Sketchbook contents.

Using these to complete my critical appraisal. Here are some of the pages in my sketchbook for this project.
Realistically would’ve liked to share them earlier but here they are now!

To be updated.

Nearly there.

Literally nearly there and I’ve decided to make one more dress – it somewhat resembles bubbles but it’s actually sourced from a previous photo below that shows a bowl shaped hemisphere glass which is hollow inside with a hole at the bottom.
Here are sketches of the described item;

and here is the image I cut circles from – a page in my sketchbook however I found the shape related to the glass pieces more so I took on that direction.

i did some further toiling and created a really simple response to this dress – if I had more time perhaps I’d cover the whole thing with circles, but I find it rather effective as it is.

Sadly at the time I had no model so I had to fulfill the task of modeling this myself, which was slightly awkward.

A shoot by the sea. {& Bits and Bobs}

In the convenience of going to Bournemouth with a friend for their interview – I thought it’d be great to have an opportunity to take some photos with such a fantastic and stunning expanse. And Bournemouth did not disappoint.
The weather was generally quite mild but later on it rained – we managed to accumulate many shots before the weather became terrible however so things weren’t so bad. I really wanted the shoot to be done in natural lighting somewhere uncluttered and tranquil – there was no place better than the beach on a quiet day.
At this point I’ve also managed to construct my two El Anatsui influenced final pieces. Copper-piece-plated trousers and a top to compliment.
The trousers are done in a harem style – after I traced around some old ones and the top is just a fairly simple T-shirt with the copper plates sewn on.
I also decided to reshoot the dress hoping that the wind would do something for the trail – or just the general background would improve previous shots.
I really liked these. Shot on a Canon DSLR.

& Here the trousers are in it’s making process.

Apologies for low quality – this is was shot on a mobile phone camera.

& Here they are at the beach; {The completed top & trousers}

Detailed close up shots;

The Final Countdown.

As the head of Art Foundation so humourously put it – it is indeed the final countdown and in the final weeks we should be completing our final outcomes and compiling our sketchbooks – to date I have one initial research sketchbook – one developmental sketchbook and around 10 pieces of A1 works – excluding life drawing. In all full honesty my work has been rather scattered due to my repeated fear of confronting tutors for tutorials but I’m hoping in my final outcomes sketchbook I can tie everything into my final outcomes – explaining how I got there, when and where. Ofcourse there’s also the aid of the critical appraisal which is due next week.

Here’s a quick summary of what’s been happening – I attempted to make the skirt and this was a success and a full afternoon spent n the metal workshop allowed me to make a metal corset, at first I’d desired to simply mould and hammer the metal around the mannequin, but after being told that that’d be far too difficult to do I was offered an option of using strips. I took on this advice and instead made a layered metal corset which reminded me somewhat of Dolce & Gabanna’s Metal corset/dress and Giorgio Armani’s logo. Hmm!
The corset itself was difficult to keep on the model as it didn’t flex as much as I’d assumed it to – meaning I had to return to metal workshop and ask for extra pieces of metal to be attached to the corset – and after doing this, the corset managed to stay on the model much better.
Conducting photoshoots has to be one of my favourite perks of doing fashion and so I went scouting for a suitable area – there was a garage door which caught my eye, but further exploring lead to a church which had equally appealing qualities due to it’s architectural structure – which didn’t interfere with my outfit but rather complimented it with it’s geometrical shapes and dusted history colour.

Here is the full desired outcome – it should work somewhat like this at the final show. Aluminum corset & pleated blue skirt was made by me, everything else is models own. The blue skirt was actually influenced by the indents of a certain glass shard, I found this interesting and so I drew the shard, photocopied it and started folding into the crevices which created a pleated effect – I saw this working really well as a pleated skirt feature so I explored this and the outcome was as above. I was also really torn as to having the skirt maxi or mini, but maxi provided the volume needed to emphasize the pleats where as mini gave the skirt freedom and more volume up top.
In the end I stuck with maxi.

