Grey Friars Installation Presentation

It was really nerve racking doing my first presentation in front of the OMCI Investments team. It is the first time I have had to present my work and ideas in a professional environment, as all my other presentation have been to my tutors and members of the class.

In the end it all went quite smoothly. The atmosphere was very informal, and relaxed and they asked lots of questions about my work, which I was able to answer. They seemed to really like my sample, but they thought it would look lovely hanging at a window like a decorative curtain,  rather than as an installation piece in the servants stairwell.

Georgians @ The Fashion Museum, Bath

Following the Grey Friars brief given to us by OMCI investments, it just so happened that I had planned a visit the next day to my parents in the Bath. The Grey Friars Building was built in 1755 during the Georgian period, and Bath is a very beautiful Georgian city, so it enabled me to make a good start on primary research for the module.

The Fashion Museum’s exhibition, Georgians, celebrates the museum’s situation in the Georgian Assembly Rooms in Bath. 

The exhibition includes original 18th century outfits from the museum’s collection - gowns made of colourful and richly patterned woven silks, as well as embroidered coats and waistcoats worn by Georgian gentlemen of fashion. 

also included are 18th century-inspired fashions by Anna Sui, Meadham Kirchhoff, Vivienne Westwood, Stephen Jones, and Alexander McQueen. All are influenced by the 18th century aesthetic, and all (in different ways) show how the elegance and grace of Georgian dress continues to inspire fashion today.

Diversity Now 2014 self evaluation

I was very excited when I heard the brief for this project, the lecture that Caryn Franklin gave at the beginning of the module was extremely inspiring and really helped to get the ball rolling on the project. As a size 18 myself I was really pleased that I would have the freedom to design a garment other than an industry standard size 10. 

I chose my friend Lesley as my muse because, I have always admired her style and the way she dresses. She is not afraid to wear something a bit quirky and individual, and sources most of her wardrobe from charity shops, car boot sales, eBay and vintage inspired online shops like Collectif. However, Lesley is 48, and a size 18, and the area that she has problems with when buying clothes is her stomach. For example if a dress fits her round the waist, it is often too big at the bust, and vise-versa. So the problem I had was to design a garment that would flatter her body shape. Because her measurements sat between a standard size 18 and 20, I would also have to do several fittings with Lesley to make sure that the dress was fitting in the all the right places whilst looking good on. I felt I chose a very good muse to work with closely, as she lives not to far from me, I was able to arrange fittings easily after the initial interview I had with her to base my research on.

Lesley’s love for 1940s and 50s fashion drove my initial research, but I need to design a garment with a shape that flattered Lesley. Because of her stomach area, I would have to draw attention to cinching in her smallest area, under her bust, to create the feminine silhouette so prevalent of the era. I decided to work on a 1940s inspired dress that was shaped by ruching fabric. It was a complicated design idea that would push my knowledge of modelling on a stand.

I really enjoyed using this method of construction in this module, as it gave me more freedom to experiment with draping as I went along, almost sculpting - but with fabric. Draping on the stand also helped me to ‘discover’ what the pattern of the dress was - from doing, rather than thinking technically how to draw it out. Using a bias cut helped to give the dress a better drape and provided a slight amount of stretch to a traditionally non-stretch fabric like tweed, which I was keen to use. After I was happy with position of the folds of fabric, I took this ‘draft pattern’ to Lesley’s to check for fit. I discovered that although the stand  was padded to Lesley’s measurements, her shape was slightly different to the stand, but I was able to make alterations to the draft whilst Lesley modelled it for me. I used fittings with Lesley several times over this module, and this helped me to develop my final garment into a dress that fitted Lesley well, so that she was comfortable, but that also flattered her figure.

Another issue I had to work around was Lesley’s eczema. Although she was keen for me to use tweed in the final design, tweed is traditionally made from wool, that can be itchy or irritating to the skin. I decided that I would need to fully line the dress in silk or cotton, to overcome the problem, although this would involve more work, but it would also give me an opportunity to learn a new skill, as I had never lined a garment before. After some research into tweed fabrics I eventually settled on a silk and wool mix tweed, it had a beautiful softness and a lot more drape than a traditional harris tweed, which worked well with my drapey dress design. Using a soft, fine, mustard coloured wool- mix suiting in a similar weight to the tweed,  helped to highlight the details of the dress with a contrasting flash of colour.

