Structure and Attachment | Final Garment

Final Garment

[Model - Shalom]

Structure and Attachment | Final Thought

As a final thought, after looking back through my gallery sketchbook, I noticed I had been to two 'Wool' exhibitions in the past month and a bit, and I enjoyed the knitwear workshop so much that I have decided to incorporate knitwear into my final garment. Both exhibitions were extremely inspiring in terms of textile, but I hadn't previously thought of incorporating.

As well as this initial thought, I decided that the coat looked interesting worn both back and front at the front, however if the large teardrop hole was worn at the front, layers would need to be added. This is how I am hoping to incorporate my knitted layer. From my illustrations, this idea can actually be seen worked into a leggin/stocking style, the layered 'honeycomb' effect, which is softer than just a plain knit. It will hopefully help bulk out the coat and keep its structure strong.

As this is a last minute risk, I hope it adds texture and interest against the harsh look of the structured leather. I will not 'officially' include it as part of the garment, but instead as an accessory. Luckily I have a large piece of red knit I have previously made as originally I thought I would make my garment out of knit. This is a great way to link in my interest in knit into this project, and will hopefully improve my skills in knitwear and improve my final garment as a whole.

Structure and Attachment | Final Garment, The Making

The making of my actual final proved to be quite stressful, I encountered many problems with my fabric, unfortunately as it was a heavy fabric it was really difficult to work with. This ended up breaking 4 needles on my sewing machine, and many trial runs. In hindsight, I should have bought two fabrics and done test-run's on both to see which worked better.

The fabric's thickness first became an issue when attaching the sleeves, after my previous mishap on my toile of attaching the sleeve inside-out, I was extra careful with my final. The sewing machine took a few attempts at getting through the fabric, and I started to get really frustrated. Because of this, and due to my decreasing needle's I decided to step back from the making and focus on other parts of the project to collect myself.

My main issue was with how heavy the neck was, once the fastenings are added this hopefully shouldn't be such an issue. Originally I designed the coat to have over-sized buttons, but after going back through my designs I thought that dainty would work better. The design is so structured and unfitted that I felt it needed something smaller and more feminine to pull it together as a conceptual womenswear piece. After the fabric dilemma, I decided on buying two fastenings so that I could chose which one I wanted, hooks and eyes or lace up with embroidery thread.

- without the Shoulder piece or fastenings

I made a few examples of what the shoulder piece could look like out of my fabric, and played around holding them against the basic frame of my final garment. As the fabric was too thick I couldn't actually pin them onto it which was annoying, but instead I used tailors chalk and marked out where they could go. This worked well, and was an easy way around the fabric problem. 

Despite all the problems I encountered during the making, I actually have really enjoyed making something that is completely my own, with my own chosen fabric. I am so excited to shoot this piece. I don't want anything complicated for the shoot of this, as I feel it's interesting enough to hold it's own. Any inspiration will be taken from my previous shoot, this will include the make up and the hair. I don't want any props and I want the backdrop to be stark and white. Taking Horst into consideration, I hope the final images are structured and bold, with clear lines and interesting negative spaces.

Structure and Attachment | The Toile

As previously mentioned, my pattern cutting knowledge is severely lacking, so I sought help from Declan, a previous Ravensbourne Student who also had a Btec in Pattern Making. I showed Declan my final designs and he helped me create them onto pattern cutting paper. I was really worried about the actual making of the garment so Declan's help was extremely useful and took a huge stress off. In future, I really hope to be able to pattern cut to his standard as he was so talented and a great inspiration to me.

I decided to make a toile first so that I could make sure I liked everything and that it was how I had envisioned it. 

My first challenge was the sleeves, as inspired by a kimono they had to be oversized, but to relate to structure the calico wasn't strong enough so I had to starch it. Although I knew I would be using a stronger fabric than calico, the starch gave me a better idea of how the fabric would hold against the body and more of a feel of what it would look like. My next immediate challenge was attaching the sleeves to the body. I had no idea how to do this, so it was quite a lot of trial and error. Fortunately I worked it out and attached both sleeves, but in my stress I accidentally didn't turn one sleeve the right side out so the seam showed. Through making a mistake like this, it taught me that I need to be more careful for the final product, and which way to sew the fabric together.  

