present to the class our findings from our research for our chosen essay question, focusing on one or two particular artists of designers to use as an example. My problem is that during my research on 'How is the role of the designer different to the role of the artist' I keep being directed towards ideas that would work better with another essay question that we have been offered to use: 'Is fashion an art? Why has it been increasingly viewed as such in the postmodern art world?'. So it was helpful to get some feedback from Gill today, she said that although I have already submitted my synopsis for the artist/designer question, I could still change the essay question at this point.

I now face the prospect of researching and creating a powerpoint presentation on the new essay in under a week (along with all the rest of my work!). Luckily, like I mentioned before my original research has turned up a number of articles that relate to the 'is fashion an art? question. I just need to relate it to the postmodern art world in some way. I have a number of designers in mind to base the presentation on, including Elsa Schiaparelli, Hussein Chayalan, Vivian Westwood and Alexander McQueen, but will narrow it down to one after some further research.

Art and aesthetics in fashion society

Fashion and art seem closer together than at anytime before. The arguments against fashion as an art is that the fashion industry is inseparable from commerce, and in contrast, art is a principle ruled by a non-commercial spirit.

Of course fashion is commercial, especially at the lower end of the scale. It is not about creating something beautiful, money no-object, but about sales and profits. But has the art world not become commercialised too? Art licensing has become a multi million pound industry, if you walk into a museum gift shop, how many products or gifts can you buy featuring a reproduction of your favourite piece from the latest exhibition?

Andy Warhol Mug

In contrast, what is the difference between one of Alexander McQueen's 2007 'Real Flower Dress' and Damien Hirst's use of live butterflies in his exhibition at the Tate Modern last year, titled: 'In and Out of Love'?

An English country garden-style dress, 

made entirely of fresh flowers, 

from the Alexander McQueen S/S '07 collection.

 Butterflies feasting on fruit 

as part of Damien Hirst's work 'In and Out of Love'. 

Fashion has increasingly become the focus of many museum exhibitions in recent years. In may 2012, the Met's exhibition 'Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations' even focused directly on the argument of 'Is fashion art?' between the two fashion designers.

The 'Schiaparelli And Prada: Impossible Conversations' 

at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Art must hang! Must art hang?

This lecture discussed the way that artists and curators display art, and how displaying art has changed over history from the first cave paintings on a vertical wall, to the walls of a museum gallery, to temporary works of art outside in the open air.

It was interesting to learn about the role of a curator. Funnily enough, the word curator was first used in english to describe people in charge of a lunatic asylum! Today we understand the word 'curator' describes the role of a person who decides how to display collections in museums and galleries. Actually, if you think about it, a curator is a kind of artist - how they decide to display work will give meaning.

I was reminded of the artist Peter Blake and an exhibition, featuring his collections of objects from childhood, I saw at the Holborne Museum in Bath in 2011, called 'A Museum for Myself'. He uses the method of curation in his work as an artist.

Elvis Shrine No.1, Peter Blake, 2001

It is also interesting to look at the role of curation in fashion. The way clothes are displayed for the consumer in high street shops are entirely different from the way that displayed in high end designer stores.

a customers photo of the inside of a Primark Store 

 the inside of the Prada store in Paris

Art and Politics

Modern art alined itself with socialism. at the time, socialism was thought to be a higher form of capitalism where an individual could better themselves, leaving behind our animal existance and freedom. Art and socialism lived together and shared the struggle. The revolutionary avant-gardes wanted to bring art and life together, but to Trotsky (a russian marxist) that would be to lose a political weapon. Art was not just about politics but art could transform the viewer from being passive to being a producer of meaning.

'Am I not a man and a brother' 

Josiah Wedgewood Medallion

Via here

This reminded me of something my dad told me about recently. In the eighteenth century Josiah Wedgewood designed and manufactured a ceramic medallion to spread the politic message to abolish slavery and to encourage people to share their ideals with others. It depicted a shackled slave on his knees, inscribed with "Am I not a man and a brother" and on the reverse " Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them".

