Personality Project: Day Seven

Today I continued with the work on the stand that I started to do last night. I wanted to create a shape/motif that represents the restrictions (trapped, holding in emotions) you feel when you're depressed. I came up with the idea of using bows/ties to represent a feeling of not being able to escape, like someone is sitting on your chest and won't get off. I also started ripping and shredding the fabric to represent self destruction. I also drew on the the fabric recreating the prints that I did based on Frida Kahlo. The rips and shreds portrayed vulnerability and how when you depressed you can feel yourself falling apart. I really love the how the bow idea has worked out and I want to continue using this motif and see how it could look on a much bigger scale. Although the rips had a rather deep meaning, I think aesthetically they look quite 'done before' and something that everyone has seen before so I don't think I'll be focusing on this too much.

Work on stand, I wanted to create something that represent the restrictions you feel when you're depressed. trapped, holding in emotions. Bows represent the trapped feel and feeling like you can't escape, like someone is sitting on your chest and won't get off. The rips represent self destruction, transferred frida prints onto stand work using marker pen. shreds, vulnerability, feeling yourself falling apart

Drew designs from these, put in colours that represent the words I'm using. Changed the placement of the bow/rip details, used them on different types of garments. coats, trousers, skirts, jumpers. Red represent pain, hurt, blood. Grey represents dullness, numbness, cold. turtleneck is trapped, suffocating.

Second party of the story, escapism through partying and clubbing. Idea of bra falling off. A party girl on a walk of shame, her clothes are falling off. Fun confetti/ glitter print. Represents a fun night gone wrong. She's a bit of a mess and has put her clothes on wrong. More work on the stand. Worked with the ideas of ties again but bigger, more extravagant to represent the hedonistic life she's living. The bows are untied to represent the freedom she's feeling but there's still something holding her back.

Personality Project: Day Six

Yesterday I was able to finalize all of my ideas so today I focused on moving these concepts into fashion. I started this by cutting out images relating to my themes and mixing them together create some really interesting and quirky garment shapes. I think this was successul and it was a quick and fairly simple way of mixing contrasting garments and themes in order to create a look that is completely new and exciting.

Inspired by these I drew some quick initial designs and then collaged my fabric samples into them to see how they could work together. This was successful because it helped to almost bring the designs to life and I immediately started to see how just from these few designs I could start to develop a collection.

I decided to look back at the research that I'd done on Frida Kahlo and the prints I'd created and started to think how I could use them in clothes. With the words torn, ripped and self destruction I made some more and cut them into sharp angular shapes. I then rearranged them onto a body, crumpled them and collage them with some fabrics. I really like these and I think to develop them more I need to do some work on the stand so I can see what actual shapes I could make with fabrics and how I would sew it.

At the beginning of this project, our tutors asked to write a story about our objects but I decided not to do that because I didn't really think it was relevant to me. At this time I felt that writing a short story could really help me to organize my thoughts. Although I have my themes clear I think it's interesting to tell a story with a collection with a clear beginning, middle and end. The story starts off sad, self destructive and depressing. The girl in the story turns the drugs, alcohol and partying to get away from this sadness, they were her way of escaping. In the end she starts to accept herself, and believe in herself. She's hopeful and is no longer scared.

I really like the story that I came up with and it's almost a metaphor for how I feel the last few years of my life have been. I think it has given me a focus for not only what I want my clothes to look like but also what I want the say and what I want people to think they see the clothes.

Next I looked through my fabric swatches and put them together in three groups to represent the three parts of the story. I thought about what their colours, textures and feel represented for me and how they related to the different emotions and thoughts i want each garment to portray. this was really useful for me because it forced me to think about what my clothes could actually look like. Doing this helped me turn my concept/story into and fully thought out idea for a collection

With the first part of my story in mind I did some work on the stand and took photos of which I will print off and design from tomorrow at uni. 