The first problem I encountered with the pattern was the size of the sleeves against the hole in the main body, however this was extremely easy to fix. I simply added 2cm to each side of the sleeve to ensure there was no tightening of the sleeve in the final. My other alteration I decided on was the neckline. I wanted the neck be high enough that it sat just under the eyes. So using my toile and some pattern making paper, I played around with height until I got the desired effect. I decided to curve it round instead of having the neck as the same height front and back, with an extra 12cm on top, 6cm on each side and 3cm extra at the back.

Finally, to incorporate what I saw at the V&A, in both the Asia sections, Horst and the Wedding Dress Exhibitions, the immediate response was an armor embellishment, like those seen in the Samurai section in the Japanese exhibit, but also with the structure of Blow's hat, and the avant garde nature of Horst's photographic style. This is where my paper work came into play, I used my paper from my mannequin work to place in various places around my coat, but finally decided upon one shoulder, which can be seen in the first two pictures.

I am extremely excited to see how this works in my fabric, which I have now chosen. It is, of course, red, bringing the Autumnal colour palette into play. As I need structure in the garment, the fabric had to be strong, I narrowed my fabrics down to three; burgundy wool lined with interfacing, burgundy patterned faux leather and red faux leather. I decided the faux leather was more striking, and I decided on the brighter red purely for the shock factor, much like the red wedding dress.

Structure and Attachment | A Trip to the V&A

I visited the V&A again for final inspiration, as I am a member I decided to see the Horst and the Wedding Dresses Exhibitions. I felt I got a lot from these two spaces, and they pushed my design to a higher level.

Horst

This exhibition was beautiful, the dresses were structured and his photography gave me so much inspiration on how to shoot my final garment. The elegance of his photography mixed with its modern approach brought a new twist to my Asian inspiration idea's. The beginning of his work was all black and white, with shadows and angular silhouettes, which reminded me of the striking Geisha make up inspiration to my accessory. He creates such romance to his photography, which I love but still keeps it contemporary. 

The way Horst uses composition and sketchbooks was really interesting to see, his designs for his photoshoots were so similar to how I originally draw sketches, so I really engaged with his work. The rough nature of them was such a jump to the final finished product it really encouraged me to create a flawless look with my project.

His later work with vogue relates better to my idea for my final piece. The pop colours along with the modern angles of the big sunglasses and striking make up is something I hope to take to my garment. And especially include in the photography aspect. Horst helped me to visualise the garment on the human body, as opposed to just on the mannequin, a skill I needed to practice. I felt this exhibition really helped me move my piece from simply a design to a garment.

Wedding Dresses

The Wedding Dress exhibition inspired my chosen fabric for my final garment, there were two wedding dresses that really stood out for me, the indian silk gown; for it's Asian inspiration and of course colour. And an extremely simple button up wedding dress, in the most beautiful deep red with a clinched waist.

Although I am not making a dress, the detailing of the dresses gave me ideas of what to to with my final. The main inspiration I took from this exhibition was a gold head-wear by Selina Blow, I immediately thought of the Chinese triangular straw hats, I made sure to get a picture of this and sketch from it as soon as I left the exhibition so I wouldn't forget it. The structure of this hat was so interesting, but yet remained elegant, I hope to incorporate this idea into my piece somehow. 

Structure and Attachment | Mannequin Work

After the Accessories and Styling/Photography weeks, I decided to use my ideas and incorporate them into my final designs.

I designed 6 details in a structured kimono style coat, which is my garment of choice. I decided on outerwear as a final garment as we are designing for Autumn Winter and the season is all about layering. Following on from earlier designs the structural necklines and silhouettes were my greatest inspirations. After my neck piece, I wanted to focus on the neck of the outer wear, so therefore using the structure of a kimono with it's high neck seemed appropriate.

Following this thought process I had to work out how to physically create a 'neck' with structure, so I moved from paper to mannequin. To start off, I was trying to work out how to create a simple neck 'collar.' I used calico, and used a simple dart pattern that I made up.

From this initial design, I used pattern paper, brown paper and calico to add various neck structures as experiments. 

I actually found this work really hard, and got really worked up and upset with it, because I had so little experience I found it really frustrating not being able to do what I wanted with the material. However, after a quite 1-to-1 with one of my tutors Sarah, I calmed down and pulled myself together. Sarah seemed to think I had quite a natural flare with the mannequin work, which was encouraging and I felt more confident with continuing working on my designs.