At this point I had neglected the copper plates but I had other ideas in mind for that piece.

FMP – Finishing touches.

{Note : I made the Lady GaGa-resque glass glasses by myself with smashed glass and a pair of sunglasses from primark – I don’t consider this to be part of my original work – just an accessory for fun.}

It’s the final two weeks of my foundation course and it’d be the biggest understatement of  my life if I said things were hectic. I’ve began seriously toiling and considering some final outcomes accompanied by sketches and I’ve been developing my work – working with a lot of metal-imitation media or actual metal itself. My fascination right now is with copper plates and that could is quite heavily influenced my El Anatsui {Also one of my contextual artists} and his use of recycled litter i.e. coke cans, bottle caps, metal packaging and such and he created a tapestry type installation that I saw in the Metropolitan Museum of New York.

For this – likewise in the previous post – I’ve attempted to create the copper covered leotard fully. However when I attempted this I found the shoulder pad an increasingly difficult feature to deploy, the fabric drape would be too heavy and simply drag down or ruin the structure – so I began sticking to more simple methods – I created the leotard with the sleeves and then I want to continue to add copper plates – gradually covering the whole of the garment.

Here is the made and finished stitched product being modeled by a fellow fashion student.

 

Front view of the long-side-sleeved-leotard.

Black jersey happens to drape incredibly well.

And here’s my latest idea –

 

Front

 

Side

Close up of the pleating at the back.

With the avant garde skirt I plan to make a metal corset.

The skirt is pleated accordingly to a pattern I found in the creveces of a cracked glass shard – it was clearly smashed however there were interesting patterns that streaked through it’s side and I copied – traced and developped this for the this skirt piece.I only need the metal corset to match and that will be one of my main outcomes. The metal corset will be quite heavily influenced by Dolce & Gabbana’s metal corsets collection also, and initial sketches of various items in my initial research sketchbook.

Final Major Project – ‘Lustre’

After an early January trip to New York – which was also the research week of my 10 week project, also known as the final major project of this course, I settled on the theme of ‘Lustre’ – before making this my final idea I considered other topic names such as ‘lights’ or ‘Reflective Surfaces’ my other choice would’ve been ‘magnitude’ but I settled for ‘Lustre’.

 

‘Lustre’ came from the wave of inspiration that I felt standing on top of the empire state building. The city was lit up and looked like a path of stars trailing across the floor. It was stunning. I wanted to translate this into my own fashion project but little did I know how difficult it would be.
In my statement of intent, I clearly noted that I wanted to create fashion that included shine but I wanted to use unconventional materials in hopes that I’d be able to make something quite eccentric {isn’t that what fashion’s clearly all about?}

So I began looking at things that possessed obvious ‘Lustre’ such as glass and mirrors and metals, but mostly glass – I began finding the cracked contours of it really interesting so looked into that. As for the rest of the items – it’s an assortment of household items that were reflective and shone in some way. As my work developed I got really interested in metals and started basing my project around that.
I looked at the shapes that my initial sketches formed and tried to translate that into a silhouette for a garment.

As the weeks flew by I began toiling . . .



I will upload more sketchbook work & sewing ideas later.
This is just to get my blogging hiatus off the ground.
I’ve been rather negligent I know – But for the final few weeks I’ll jam my very slow beginning of this project into a full episode.

Worry not & wish me luck.

Watch this space!
x

Deadlines.

It has finally arrived – deadline week and tensions run high as every student is in a deathly rush to finish their work and prepare for assessment. I for one am particularly anxious.

I’m trying desperately to fill my A3 sketchbook with just drawings of the installation I made with fellow students but I am struggling entirely. My tutor told me I’d totally dismissed  development work and jumped straight to outcomes – I’m a bit lost generally but I have UCAS to deal with as well. It’s piling on so fast and DMU didn’t lie when they said that it’d all be over in the blink of an eye – this doesn’t seem like half a year at all. I’ll have to soldier through with what I’ve got – I badly want to pass this assessment but how am I supposed to know what to do when the tutors don’t have the time to tell me what I need to do?

