Concept boards

To collect imagery for a concept board I went to the library and looked at books about my two themes, Judaism/religion and sexuality, particularly female sexuality. 

I found a book about traditional Jewish costumes which I found really useful. It had a lot of images showing what Jewish people used to wear and specified what they wore for various ceremonies. I noticed that they wore clothes which covered their whole body, floor length robes, floor length dresses/skirts and loose trousers. I found this information useful as it gave me a starting point on different shapes and silhouettes for possible design ideas. 

For images on my second theme, sexuality, I looked mainly at books about lingerie and how it has changed throughout the years. This was useful because it also gave me ideas about silhouettes and also fabrics such as silks and lace. I also did a lot of reading about the psychology of sexuality and feminism. One book I read made an interesting point about how even though sex is often one of the most dominant of all our thoughts, it is such a taboo topic. I read a book called 'The Female Gaze' which was about how the media and society portrays women. A stereotypical woman is maternal, nurturing, graceful and submissive. Women are meant to attract men by how they look but should be overtly sexual or 'slutty'. These books were useful to me as they gave a contextual background to why women dress the way they do.

 Women often dress for men. They a often seen as objects to be looked at by men so men often influence women's clothing choices. After reading books about feminism it made me ink about what type of woman I want to dress. A woman who dresses for herself without thinking about what other people think, man or woman. Someone who embraces her femininity without wearing typically 'feminine' clothes. 

I briefly looked at some artwork by Egon Schiele because of the way that he depicts women in his work. I really like the colours in his work such as the deep purples, magentas and forest greens. Looking at his work has been useful as the could be an inspiration for a colour scheme.

 

Making these concept boards has been useful for me as it helped me gather some images and display them in an inspiring way which will I can refer to when developing my designs. If I get stuck for ideas I will always be able to go back to them for inspiration.