Although the mannequin work was successful, transferring these designs to a pattern would mean I would have to design a pattern that 'grew' at the neck, something extremely advanced. I spent the rest of the day sewing and experimenting onto my mannequin at home, and manipulating the paper in different ways, this was very useful to the development of my designs to final product.

Introduction to Pattern Making - Rave Short

With the final garment coming up, and my complete lack of experience in pattern cutting I decided to partake in a 'Rave Short' which was a 2 hour course outside that we could partake in, in our own time. The short I chose was called 'An Introduction to Pattern Making.' 

Magdalena, the course leader had previously studied at Ravensbourne which was great as she knew the Uni well, she worked in Pattern Making and Industrial Process, hearing about what she does and where she had worked was really interested. It showed me aspects of the fashion world I knew very little about. Unfortunately as it was only a 2 hour course we hardly had enough time to learn beyond a classic top pattern. However I still learnt a fair amount from this extremely short time period, so it was worth doing.

The tools for pattern cutting, for example the pattern master was completely new to me, I learnt how to use it and how the curve is used for sleeves, necklines, hems and much more. I was originally terrified by this tool as I thought it would be much more complicated than it was, it was interesting to see how many ways it can be used, and I was surprised at how quickly I picked this up.

During the evening we were given a pattern to trace, I thought this was such a shame. Seeing as I hadn't previously designed a pattern, that's what I thought we would be learning to do. However, I still used this opportunity to learn, when making a pattern the details put onto the pattern are of the utmost importance, especially when the pattern is for someone else, and making the slightest mistake can completely ruin a garment. 

Overall, the evening course, although not what I expected, was helpful to an extent. I learnt about the tools and details needed. I am disappointed that I wasn't actually taught how to know what pattern to make from a design, but hopefully in the future if I partake in another course I will achieve this.

Essay Research | The Tate Modern

As research for our upcoming essay we had to visit a series of gallery spaces at the Tate Modern and Whitechapel Gallery. Our essay is to be a comparison of 2 of the spaces we visited that day, this can be from both galleries or from just one. As I greatly disliked and was completely uninspired by Whitechapel Gallery, it will not be included in my essay. Therefore my comparison will be between two Tate spaces. 

The first, 'Facing History' curated by Jessica Morgan, brings together two bodies of work that confront the violence and atrocities of contemporary war and civil society. I felt this related to my culture theme as the political, social and economical side of a Country shapes its culture, art and people. This room included two artists work; Leon Golub and Hrair Sarkissian. Golub's work 'Vietnam II' was a wall Muriel, stretched along brown paper. The painting was made from 1970's newspaper cuttings and photographs from the Vietnam War. Golub was heavily involved culturally with his work as he had protested the war in the 60's. His inspiration was Picasso's 'Guernia' and he described his work as "the visual metaphor of a newspaper, a super photograph or a comic strip.. assulted by tumult and violence."

The other artist, Hrair used photography. At first his take on war seems disconnected , but these images portray his upbringing, his own personal culture; the towns he lived in, people he knew and the way he was brought up. The images were of 'hanging' sites, taken at early hours of the morning when executions were going on.

My second chosen room was 'Homeworkers' which was also a collection of various artists works, I felt the collage theme tied in with the mixture of photography and fine art in the previous room. Many of the pieces in this room had political and sociala aspects, fighting for womens and workers rights. Also based in the 70's, the other works in the room followed similar subject matter. However this room's political views were about the subvert hierarchies of power in the relationships between male and female.

Overall, this trip, although not directly influencing my project, inspiration is always helpful, and it gave me new ways to look at bringing culture into my project.

Structure and Attachment | Digital Printing Samples

After a full day of working on our books, I decided to stay late to transfer my final digital prints onto fabric as final samples for my book. This was so I could learn the skill of how to, if I should want to use digital printing onto fabric in the future. I found this extremely useful and easy to do, which was quite a surprise as I thought it would be much more complicated than it was. 

To make the sample you simply had to convert your image to a 300 resolution, flat, GRB, TIFF format. Then you opened the file on the computer connected to the machine, and printed it the size you wanted. This particular printer, prints your print onto paper in special ink, then you use the flat bed to essentially heat press your print onto a chosen synthetic fabric. There are actually two ways to digitally print onto fabric, but the other printer which prints it straight onto the fabric instead of paper only transfers the print onto natural fabrics. As my samples were man-made fabric, I used the paper printer.

