Fashion & Textiles - Styling

Styling is one of my favourite thing to do, especially styling on other people. It always excites me to see my clothes being worn by other people. Today I brought in these things- A vintage PVC bomber jacket, my favourite PVC corset, fishnet maxi skirt and A LOT of makeup.

Shani's styling on Rosie

My styling on Shani

My styling on Rosie

Rosie's styling on Shani

Fashion & Textiles - Knitting

Today we worked on knitting. I never really liked knitting, my mom used to teach me how to do that. I knitted once in my life, and I never really got back to it until today. And I absolutely loved it. It is quite confusing using this machine, but it surely made knitting a lot more enjoyable. 

My first knit on this knitting machine!

Working on stripes. I only wish we have black yarn, or white. 

Lace knitting! I was trying to create a sad face here, I failed, it was not perfect and the way I wanted. But I still think it's cute, and I'm happy that I experimented.

Final sample. Loose knit and holey knit. Once again I'm happy that I tried to combine different ways of knitting to create a piece inspired by my mood board, I just hoped that I had more time to make this knit longer so I can see the effects better. I was trying to create a destroyed look to this knit and I think it is going quite well. 

Mood Board.

I love a lot of different styles. My mood board includes things like latex, pvc, big dresses, stage clothing, graphic clothing, lingerie... and inspirational people (designers and models) like Dita Von Teese, Marilyn Manson, Jeffree Star, Ophelia Overdose, Razor Candi, Nina Kate, Jimbo Phillips (designer for Santa Cruz Skateboards), Mike Giant (designer for Rebel 8 Clothing), Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Tim Burton etc . My mood board also display a lot of different style of clothing like burlesque, fetish, high fashion, street, vintage etc. 

6 Weeks Review

In these 6 weeks, I have been exploring lot of different areas in design and media. 3D design, graphic design, lens based media, and also fashion. They inspired me a lot and made me want to take several pathways. Before these 6 weeks, I was sure about going to choose fashion design, but after these 6 weeks, it turned out that I wanted to do graphics and lens based media too! I had a hard time choosing between 3 of them, but I still went for the fashion, since that has been something that I've always wanted to do since 3rd grade.

This definitely had opened up my mind further more. 

Homeworkers Review

Figure 1. The Pikes, 1992-3, Annette Messager

 Tate Modern

Level 4 Room 8

Homeworkers

Figure 2. Homeworkers, 1977, Margaret Harrison

The Tate Modern exhibition takes on a whole new level of expressing feminism and political flaws. Works done from different period of times showed us the history, and letting us see how it had influenced our society. Textiles works from Tracey Emin, Rosemarie Trockel, Margaret Harrison and Annette Messager were put together by Ann Coxon and Valentina Ravaglia, shouts loud messages to viewers, representing all Homeworkers’ voice.

Figure 3. Hate and Power Can Be a Terrible Thing, 2004,
Tracey Emin

The first step into the room, The most striking piece of the whole exhibition The Pikes by Annette Messager screamed truthful messages by using severed heads and limbs made out of feminine garments and possessions- stockings and dolls. It does not just focus on feminism, it also conveys other society problems like relationship between genders, war, culture, nature and human’s aggression. Taking a closer look at the little drawings and paintings and a darker side of this work was revealed. This piece stood out to me the most because of the creepy looking dolls and the hostile pikes.

Tracey Emin’s Hate and Power Can Be A Terrible Thing displays large sized words, making multiple strong powerful statements, clearly confronting the viewers. There were no subtleties to her piece, just sharp messages.

Margaret Harrison’s Homeworkers included data and stories to support this exhibition, truth of economic flaws and gender division were harshly unveiled. Gender division definitely need to be saved, viewers should keep their mind open and accept the ugly truth. Her artwork was very convincing. It was so interesting I had to take the time to read what was written on her piece of work.

Figure 4. Untitled. 1986, Rosemarie Trockel

Rosemarie Trockel’s  knitted work didn’t stand out to me as much as the others until I walked up  to it and spotted these geometric patterns. Connecting to the theme of the exhibition, this piece of work conveys in machinery and job of a female. Ironic message in this piece was subtle and it took me a while to understand it.

Truly inspiring and brave artists, I believe female should never be afraid to stand up for themselves, and should be able to fight for their rights, for it is now unjustified. As a practitioner, I think it is really important to have my own thoughts and not be afraid to speak up and share. 

Bibliology:
Ravaglia, Valentina. Accessed on 12th October, 2013.  http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/display/homeworkers

Fashion and Textiles Day 3

Today we were told to make a wearable garment out of paper. I chose to base my work on the stripey plan that I had the day before, and develop it into a bigger size. I added bits of extras to the original one to make it a bit more interesting. Inspired by the delicacy of paper, I decided to include a piece of lace-y like thing. However because of the limited time, I had to simplify it. So here it is. I'm extremely satisfied with what I did here.

After that I paired up with few of my friends. Here's Aleia and she's modelling for my head piece.

I love how the lights shine onto the piece of 'lace' and form a really nice shadow on Aleia's forehead, I love the mysterious feel  to it.

Here I had this idea that it'll look ironic to put a well-made (haha) paper headpiece together with waste paper. I love the contrast and Aleia looked so fierce here! 

Chanel was my next model. We decided that my head piece will suit Chanel more because she has more of a sophisticated look. I absolutely love how Chanel look here, classy.

I loved this project and I'm seriously considering go for the fashion pathway. Only thing is I hope to explore more materials, even for paper, there are different types of paper that I want to play around with.

Fashion and Textiles Day 2

I brought in a few magazine cutouts for me to work with. We had to build on top of the model and create a garment on them. Here's what I came up with.

Inspired by the style of the photograph, I decided to create spikes on her jacket to enhance the sharp look. I love how the spikes look like because they are sticking out in different directions. This is my favourite piece.

Side view

Here I created something less strong, so I used the curves of the paper to create a puffy skirt for the model. I also ripped black paper, because it gave a feeling of softness and fur-like texture. I stuck them around the model's neck to create a scarf or some sort.

Side view.

I love striped everything. So I took that inspiration and applied to a classier garment. I loved the headpiece here. Tutor told me to make it bigger, and I decided to do that another day.

Side view.

Then we photocopied what we did and transformed them into tiny little garments. Here are some of them. I like the jacket the most, because it has got the graphics on it. I think I need more but there is really nothing else left for me to cut, because the area that i created was quite small.

I loved what we did today, it was something new and I definitely learnt a lot from it. At least these designs don't just come out of nowhere. Randomness can be a key to design.

Fashion and Textiles- Day 1

We were working with paper to create different textures and forms. I didn't like using paper at all, I think they are boring but at the end of the project I changed my mind. 

Here I used newspaper, scrunched it up a lot and made a swirl. I've always loved soft materials instead of hard ones. That is why I chose news paper. This is my favorite one out of all of them. 

I used paper for printers here, scrunched it up a lot again so it goes soft. I tried to rip it, make holes in it so it gives a destroyed look, but it didn't work out that well

I was trying to make something like fishnet, again, I didn't like it at all.

Later in the afternoon, we're told to make a larger version of the piece shown above. Of course I chose to to the swirly thing. We were divided into groups and we had to create an outfit by combining each other's creations. And here's what we thought of. We also had different styles to follow. 

As you can see, the brown paper in the last few photos was my creation. I realized the swirl doesn't work that nicely when the material is too soft. Now I'm appreciating using paper because it's quite challenging, since I hated it. Overall I liked this project, I love doing anything related to clothing and styling! :)