Obviously I didn’t expect to be spoon fed throughout the course since the course leader did stress that students have to be very self-motivated, and independent. Nonetheless I must continue to approach tutors when they’re available and just produce work like a machine meanwhile.

 

This is considered a final outcome . {I’m meant to produce 9 more of these sheets in 4 days!}

On the upside – for my last workshop I was able to try out printed textiles and I found it really good! I see myself using it in the future to aid the final major project.
{ If I get there! }

And just some messing around – I wonder if this will go towards anything though.

Life drawing continues as per –

And let’s see if I’m still alive next week!

staying indoors .

Despite my best efforts, snowy days, cold outdoors, hot drinks and watching snowfall is hindering my progress on coursework. I understand that it’s all shame and blame but it’s days like these where I’m perfectly happy to stay tucked under my duvet and do close to nothing.

Having said that I have been doing my best to stay productive, general sketchbooking and attempting to generate A1 sheets and all of what is expected of me for this project.
Personally I find thinking of ideas to develop then use on A1 paper most difficult. I’m fairly decent with my sketchbook work but when making something much bigger and elaborate, I think I struggle somewhat.
Perhaps I’m picky with the outcome, fear of experimenting, or just plain lazy.

On the flip side, I do enjoy putting together contextual studies {in a most geeky manner} perhaps because it reminds me of folder work back at A level. I do after all pride myself on presentation, I hate to consider myself style over substance but sometimes that may just be the case.  My creative process starts of kind of scattered.

My room often suffers the brunt of my creative hurricanes. {I’m a very messy person.}

Maybe one day this wall will be filled with magazines. After all I need a bit of inspiration, one day I’ll be among those, who eat fashion, sleep fashion and breathe fashion. My involvement begins small, but dreams are fueled by aspirations, and aspirations are completed, one small step at a time.
Someone remind me to stay focussed and motivated next week.

Thanks.

give us a toile ! / Ma Ke`s WUYONG.

Finally being able to do something fashion-related made me very happy. Our tutors lead us to a room for a brief lesson on toiling, {Though this was all I did during A levels!} However, there was a twist – and that was that we were only allowed to toile with shirts/T-shirts that we bought in. In using what was already there, the seams, stitching detail and such we were asked to create a completely new way of wearing that garment, at first by just draping and pinning on mannequin, then eventually starting to cut the garment and experimenting with more new ways of using that garment. The aim of this project was primarily considering possibilities of recycling – which is actually quite a large issue with the world.I could argue that recycling is a whole new form of art itself – In giving something that was old and unwanted – a new use, we are helping the world, towards a greener future, and giving purpose to useless things – addressing a deeper issue at hand.

Reflecting upon this, I recently continued my contextual studies with a fashion designer named Ma Ke.
Ma Ke is a fashion designer, based in China who created a line named “Wu Yong” directly translated meaning worthless/useless. And the aim of this collection was to present a series of clothing that was created purely from unused materials at home, such as bedsheets and curtains.  This collection was described as ‘Political’ in a sense since it targeted the way the world wasted perfectly re-usable materials and this itself is slowly snowballing into a much larger issue, as the human population are creating more waste than the world is capable of disposing in the time given.

I personally loved the fact that Ma Ke created fashion for purposes outside of aesthetics, the line is actually very powerful and it is this kind of fashion that sits on the line that separates art, fashion and politics.
In my response to this, I created a neckpiece of pleats and ruffles out of old calico and a dress that I hardly wore anymore. I found myself a stunning model {KuriPurii} and conducted my own reflection of Ma Ke’s work.
The backgrounds are photoshopped and I wanted to send the same message as her line did – the “abandoned fashion”. In which there is a deeper meaning and hidden beauty. I was quite pleased with the outcomes and think that they responded appropriately.

The contextual study I did for Ma Ke is here.

Credits;

Model : KuriPurii
Images Used : one, two, three