I really enjoy doing this, and I hope to use this technique in future work.

Structure and Attachment | Accessory Photoshoot

The Set Up

I decided to use the inside of a town house for my set up, white walls with various art pieces. Within this, I moved locations a few times. In this town house there was an over-sized green cupboard that reminded me so much of that image from my mood board, it related extremely well. As I had previously spray painted my accessory red I didn't need to do that much with it on the model. The other props I included in the shoot were some Parasols with Japanese characters on them, a kimono in a turquoise/green shade to compliment the red and various gold ornaments for a ledge above a fire place in a different room.

Looking back at my produced images I wish I had shot a few outside, in a concrete scene. This would have given an interesting contrast to the homely feel of my other images. Apart from that, i was happy with how the shoot turned out. 

Editing 

The editing of the images was inspired by both sections of the themes; the culture side was through gallery visits, but in particular, my personal culture. The art in my grandparents house is all Japanese and geisha inspired, much of it is traditional Japanese paintings on wood and parchment. This effect was almost sepia, muted colours with calligraphy. So on a few of my photo's I old-ified them, distressed the image, increased the noise, desaturated and added various layers and effects to produce this worn look. My other main inspirations were from photographers. Araki, a Japanese photographer was my first inspiration. These particular shots of his inspired some of my finals, the odd objects, bleak background, composition and red accent colour.

The next photographer was Juergen Teller, but in particular the still life collection and Celine editorials; the overexposed effects with saturated colours reminded me of the Geisha make up, and the look I tried to portray in both shoot and editing. 

The final influence was from Vivian Sassen, whose style is extremely contemporary, but in particular her Pop Magazine shoot. The surrealist nature drew the contemporary modern edge to my images.

With the planning of the shoot, I should have checked the weather in accordance with my day as then I would have been able to include some outside shots, unfortunately I shot my accessory on the day there were hurricane winds so going outside to shoot was impractical. However, I was still happy with the outcome, and with the edits. I feel they reflected my themes well and were strong finals.

Structure and Attachment | Accessory Photoshoot Mood Board

Following my maps and culture themes, I decided that as red is my colour and it is also the colour of prosperity in China, this therefore decided the Asian influence in my project. Luckily I have recently been to the V&A Asian exhibitions and looked at structure in Kimono's, origami and attention to detail in pattern, leading me to this path anyway. 

I wanted the shoot to be plain and simple, with Geisha-like make up with a modern twist. Chopsticks in the hair, bold eyebrows. Vogue Japan, Fashion Asia and a book called 'Zen in the Home' were my main inspirations, and I took images from these, along with others to create my boards. I decided not to use an Asian girl, but instead a Caucasian girl with similar features. This modernised the shoot and gave it a twist on the vintage Japanese look I was originally going for. 

Once I knew my influence for my shoot it was easy to find images that portrayed how I wanted it to look and inspiration for props and colouring. When I was looking through the Zen book I found a picture I knew would be a perfect set up; a grungy green coloured room with a single figure in the foreground. Other images I found that inspired the shoot included parasols, kimonos, red lips and odd bits and bobs scattered in rooms. I felt this mood board was more successful than my last, as I was greatly inspired by it and it was well balanced whilst the images still flowed. 

Structure and Attachment | Magical Mystery Fashion Tour

Pictures taken around London; 

Selfridges, Dover Street Market, Regents Street, Alexander Mcqueen Dover Street.

In preparation for this day trip, I looked up a few of the roads and places so I was aware of what kind of places I was be visiting and what to look out for when I got there. We met at 9.45 at Piccadilly Circus by the Eros Statue, then were free to go about as we wished. I stayed with three girls from the course, and we decided to hide from the rain and pop into McDonald's to check the map and plan out our route. By this point we were basically on Regents Street, so we started it there. We went into Burberry and asked the store manager about what it's like to work in a high fashion brand, she told us about the pace at which it moves, the classics like the trench coat and about the shop she worked in. The Burberry trench coat originated in the 1850's, around the time of the First World War as an alternative to the heavy serge greatcoats. As she had clients we couldn't hold her for long, but the information gathered was extremely interesting and she gets a pretty nice discount! 

