Designing

Although i am more interested in the promotion side of the Fashion pathway i found the exercises in this workshop extremely helpful and insightful. I think that learning the process of designing garments can also heavily inspire the work of other arts.  An example of a task we were given was to draw as many sleeves, coats, skirts, trousers or collars as we could in 5 minutes using one shape [in my case a diamond], the idea was not to get too caught up on creating an actual garment but to be experimental with our drawings. At first i thought that none of my designs were good enough, but when refining them further into ones that i liked best i realised that by simply adding more and more detail to them, the better they looked. I was really happy with the small sketches i came up with at the end of that task [see right] and decided to draw them onto figures, sticking with my white on white theme. For the sketches i used white chalk and a strong pencil outline to accentuate the white appearance of the garments, i decided to also add hair and a fleshy tone to the figures so that the clothing stood out from the page. I think that the illustrations are a good example of what i tried to achieve and i think they all work really well, i attempted to use my shape as an inspiration to design the garments silhouette rather than the pattern.

Once i had finished the white illustrations i decided that it would be a good idea to experiment with some real samples of material, i tried to vary up the material as much as possible but i was limited due to colour and what materials i already had. The fist design shows a diamond shape dress made from felt, the idea of the dress' shape came from an origami structure i had previously made for another workshop during my foundation. The structure is a Chinese water balloon that has not yet been blown up. The second design shows a diamond shaped coat with the front undone and flowing outwards, the coat was made from paper and the skirt was made from fabric i had from a curtain sample. Design number three is an ambitious design made from stiff white lino, with a mesh interior, the skirt is made from the same material.