Personality Project: Day Five

On Saturday I went fabric shopping but since I'd only really started the project a day ago, I had no clue what kinds of fabrics I wanted. Since it's a personality project, I decided to focus on just getting fabrics that I like and speak to me. I thought about if I was a fabric, what would it look like; maybe a bit quirky, a little loud, different, slightly girly but with and edge. I also new I wanted some sweat shirt material which could relate to tracksuits which is basically the uniform of grime artists and also something sparkly which for me represents the distractions that people seek through escapism.

I'm really happy with the fabrics that I found as they suited my themes even more than I expected them to. One that I really liked was a grey sweatshirt material (grime, tracksuits) with a glitter overlay which represent the partying, fun and also relates to Cyndi Lauper's extravagant outfits. Surprisingly, this was a very successful trip considering I had no idea what type of garments I was planning on making. I feel quite inspired by the fabrics and I think they will influence my designs almost as much as my research/themes.

Later that day I did more research on Frida Kahlo. I like to get to know each theme rather than just taking it for face value so I looked into the meanings of her paintings especially some of her lesser known ones which represent the sadness she continually felt throughout her life due to her many illnesses and miscarriages. I can relate to depression a lot and found out that she was a heavy drinker and took drugs to get away from it. I think it's important to put some of the sadness into this collection to contrast the excitement of the club scene that I'm also looking at and I think it give my concept more depth. I wrote words around the paintings which I felt when I looked at them and also words that I think Frida may have felt when painting them such as anger and self destruction. Inspired by these words and the colours in the paintings I created a series of mark makings which could create some interesting prints for the garments.

A couple of years ago I bought a Cyndi Lauper CD called 'A Night to Remember'. At the time I was quite depressed and I don't know what it was but whenever I listened to this CD it just made me feel so much happier. After looking at the way other people I escape, I thought about how Cyndi was, and still is, my way of escaping. I made a concept board about her, especially focusing on the clothing she wore. I've always said that if I grew up in the 80s I would've dressed exactly like her. Although all of the objects relate to me I definitely think the Cyndi Lauper CD is the most personal to me so this was really important for me to find a way of incorporating it into this collection. I'm going to use Cyndi's free spirit and and no fucks given kind of attitude as my inspiration for the type of woman I would want to wear my clothes.

I feel that today was a very successful day because it helped me to finalize my themes and ideas and also find a way to bring the different objects together. I feel like I have collected enough imagery and developed them enough to start designing some clothes in the next day or two.

Personality Project Day Four

On Saturday I went into uni and printed all of the research I'd found. I made mood boards, picked out quotes I liked, made notes from articles I'd read and using my favourite started to create a colour story. I felt it was important to pick out certain images, colours, words and phrases that can immediately help me define the mood and feeling of this collection, especially since I only have 6 days to do this. Afterwards I decided to look at each of the images individually.

I started with the Grime music. I felt it was important to actually listen to the music, especially the people who are credited with creating it, Roll Deep, so while reading some of their interviews I listened to some of their early music. I also wrote words and themes that I felt the music was trying to get across such as anger, crime, estates and outsiders. I think the words that I wrote were really good starting points for more research so using them I looked into them individually. To move these themes into something more visual, I created some collages which expressed the idea about how many grime artists use their music as a way of connecting with friends but also as a way of escaping from the gangs, anger and crimes which was common in the areas they lived in.

I continued to look at escapism and began to think about how people use all kinds of music to escape, especially at parties and clubs. I did some research on the ways people choose to escape; television, drinking, drugs etc. I really like this idea of escaping because I think it's something that everyone does in their life at some point. It also links nicely with the 1920s paris theme as many parisians went to burlesque shows and speak-easies to forget about WW1. Escapism is a way of being free and for a few moments being able to forget about your worries and stress.

Using this overarching theme of escapism, I made more collages for each of my individual themes. I think this was successful because it helped me turn my fairly conceptual theme into a visual aid which I can then develop from and use as inspiration for my initial designs.

