Fashion construction - Hand in

I finally handed in my first module for this year today! Before this fashion construction module I had attended two pattern cutting sessions in Yr 0 (my foundation year), but I didn't have a lot of confidence in my abilities in pattern cutting and construction. However, fashion construction is a skill that I am really keen to master, and so I made every effort to attend 100% of the studio sessions, so as not to fall behind.

One really important thing that I have learnt, is that whilst I am learning new skills, it helps to document each step I make in the studio with note taking and photos, which I then type up at home. Although this slows me down initially, it provides me with a reminder of how I did a particular step, as construction can be complicated and can turn out wrong if done in the wrong order. Not only can I refer back to my own notes and instructions at a later date, but the process of note taking and then re-typing helps me to commit the stages to memory, therefore benefitting my independent learning.

Having a young child I find it difficult to manage my study time at home, so my attendance during the studio sessions is really important to me. If I missed one, I know I would quickly fall behind and struggle to catch up. Also because I attended all of the studio sessions, I was able to explore and record all the techniques and processes taught on this module which I will be able to refer to throughout my course.

I really enjoy the neatness of pattern cutting and construction. I prefer to be slower, accurate and methodical, and get it right first time. When I rush things I quite often make mistakes which take more time to go back and fix. I think my finished shift dress toile reflects the time and effort I took over it.

One of my favourite parts of this module was researching historical designers and some of the beautiful garments that they designed and created. I am particularly enthused in how design elements such as interesting pockets, collars, cuffs and fastenings can make a garment look really special. I have been a bit of a Pinterest addict for a while know, but now I have boards for these specific construction details which I will continue to add to after this module is finished. Combining and adapting these design elements will provide a wealth of inspiration for my own designs throughout this course. I think that owing to the research I did on these design elements, I was able to design a shift dress that was relatively simple to make, but included some interesting construction details.

 pleated and piped collar

pleated piped peplum with pockets into waist seam 

*EDIT*  25/1/13:  I received a grade of 70% overall for this module which is classed as a 1st!

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

Fashion Week Group Presentations

One word to some up our group presentations - embarrassing!

the week before last we watched the presentations for Milan and New York, and last week it was our turn with London and the other group who did Paris. All of the groups had a t least 2-3 people within their group who where absent on presentation day, and some people had had trouble logging into their Pebblepad account to upload their work so they had to use a word document to support their presentation.

I think that most people find giving presentations incredibly nerve racking and embarrassing, but I think that was made worse as none of the groups had got together to practise their presentations, and it showed.

I think because we had all just met each other and our teams where selected at random, we all held back a bit, I know I did. I volunteered as a 'team leader' with Becky because nobody else wanted to do it, but I did not want to start the term bossing everyone around and telling them what to do. As the oldest student on our course, a mother, an ex-learning support assistant and a generally bossy person, I know I can be prone to playing mother duck. But I didn't want to rub anyone up the wrong way at the start of our next three years together, as I know that first impressions can stick.  I set up a Facebook group to help our group to communicate outside of uni, but nobody really used it, including myself. So as a team leader I failed miserably.

Having said that, I believe that the research that I carried out and the work that I uploaded onto Pebblepad was of a good standard. I read through several different show reports and websites for information on each designer's collection, and used this as well as my own opinion on each collection to form my webfolio page. I also picked images that illustrated some specific pieces in the collection that I wrote about, so I was able to point these out to the audience during the presentation. I also researched and uploaded the Overview page for London Fashion Week. I made notes to refer to during my presentation, rather than just reading off of the webfolio page, and made an effort to make eye contact with the audience. Owing to the feedback I received, I believe this helped to make my presentation more engaging to the audience.

I think that doing a group project together at the start of the term is a good way to get us all to interact and mix as a group, and I think that is achievable within the structure of the teaching environment. But after all the initial flurry of work and good intentions, and because we knew that it wouldn't be formally assessed, for a lot of students it got placed on the back-burner and forgotten about until d-day approached, and by then it was too late.

Photoshop workshop

I am so glad that managed to attend the Photoshop sessions with Tim, the new skills I have learnt have been invaluable. I have used Photoshop before and have a basic understanding of how it works, but the skills I had leant up until now have been 'self taught' with tutorials on the internet and general fiddling about until I get the results that I am after.

Now I can do thing that I could't do before and have got faster at things that used to take me ages beforehand. I now know the proper way to add my textile designs to illustrations and can create a pattern repeat from my scanned in samples, alter there colour and change there scale. I have also learnt how to create a displacement map (a way to make your print follow the curves and folds of a garment).

One of my samples, scanned in and turned into a repeat pattern

Using Photoshop is such a fantastic skill to learn, not only does it open up lots of possibilities for illustration and digital print design, but is almost an essential requirement for most jobs in the fashion and textiles industry. I need to continue to practise these new skills that I have learnt on a regular basis, so I don't forget them.

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)

Hollywood, Valentino and mulled wine

So glad I went on our college trip! We managed to squeeze in a visit to Hollywood Costume at the V&A and Valentino: Master of Couture at Somerset House, as well as a seasonal shopping trip around Covent Garden.

Hollywood Costume was absolutely heaving with people. Around each exhibit, literary shoulder to shoulder two to three people deep, which spoilt it for me quite honestly. I did try and read everything and look at everything, but I have come back and can't recall anything that I found particularly interesting or exciting.


It was the Valentino exhibition that really made the trip worth while. The techniques involved in making the dresses are amazing. After walking down the 'catwalk' where his dresses are displayed, you go down stairs and can look at samples of the different construction techniques used to create certain elements of the 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 Mr Giammetti bought them a machine once and it sat in a corner, unused!

Although, as with the Hollywood costume exhibition, there was no photography permitted, there is a virtual museum you can access online, and the free booklet that supports the exhibit, has a useful glossary in the back with definitions of the relevant terms and the names of construction techniques, which is useful to keep on file for reference. 

Such an amazing exhibition, I came out of it feel in enthused and excited about fashion construction, definitely worth a visit!

This short 3-part film is an interesting insight of how the curators of the exhibition decided on how to display Valentino's work.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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

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 - module review

I'm halfway into my fashion construction support module and really enjoying it. I am starting to feel a lot more confident with basic pattern cutting, and I am really getting to grips with using the industrial sewing machines and overlockers. I now know how to create my own patterns with the use of basic cardboard blocks and by modelling on the stand (dress-makers mannequin).

modelling on the stand

I have particularly enjoyed researching historical couturiers and have found their designs, especially the tailoring, really inspiring. What I want to be working towards now is to be able to put all these design ideas, that keeping popping into my head, into practise. I will try to do this by drawing a collection of shift dresses, working on my technical drawing, and choosing a final design that I will draft a pattern for and construct.

Madame Gres

Dior

Balmain

My tutor is pleased with my progress so far, saying that I have a "Conscientious file evidencing a good level of skills in cutting and making" and "Excellent attendance". There is a small amount of annotation that I need to add to my technical file, but otherwise I am up to date!