W7 - Fashion Week

Unfortunately we didn't get very long with Fashion this week as we had a lot of guest lectures and friday was a teacher training day.

Fashion began though by discussing what fashion actually is and what I really liked about this was that it was suggested that Fashion is all about ideas. It reminded me how contemporary and imaginative fashion can be, it isn't all about high street clothes.

From this we learnt that our aim for the week was to create an item, constructed out of paper, that focused on form and was built out of shapes, but could be perhaps worn. We started by designing the shape that we would use by taking a template, mine was for a waistcoat, and by cutting it, expanding it, curving it we had to create new shapes from it, drawing around it to record them and then moving on and changing it even more to develop the shape. We had to do this using tracing paper as well as the template until we felt that we had developed it enough. To begin with I wasn't sure whether the waistcoat template would be too complicated to make a good shape out of, but it actually supplied a lot to work with, helping to make an interesting final shape. I liked using the tracing paper also as it allowed you to take shapes that you liked from lots of designs and combine them into one shape easily.

Below is an image of the (almost destroyed) template and the shapes which were developed from it.

I also tried using masking tape, which involved sticking some down and then drawing around it and the template to extend the shape even more.  I really liked this as it complicated the shape quickly, creating more connections between sections and making it look more exciting.

Experimenting even more we were encouraged after using the photocopier to copy our shapes to A4, to reverse the colour using the negative settings so that our shapes came out as a white outline on a black background.

The negative image

The original copy

I found this effect really interesting as it looks almost like a chalkboard drawing, in particular the animation Humorous Phases of Funny Faces. Working with this I then tried it using the template to see the effect that they would create, as suggested.

The copied image

The negative image

I loved this effect as the negative copy contains some great contrasts with the bold white lines standing out on the grey and black background. It showed me another way to look at designs, combining lines and collage to create different layers.

This was my final developed shape. I stuck with this shape as while it looks quite complicated, it offers a lot of movement and different sections that I thought could be used for different effects.

After creating our shapes we enlarged them to over A3 and then made copies of these onto cartridge paper, ready to be used to make our final item.

Here is the enlarged shape.

With our shapes Sue then taught us different ways to score using a craft knife and fold the paper so that it could be bent and manipulated in various ways. For instance so that it created box shapes or using circular scoring so that the shape could be compressed to form a tighter shape, or left loose to maintain a hanging shape. I couldn't believe that paper could be used in this way to create such defined and imaginative shapes and forms, especially as this was quite easy to do, all you had to know was how to fold, score and pin paper to a manikin to create the item. 

Below is the process of creating my item.

Some of the angular folds that I used

More compressed folds.

The emphasis for our items was on creating form, particularly forms that didn't follow the shape of the body and instead created a new shape to it.

I started with these folds and shapes, wanting to build up layers.

The photos show the item changing over time as sections were removed as well as added. This was because after creating the flower like shape on the front I wanted to concentrate on the contrast between artificial man-made straight lines and organic flowing forms that capture a lot of energy as the flower shape does that really well. It's a theme that I looked at for Applied Arts as well, so I wanted to continue with it and see how it could be interpreted in a different area and to what effect. I continued to build up the layers though.

The flower shape flew down slightly, but I quite liked this as it spread the emphasis instead of focusing it in one area. This was an advantage of that fold, that it could work well loose or compressed.

The back changed significantly from a plain style that looked quite military to more of a busy, expressive design. This was because the past style looked too separate to the front and the theme as a whole as it wasn't organic enough. So solve this I tried to make the back look almost like wings or feathers, but using straight lines to combine the styles, which I think looks quite good due to all of the layers.

The Final Item

I really was impressed by the use of paper as it kept it's shape amazingly well and was easy to manipulate as well. On my item I tried to make forms that didn't follow the shape of the body too much and because of this my favourite section is the flower shape as it, and the shapes around it, force the form out, creating a lot of movement there.

After making our items we moved onto drawing them by using manikin templates and tracing paper so that we could concentrate on getting the shapes and forms of our designs down and not have to worry about the shape of the body/manikin just yet.

The template

We just had to focus on a line drawing to begin with and then we could complicate it afterwards. Although because my design was so complicated to begin with, this made doing the line drawing a challenge anyway. It took a while to draw all of the folds in, but I wanted to as accurately as possible draw it. I did have problems with the scale at points, so there are a few alterations to the drawing and as I was drawing in fine liner these can still be seen.

A photocopy of the line drawing

A negative of the line drawing

 I did another negative image, which again looked great. I just love that contrast of a black background and strong white lines as it seems to place more emphasis on the lines.

After completing the line drawing though I wanted to do something a bit different so I tried adding light tone to the drawing, using the first drawing as a stencil. Although I tired to rectify some of the scale problems of the first in this second drawing. I think this one is more interesting to look at as the shading creates more depth to the folds, making them easier to see and even more interesting in negative form as well.

We didn't have long on Fashion, but I'm really surprised by how enjoyable it was. I'm not really into fashion, so I thought that I wouldn't be able to connect to some of the tasks this week, but I've loved focusing on shape and form and experimenting with what paper can do. It's made me think more openly about what fashion can be and I've been able to learn transferable skills as well as how to use some more of the special features on the photocopier, so it's been a great week.