Photoshoot

Styling: Katie Urban & Philip Lord
Photography: Hannah-Beth Todd
Model: Emma Howl
MUA: Becky Hunting
AD: Dave Piper

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Creating our Pattern

I'm really enjoying working in this way, it's allowed me to be more creative and experimental with how I work. However, it is a little unpredictable, as a lot of our process is almost like a guessing game as we have used a single conventional pattern throughout the whole process.

Our Favourite Six

After combining our designs and generating 30+ from them, (I'm really pleased with how they've turned out) we narrowed it down to our favourite 6 which will become my line-up. The design circled is our chosen one. The next step.... to make it!

Collaborative Designs

As we both designed from a different perspective, we needed to combine both of our designs to become one. We did this on Photoshop, layering up our designs in a way that the big shapes that Phil designed from fit well into mine designs of smaller shapes.

Here's a taster:

Design Basics

After coming up with our combined concept, I decided to focus my designs on having many small words/shapes within single designs as opposed to Phil, who chose to focus on designing using just one word per design in it's entirity.

Some of my initial shape layouts:

Experimenting with Words as Shapes

I'm really pleased with how this project is going. There's so much freedom involved with the whole process and I'm liking how the shapes are each so different from one another. Their placement distorts the natural silhouette which is making us think we should work only with a nude colour palette so the garment becomes an outer skin that has been distorted and emphasised with these random words.

Geometric Shapes to Inform Language & Silhouette

So as we can create a language using geometric shapes, we created an alphabet using shapes similar to those in the experiment, where each shape is unique to one another and each is allocated a letter. This way, when certain letters are pieced together in a 3d form, a word is created on the shoulder, hip, arm etc.


Our shape encoded alphabet:

in order to create words with these shapes, we needed some words, so we randomly selected a number of words from the English Dictionary and went from there....

The words selected are: SLAKE... MEASURE... BLIND... ACHY... BLAME... ORGASM... WARDAY... WHOA... NOSTALGIC... PARENTAL... BAGNIO... VERGE... TRUCK... TRUST...

Here are a couple of the words in their 3d form using our alphabet:

Group Workshop... COLLABORATING OUR IDEAS

Today was a chance for us to spend the day working with each other and collaborating our two ideas and concepts. Philip Lord, who I am working with in this collaborative part of the project, has been looking at miscommunication and misperception within language. Below is a mind map of our ideas of portraying both our concepts through one design idea.






After talking through our individual concepts and ideas, we are both very interested in the pattern cutting techniques in the 'T-Shirt Issue' garments. We both want to take our designs down a pathway of creative and innovative pattern cutting techniques (as opposed to technology) to help inform a language (that we will create) through structure and silhouette. Our aim is to create a 3D form through pattern cutting in a similar way to that of the 'T-Shirt Issue' where in our case, geometric shapes will have meaning and create something else within the garment that may by misinterpreted by the wearer but overall will represent either a word or phrase through a language within the fabric pieces.


We had a play around with simple geometric shapes to create a 3d structure from paper that we placed around the body in order to change the silhouette. Pleased with the result, we made one up, 1/2 scale size in a grey cotton and attached it to a basic front and back dress block.

As you can see from the photos above, in fabric it worked just as well with a nice soft touch to the edges.

Summary Of My Ideas

As language can be portrayed in many different ways through encoding and decoding, as I've found out through my research, my main idea for this project is to create a language within our designs through creative pattern cutting and silhouette. My main interest is to experiment with new and innovative ways of cutting the fabric as opposed to the general flat cutting that we as fashion students are used to.

Laser Cutting... THE T-SHIRT ISSUE

Mashallah Design and Linda Kostowski designed and created three t-shirts that combine a biographical memory and a 3d digital body scan of each of the three people used. The 3d data is turned into a pattern to cut from using an unfolding function which is often used in industrial design processes to make paper models with. The edges are cut using a laser cutter and once constructed, the 2d fabric once again becomes 3d.

No 419: MARKUS

No 378: PAUL

No 318: LINDA

I find this process very intruiging and personal to the wearer as a personal memory is combined in the design. It really is a very innovative way of pattern cutting, and although it's quite a complex process, there is a lot of freedom within the way the pattern is cut.

These pieces make me think more about how I can become more creative with pattern cutting of a simple garment, changing the silhouette of the figure simply by the way the fabric is cut and falls on the body.

Laser Cutting... MARK LIU

After the pattern cutting workshop last week, I've been thinking about how I can use creative pattern cutting in my designs in an innovative way. Following on from laser cutting ideas, I came across designer Mark Liu.

Liu's collection works on the concept of 'Brinkmanship' and uses a technique of cutting the fabric in order to use every last area of it and not a scrap is wasted.

Brinkmanship

-noun

the practice of pushing a dangerous situation to the verge of disaster in order to achieve the most advantageous outcome

The fabric is cut using laser cutting technology and the edges of the pieces are cut to follow lines of the prints which are inspired by a lifestyle of danger and extreme luxury. The pattern pieces are then stitched together along their original construction lines and the excess fabric become outside seams that look a lot like lace.

I really like this innovative way of thinking and it's made me think that there are a lot of boundaries that can be pushed when designing with the aid of laser cutting technology.

Could I create edges that follow the shapes and contours of sign language letters?

Could the edges simply create a message by laser cutting letters into the excess fabric beyond the seam allowance?