I also did some more focused research on Isamaya Ffrench. Her make up often more art based, and creating interesting looks rather than making a girl look pretty. She uses colours, shapes and embellishment which I think could heavily inspire my colour story. One of her looks that has particularly inspired me is where she covered a girls face in glitter. It reminded me of a photo-shoot I was looking which told the story of girls night out and there was glitter and sparkle everywhere. I like to think about textiles, pattern and colour whilst designing as I think the fabrication is extremely important. Using the glitter as inspiration I developed several prints changing the colour combinations, shapes and layout. I want to focus mainly on garment shape and construction so I don't think I will have time to develop these prints as much as I'd like, but I really love the colours that I used and think these will help inform which fabric samples I get.

Personality Project: Day Three

The book that I read about the exhibition at the barbican had a lot of photos of artists in their studios. I think look into the place someone lives or work is one of the best ways to learn about a person because whether they mean to or not everyone collects objects and we keep most of them in the places we spend the most time. Not just the things we own but also how we present them says a lot about us. Last night I took photos of my room and the many collections I own, including magazines, clothes, teddy bears and fabric. I did this because although I spend a lot of time in my room, I never really noticed how many collections I have and I think this says a lot about me. I unconsciously hoard all of these items and it's become such a habit I don't even notice that I'm doing it anymore. I would love to take photos of other people's room and see how they present the things they own and what this says about them. I think how we present them actually says a lot more about people than the actually objects we have.

Then I wrote words around the photos which described how these photos say about me. I did this to help turn these photos into a more conceptual idea, words such as unorganized, cluttered and chaotic. I want to then use these words and respond to them making fabric samples or with particular fabrics or patterns that I think represent them. I wasn't sure how I was going to use all of these ideas and turn them into a final collection. Usually it's good to not have an exact idea about what the final outcome will look like but as it's quite a short project I'm a little worried about where I'm going with this project.

I decided to go back to the beginning of my research and realized that I hadn't done any research into the photo of the speak easy in paris so I did some research on Paris in the 1920s.

By the time I got home and had thought over my project and where I was going with it I realized that I really had no idea where I was going with it and to be honest I wasn't even enjoying it anymore. So I decided to start over, got a new sketchbook and chose new objects.

I chose a post card of frida kahlo, a photo from a concert that I went to last year, a cyndi lauper cd, a photo of makeup by makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench and a photo of Josephine Baker. That night I did loads of on these themes, on the interenet, read some books I have and looked through magazines. By the end of the night I felt really confident about the research I'd done so far and I felt really happy that I decided to change the direction of my project.

Personality Project: Day Two

I did some research on how other designers, artists and photographers have approached the idea of collections and claustrophobia. I decided to do some responses to their work as a way of quickly developing ideas that weren't necessarily fashion focused but I could later use to inspire my initial development.

The first artist I looked at was Jim Golden. He takes photos of collections, normally mundane objects and lays them out in a fairly simple way. He relies on the amount of objects usually shown in one photo to make them interesting. I responded to his work by doing my own photo shoot of random things I had in my pocket and the bottom of my bag. I did this because I think it's interesting how everyone has little collections of things that they keep with them, usually without even knowing. For me claustrophobia is about space, or lack of it, and chaos. I used the same 15 or so items in each of the three photos I took and changed the spacing and how they were organized. I think they created some really interesting photos which portray what I was trying to say about how space and the way objects are organized can completely change the way we see them. I think this was really successful but could be made even better if I was able to do this on an even larger scale. To relate it to fashion I want to use objects like buttons, zips, poppers or just have loads of one detail like ruffles, pleats, collars etc.

Next I looked at a collection by Comme des Garcons which was all about monsters and clothes taking over the body. As a response I did a photo shoot where my friend started off with just one layer of clothing and after each photo we added another layer. By the end she looked completely overwhelmed by loads of clothes, I would have loved to keep adding but we'd run out of clothes to use and I could tell she was becoming uncomfortable. I really love how this turned out, I can imagine a garment that is only one piece but looks like its made from loads of layers and different items of clothing. I think there are a lot of ways I could develop this and will probably do some collages to help generate more ideas from this idea of how things can overwhelm a body.