Final Evaluation

My final outcome is very different to what I first anticipated it would be. I thought that my project would end up being largely based on the stylistic codes of subcultures. I also expected my final outcome to be more symbolic of my personal style and people that I have known for a long time but instead my outcomes were inspired by a homeless girl and a boy that I only met quite recently. I actually think this outcome is far more interesting and unique and I am glad that my that my project took an unexpected turn. I think subcultural references are now extremely overdone in the fashion industry and it would have been hard to create something unique and distinctive using subculture as inspiration. This has taught me to be a lot more instinctive with my ideas and not be scared to explore ideas which I might previously thought of as a bit odd. 

In my original plan I was going to use my favourite items of clothing as research and make designs inspired by the symbolism behind them. Looking back, I'm glad I didn't do this as my final outcome would have ad very limited and and unimaginative research sources. I already know and understand my own clothes, and it far more interesting to look at the clothes of others.

Although I branched out a lot from my original plan, I still managed to stick to the most important aspects of it, such as looking at the symbolism of particular items clothing to generate designs and exploring a wide range of techniques. I was actually really surprised at my own ability to use different skills throughout this project. I challenged myself to try digital print, embroidery and had never created my own pattern from scratch before. I felt that during this project i learnt fundamental designs skills by myself to take with my onto my degree course. During this project I also used constructive criticism to greatly develop my illustration style. I also feel that during this project I have developed a strong sense of personal style and a unique aesthetic. The fact that I was told by a lot of people that my aesthetic was very androgynous and the fact that I ended up using male models in both my shoots has made me consider choosing to pursue menswear later on during my degree.

I felt that the turning points in my project which lead to to my final outcome were the point when I realised that I wanted to focus on the symbolism of working class culture, when I created my homeless print, during the workshop putting shapes on the stand where i decided on my final structure. However I think the most important skill I have learnt through this project is how to use life experiences, such as meeting George Watson and the 'strongbow' incident as inspiration for my work. As an artist I feel it is very important for your work to become your life and you life to reflect your work. 

Strongbow Photoshoot

I know that it is morally wrong to ask your current boyfriend to model clothes inspired by an ex-boyfriend in a location also inspired by the same ex, but I did it anyway because I thought there was something intriguingly controversial and almost disturbing about it. He offered to model for me anyway after seeing my designs. 

I chose to shoot my menswear pieces in a typical English pub, as this was the type of place where my initial inspiration for these designs came from. Of course he was also drinking strongbow throughout the shoot. This particular pub is also quite a significant pub for me and my boyfriend Matt, which is another reason why I chose it. The pub is situated next to Camden canal, which also provided and interesting and urban shoot location. 

Matt also decided he wanted to wear his new bucket hat in the shoot, which I thought was a good idea as it added an element of his personal style and related to the strong 90's theme throughout this project. 

Homeless Dress Photoshoot

I originally intended to shoot my dress on a female model, however a lot of people were commenting on how androgynous my outfit was, therefore I thought it would be more interesting to shoot it on a male model. I chose Frankie as my model as I thought he had a very adolescent look and wanted a model that looked like an angsty teenager. This is because one of the initial themes I explored at the beginning of this project was youth rebellion . This angsty teenage look also relates to my 1990's inspired aesthetic which I seem to use very frequently at the moment. To emphasise the 90's teenage theme, I gelled Frankie's hair into curtains which were a style frequently sported by 90's boy bands and football fans. Frankie was also wearing and ear stretcher, which I thought added a reference to modern day rebellion and alternative culture. 

I wanted to use an urban landscape as the location to emphasise the gritty, bleak, urban theme of my outfit. I chose Scape- The Ravensbourne accommodation as the location for my shoot as it provided a good, urban, concrete background without being too obvious. 

Frankie also just happened to be drinking a can of Relentless and I thought it would work well in the shoots as it is quite an aggressive, masculine drink  (it is very high caffeine content and the branding is very harsh), often drink by teenage boys. The green colour of the can was also complimentary to the orange in the outfit. 

I was really happy with how this shoot went as I feel it captured the exact mood that I wanted to portray. If I could change anything, I would have preferred a slightly more interesting and less sterile urban space as my location. 

Making my homeless dress

As this design was a very complicated shape, I realised it would take a lot of planning and experimentation to get the shape right and make it easily wearable. I decided that the best approach was to make it in two parts- an basic under-dress and a complex over-skirt. I drew out how I thought the pieces should be and labelled where they should go. I thought of 3 different possible structures but in the end decided that the third structure would be the simplest and use the least fabric. 

