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.