The illustrator class was a great addition to support the module, another new skill to practise and develop. I have learned how to draw out garment designs and create patterns to fill them with, but because my final collection was quite asymmetric and involved a lot of gathering, I spent a long time trying to recreate my garment design in illustrator at home, but it never looked very professional, I hope that I will be able to develop my skills in illustrator as I progress on the course, as I have done with photoshop. I therefore decided to draw my final collection line up and technical flats by hand, but used photoshop to add colour and texture to present them in a more professional way.

It was quite challenging to make a garment that fits someone in all the right places, compared to constructing a garment from standard size blocks and mannequins. Womens’ body shapes vary so much even within their own dress size bracket, and so it is important to learn how to design clothes to flatter those different shapes and make fashion easily accessible and enjoyable for everyone. As a size 18 myself, I strongly believe clothes should make women look amazing, no matter what their size or shape. After reading an article a couple of years ago about a student at Graduate Fashion Week that had won an award for their plus sized final collection, it made me start to think about whether it was something I should consider for my final collection. Although it would be more challenging than designing standard size 10 garments, I think the fashion industry needs to address the issue that size 10 is not the standard size of our nations women anymore, and as fashion students, and the next generation of designers, I 

think it is definitely something we should take heed of for the future.

Fashion & Textile Processes - module review

Because our year group is so big, we have been split into two groups; ours will be working on the construction element first, to design and make a toile of a womans' shirt; whilst the other group will be working on textile processes.

finished shirt toile

At this point I have finished my shirt and as with the construction support module, I have really enjoyed the process, but I feel it might have been better to design the shirt after doing the textiles processes, because I might have had a bit more time to decide which way I am going with my primary research in Colchester.

Because I finished making my shirt earlier than some, I have had time to start experimenting with pleating, an idea that came from the parallel lines of the Firstsite building in Colchester, but I hope that when I start the textiles workshops next week, I will begin to have a clearer idea of the look and feel of my final collection.

In the last couple of weeks I have been really inspired by Dior's 'new look' which I researched in my construction support module, and the late 1950's fashions featured in the BBC's 'The Hour'. I would like to try and use this as inspiration for my final collection in some way.

1950s Dior Wool Suit

Beth Rowley 'The Hour'

Fashion construction drawing

I found todays fashion drawing workshop with Val really helpful. Although I had to produce fashion illustrations for my projects last year, and had been given suggestions on ways I could do this, we never really had any formal workshop to help us.

I feel that I have made lots of good progress today and now feel a lot more confident in sketching out fashion designs. Last week I was worried that most of the pictures that I had taken wouldn't be suitable to aid me in designing garments. But it is amazing how collaging different architectural details onto a figure can inspire design ideas.

Walking Through Camulodunum

Our new studio module is called Camulodunum (The Roman name for Colchester). During the module we will design, cut and construct a shirt and explore knit, print, dye, embroidery and embellishment processes to be included on our shirt. Charlie and Val arranged for us to go on an historical walk around Colchester in order for us to draw inspiration from the architecture, landmarks, open spaces and people of the town in which we are studying.

I found the walk quite interesting as I don't live in Colchester and although I study there, I have only ever walked into town a handful of times, just to go to the shops. Although the walk and talk was mainly about the history of the town, we did manage to fit in a quick visit to Firstsite (Colchester's contemporary visual arts centre).

Originally I was hoping that I could use the mini project that we were asked to complete over the summer. After a trip to Mersea I was inspired by the fishing boats and nets, and you can see my visual research for this here. But although Mersea is in the district of Colchester it is not in Colchester town itself, and although I maybe able to loosely link it in with the project brief, my research is very much textile/knit lead and I can't see how I would be able to apply my ideas to a shirt. I think I need to talk about this more to Charlie and Val next monday.

In the meantime I will try and draw inspiration from the photos I took on our walk. I think that the straight lines and angles used in and around Firstsite could work really well in textile design and a fashion construction context e.g. pintucks and pleats.

Can I draw inspiration from the strong history of textile production in Colchester?

I am really drawn to the curly rococo architectural detailing that can be found around Colchester. Obviously, these could be easily be recreated in a textiles design, but I could also research the clothing fashion for the period, and try and include some historical construction details in the shirt.

   

Then of course there is the Ancient Roman history of Colchester to consider, but this doesn't really inspire me as much as my other ideas.

This was my favourite photo I took of the day, I saw the couple sitting on the bench in Castle Park and thought it looked quite romantic, although the picture I saw with my own eyes was in colour, the picture came out almost in silhouette. It reminds me very much of a Rob Ryan paper cut. It also came to me that the Park theme could also be linked in with the famous Colcestrian, Damon Albarn, and his song Parklife.