Our next stop was Selfridges, we went straight to the womenswear floors and paraded around taking pictures of collections, details and installations that were either in our chosen colours (mine being red) or were inspiring either through structure or finishings. In particular I loved the Jean Paul Gaultier pop-up. I have recently been to his exhibition at the Barbican and it was lovey to see some of the pieces in the flesh and be able to try them on. As one of my themes is culture, his union jack stylised pieces, like the Gillet were fabulous. We saw a huge display of designers including Marni, Yves Saint Laurent, Versace, Comme Des Garcons, Wang, and Mcqueen.

We stopped off next at Dover Street Market, as I hadn't previously looked this up, I was slightly confused to see it was not exactly a market; more a collection of gallery-like showrooms, crazy installations and designer wear! I absolutely loved this place, and I am so glad we got a chance to visit it. Throughout the 6 or something floors, designer goodies are arranged among geometric wall designs. Each floor has a different 'theme' or feel to it, and although we weren't allowed to take pictures I took a few. 

I made sure we popped into the Alexander Mcqueen Store in Dover Street, which was on our way to our next stop: Berwick Street. It was beautiful, exhibiting an incredible sequinned knitted dress that Lily Allen modelled for GQ in. The shop assistants were lovely and allowed Bobbe (one of the girls I was with) to try on this digitally printed dress, we were told that it was designed using a placement print meaning it was made first and then the print was added. This made it almost impossible to alter, but at a couple thousand it wasn't the kind of dress you'd want to alter. The shop had interactive screens, so I signed up for the newsletter and emailed myself a current accessories picture, feeling it was appropriate due to the current workshop we're doing.

Finally we made our way to Berwick Street, a familiar street to me, having run errands there for Reiss when I interned there in Summer. I picked up red samples from all three Misan and Textiles shops and one from my favourite fabric shop 'Silk'. There was a massive jump in price range, from one end at around £9 per/m to a huge £210 per/m for hand beaded silk. Visiting fabric shops is really useful as it gives a realistic feel to what kind of fabrics are in the price range, and what's suitable for what designs. Whether the fabric can be machine sewn, hand cut, have darts added etc. Overall, I found the day extremely useful, I picked up samples, leaflets and took pictures, and we even had the chance to interview two very different fashion house employee's. On my way home I went via Jermyn Street, but as it was all menswear it was unhelpful to my project.

Structure and Attachment | Accessories Development

The next part of the Accessories workshop including scanning in our samples, and printing them whole on A3, 20 on an A4 page, and photocopying models and head shots to work onto. When we were photographing and scanning our objects I tried to keep everything as flat as possible, so the image produced was clearer. What I noticed about others work which helped me on my own was the smaller samples looked better, the finish was neater and they scanned into 2D well.

Throughout this development we did a rotation of 3 workshops. The first was making more samples, as I didn't bring in my original objects I searched around the building for various things to use, this included straws, cups, batteries, elastic bands and string. One machine we were introduced to was the heat press. This (depending on the plastic) melted separate objects flat together. If the plastic didn't melt, the heat flattened it and it re-hardened. I tried many objects on the heat press to see how they would look if their structure was altered. Elastic bands and small plastic objects like beads and buttons melted well, but straws and plastic cups would't melt, so simply flattened. Some objects others used that worked well was plastic dolls, plastic cutlery and gaffa tape. 

I enjoyed incorporating plastic into my accessory samples as it gave a new textures, however as plastic will only stick to plastic, it would be difficult to use it in my final. I found it hard to think of new ideas when not using the heat press, as I didn't have my original objects I couldn't 'develop' them as such, so instead I came up with new attachment or statement pieces that could be added to other designs.  The workshop was made harder to my disorganisation, so in future for general workshops I need to be aware of thinks to bring in, and what I need for which days. This will help my time management and through distressing, should make me more focused.

The second workshop was using our A3 print outs to pin onto the mannequin, which I really enjoyed, as seen in the images above I made hats, and bags. These looked great and gave me a better idea on what  I wanted my final to look like. The final workshop was using the 20 scans on the A4 which we cut out and stuck onto models and headshots, I'd say this workshop was the most useful as I was unsure on what to do for my final, but after placing my scans onto a model I could see what would work where and which materials I wanted to use.