Next I cut these pieces out of pattern paper and positioned them on the stand to try and turn them into the shape that I wanted. I ended up spending a whole day repositioning the pieces and was worried that this structure would not work. i then realised that the paper was very stiff so could not form the soft shapes that I wanted, so I used these shapes as a pattern to make a tiole out of calico to see how it would hang in fabric. For my tiole, I ended up having to change my circle into a bean shape to go get the structure that I wanted. I still wasn't happy with the shape, so I added darts to make it more 3D. 

I soon realised that it would be extremely difficult to make my top connect to the skirt, therefore I had to get rid of one of the front panels and make the dress into two separate pieces. Designing the top was very straightforward, as I only wanted to make a very basic sleeveless turtleneck. I wanted to keep the top simple as a contrast to the complex skirt and prints. 

I ended up having to take apart my tiole to make a pattern, which I felt was as shame but I couldn't see another way to do it and get the darts in the exact right position. I found this pattern extremely difficult to match up because of it very unusual shape. 

I meaured each pattern peice and rounded it off into a square to wirk out how much of each different print I would need. I used the digital printer and printed onto a luxurius feeling silky fabric to create a refined look which was a big contrast to my orginal insiration of homeless people. Once I had cut the printed pieces, I disnt find the garnments too difficuilt to put together, but I struggled techically with the zip and interfacing. Oringally I wanted to use a zip with a rounded ring-pull, but I was told that this was too heavy for the type of garments and fabric so instead had to just use a regular zips. 

I am really happy with my finished garment. I feel my initail sketch has been translated very well into real life and it is both wearable and interesting. If i could change anything about it, I would have used a stiffer fabric for the skirt as then it would have held the shape better. 

Strongbow Shirt

I thought about creating a digital strongbow print using photoshop, but as I unfortunately I didn't have the time to make a shirt from scratch, I realised that there was no point designing my own fabric. Instead, I decided to use heat transfers to put my strongbow illustrations onto my shirt. This method meant that I also had more control over the positioning of each picture. 

To make this shirt more unique I decided to extend the hem, adding 20cm to the front and 40cm to the back to create a very contemporary and interesting shape. On the back of my shirt I added some text of the full 'Srongbow' conversation between the 'lads' at the pub, as i really wanted to emphasise the story behind the initial inspiration for this shirt. 

Like with my other shirts, I added an embroidered ghost on the pocket to symbolise that George was also a big inspiration behind this shirt. I felt the colour was a bit plain so took inspiration from western-style metal collar tips and sewed some strongbow can metal ring pulls onto the tips of the collar. I am very happy with this shirt and I actually also like how it looks on me worn as dress so could even be a unisex piece. 

Awkward.

George mostly wore white shirts with black blazers, so I decided to use these items of clothing which distinctly remind me of him for a basis of my designs. I wanted to create pieces which symbolised his identity using elements of his personal style and his awkward ghost icon. 

He often wore printed shirts so i decided to use the awkward ghost to create a print. I chose to make the quite randomly positioned and sized to make them look free and floating. I also added my 'creepy heart' logo to the collar as I really liked this idea and wanted to incorporate it into my design. I decided to also paint an awkward ghost in white onto a black blazer with the work 'dark' above it. This loosely inspired by the concept of painted customised jackets that I explored earlier in the the project, almost painting on your back a way to express your identity.  I feel that this jacket is supposed to embody George Watson's identity. 

I created some samples to help me work out how I would go about making these pieces. I practised embroidering, painting a drawing to experiment with which application method worker best for what material. In the end I decided to hand draw the ghost print print onto the white shirt, which I think actually worked better than printing as it gave a rougher and more random effect which is what I wanted. I appliqued the hearts onto the collar ad stitched the writing on in black tread to add a different medium and texture. With the blazer, I decided to go back to the punk roots of this project and hand paint the ghost and text on using white acrylic paint. I was surprised how difficult and time consuming it was to get a thick even line. The jacket to many layers of paint, different sized brushes and several hours. 

Onto the pocket of both garments I added an embroidered ghost as I though this was a nice finishing touch which emphasised my theme and made them look like they were part of the same collection. 

I'm a bit obsessed with you now

I feel that I need to explain more about  George Watson. 

