Its the first time I've been given a new brief! We had the old 'Generating Fashion' and now we have oh, so suddenly moved to 'understanding' it. Well I hope I will more after all this! Last friday we met at the Museum of Science and Industry just off Deansgate in Manchester. It was a cold morning, and I'm fortunately familiar to the museum but it still made it a whirlwind of a day! Briefing day is always a mind boggle. You have to take so much in and think so many different thoughts and collate your best ones together in a matter of hours. I have previously done a brief at Alevel focusing on the mechanics of the machines in the museum and was facinated by the electrical archives of the museum. It seamed like a peculiar choice, but one I was overly keen to explore. I struggled to find many electronic items in the museum on Friday but have a few days next week to collect more and digg a little deeper...
On Monday, as I wasn't too successful in finding a lot of electronic items at the museum on friday, I contacted an electronics and computing shop to ask if they had any spare/broken parts they did not need. They said yes! To my surprise it was two large boxes of miscellaneous objects including circuit boards and computing hard drives etc, exactly what I was going for! I had to be selective of the best pieces to draw my print/shape inspiration from, took photos, printed them and managed my photos from friday's visit. I also got my crispy white nylon, white jersey and medium weight calico. After the efforts of the working day were over I extended my love of fashion by going to check out the collaboration between Gareth Pugh for MAC cosmetics.
In pattern cutting this week, we learnt how to put lapels onto a jacket as a design feature. This was really interesting as you gained the control to be able to make them as minimal or as extreme as you desire. I started by using the calico - wrapping and twisting it into spiral forms to mimic the turbines in the aircraft room. Then I wanted to created sharper edges with the cotton, yet I found it too heavy. By switching to the nylon I realized that it held great structure and was giving me the large shapes I desire. I then changed to the jersey as I am more fond of lighter details and found myself with some good ideas to work on for the first shape making session.
Later on in the week I returned to MOSI as I still wasn’t set on a particular element of the museum to focus on as I didn’t have the best photos, so I spent the days taking high-quality photographs of the inside mechinics of the machinery, wires and circuits. These drawings and images really helped me to see details and structure coming through onto cloth for the next workshop on the Friday.
I really like the twists and turns in the fabric as it moulded to the body more and contourted it. I chose to explore this more on Friday in the workshop in the different fabrics, calico, nylon and jersey and see what worked best. The cotton was far to heavy and bulked, the nylon didn’t twist well enough to give a clean edge, yet the jersey had a very ‘Mark Fast’ and ‘David Koma’ effect on it and the twists and turns which invisioned the cable circuits contorted the body very interestingly. My sketch of the day made me think how I next need to consider the aspects of colour, surface texture, pattern, multiples and scale and proportion next week…