The medallions were very popular during the period and they actually became a real fashion statement. Ladies would have the medallion mounted into a bracelet or wore them as hat pins and pendants. The image was also printed on plates and boxes and other pieces. It seems a little unexpected that something quite so frivolous as jewellery could carry such an important political message. But Wedgewood had the foresight to use fashion to promote the cause of abolishing slavery and creating equal rights for enslaved people, in the same way as art is used to highlight political messages. (source)

Photography and Painting

Yesterday we had a lecture titled 'An odd relationship: Photography, painting, the problem of originality and the life and death of mediums.' I found it quite difficult to follow, but I got some small bits of knowledge from it:

The invention of photography changed the purpose of paintings. Painters began to move away from recording in a realistic style, and became more self expressive. Then photography became not just a method of recording things, but an art form with focus on composition of the image. e.g. light and shade, shapes, conceptuality and artists style. So photography influence painters at the time, but painting also inspired the way photography was used.

Also, with the invention of photography came the problem of originality, because although an original painting can be reproduced as a print, it cannot be reproduced as an exact copy in its painted form. Whereas a photograph can be reproduced as an exact copy again and again from the original negative. 

Fashion & Modernity

Charles Pierre Baudelaire is credited with coining the term "modernity" (modernité) to describe the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban setting, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.  Fashion is therefore an excellent way to track the progress of modernity in our society - Modernity is a code and fashion is its emblem. Looking back at the fashion of a particular modern era, we can see the political and social values of the time.

For example, the 1920s was the age of modern travel. New inventions such as the automobile, motorcycles and the aeroplane influenced the fashion at the time. Elsa Schiaparelli designed flying clothes for women. We also associate the 1920s with the 'flapper' dress, a loose, drop waisted, short dress, named after the young liberated woman who wore the style. The constraints held over women in the Victorian era were disappearing, now they smoked and drank and wore their hair in a very short style, blurring the once strong line between femininity and masculinity.

1920s advertising poster

The question is which fashion designers would we think as 'modern' today? I think it would be designers that are using hi-tech, cutting edge technology. Mary Katrantzou is famous for using digital print in her designs, and Hussein Chayalan is always ahead of the game with his LED and convertible dresses.

Mary Katrantzou  S/S '13

Hussein Chayalan, LED Dress

The Avant Garde

The revolutionary avant-garde art movements of the early 20th Century were: Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism and Constructivism. Although they celebrated different ideas, they all had similar ways of working and had the same political aim - to destroy autonomous art, so it could become part of everyday life again. Artists moved into design in order to bring art to the masses. They turned their hand to fashion & textile design, graphic design and product design. They also collaborated with designers of the period, for example, Salvador Dali worked in collaboration with the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli on many pieces. Sonia Delaunay, Stepanova and Popova were all female avant-garde artists-turned prolific print & fashion designers of the period.

  Beachwear,  Sonia Delaunay, 1927

      Textile Design, Stepanova, 1924        

                   

Dress, Popova, 1924

'Avant-garde' was originally a french military term meaning 'advanced guard', referring to a troupe of highly skilled and specialised soldiers, sent out to scout and survey a field before the whole army advanced. So the term was used to describe the above art movements, owing to their forward thinking, experimental and extreme ways of exploring art.

Some fashion designers that I might describe as avant-garde today would be: Alexander McQueen, Gareth Pugh, Jean Paul Gaultier, Viktor & Rolf and Thiery Mugler. For me, their iconic 'avante-garde' pieces are something that the average woman of today would generally not wear. Mainly due to their impractical shapes and revealing parts of the body that is normally perceived and inappropriate even in  today's western society. Although the work of the original avant-garde designers look quite wearable by today' standards, during the period that they were designed, they must have been exciting, daring and revolutionary. The loose fitting, drop waisted dresses in bright geometric prints would have been a shocking contrast to the tight waisted corsets and full skirts of the Victorian era, and the new beachwear showed a lot more flesh than Victorian fashion ever permitted. Which begs the question - will we find today's avant-garde fashions wearable in 80 years time?

Gareth Pugh, A/W, '11-'12

  Thiery Mugler, 1995