I can say this because I'm almost sure that he will never read this blog, but my first date with him was possibly the best night of my life. I have never before met somebody so perfect and beautiful inside and out. I have never been so happy in some body's presence. I have never met somebody who I can relate to so much, who thinks in such similar way. Somebody so kind a gentle. I honestly feel honoured to have even briefly known such an incredible person.  

It hurts me so much that he is going to study in Edinburgh next year. So cliche and cheesy as it sounds, I decided to channel this into my work. In my research book I did some pages dedicated to George Watson which were supposed to resemble a creepy teenage diary. 

On the first page I put a huge picture of him taken, with 'dark' written in the corner because he always described things which were unfortunate, unfair or unpleasant as 'dark' for some reason. I always (in a good way) found his whole aura a bit dark and creepy and wanted to portray this. I wrote his name out in bold black font and next to it I put a little red heart which said 'Creepy Heart' in the middle as I was aware that what I was doing was very creepy. 

He always drew these little ghosts in his work that he called "Awkward ghosts', which weirdly reminded me of the drawings that I used to do as a child. He drew my my own awkward ghost and said that I was welcome to use it in my work if I wanted to. Normally I wouldn't want to copy somebody else's work, but seeing as my project is about symbolism, I felt that this ghost was a strong symbol of his identity so did mu own variations of it in my little booklet which I may use in some designs. I also did a little portrait of the way that I saw George Watson and wrote "You what sorry?" next to it, because he always used to say that.

Oi lads, I'm on the Strongbow tonight!

My project took a very unexpected turn! 

I went on a date with a boy called George Watson. That night me and George were wondering around Soho looking for a place to get a drink. We stopped at a pub and outside was a group of young men shouting: "Oi Oi, Lads lads, what you on tonight?", "I'm on the Strongbow tonight mate!'. For some reason, we both both found this hilarious, and it became a running joke between us for weeks after. We both joked that we would base our FMP's on this incident, but in the end be both ended up actually pursuing this idea.

George studies fine art, so decided to produce a painting entitled 'Oi lads, I'm on the strongbow tonight'. I was inspired by the masculine connotations of this quote, therefore wanted to translate it into a menswear piece, like a shirt.

As a staring point, I started doing some illustrations of these 'Lads' and some various strongbow containers in a little booklet. I chose to do these illustration in a separate little booklet as I was worried that they were going off on a tangent slightly. However, I realised later that they fitted in really well with the rest of my project and incorporated them into one of my main sketchbooks. Luckily this idea still relates strongly to my theme of symbols of working class culture as 'lad culture' and cheap cider are commonly associated with the working class.  I plan to scan them into photoshop to create another print similar to my homeless print. 

Putting prints on my dress

I thought that my homeless prints would work really well on this design as it was also developed from the shape of homeless people in sleeping bags. The colour schemes of these prints compliment each other really well, so I decided to try applying a different print to each panel of the dress. This not only shows off the variety of the prints, but also highlights the different shapes and sections of the garment. 

I did many variations of print panelling and even experimented with different scales. In the end, I chose the design in the top right corner of this post as my favourite print variation, as I thought this was  the most well balanced in terms of colour, density and scale. 

I think the camouflage style print works really well with this design, as the shapes of the structure itself mirror the shapes within the camouflage print. 

Stand Development

I took part in a stand-work workshop and found it very useful for generating design structure ideas. I was asked to cut out 6 shapes inspired by my research and a large circle to fit them around to ensure that I could create a 3D form form from these shapes. 

I used blobby, organic shapes inspired by the silhouettes of my illustrations of homeless people. I chose these shapes as I had already explored putting them on the body earlier in my project, and saw this as an excellent opportunity to to develop this idea further. 

I had to fit all of the shapes together at the seams, to make sure that they created volume. I found that this technique helped me to discover some very unusual 3D shapes that I could not have possibly thought of when designing in 2D. I noticed that the basic essence of the sleeping bag shape was coming through in my stand work, but looked a lot more refined that my intitail sleeping bag designs, which was exactly what I wanted. 

To develop designs, I did lots of rough sketches from my stand work. I worked very quickly in pen as I wanted my designs to be raw, imperfect and instinctive. I then selected my favourite designs from these rough sketches (there were 7 of them), and drew them out again a lot more neatly and thinking about how they would be structured if they were a real garment. I did some backs as well to show how I would imagine the back structure and the placing of the zip to put the garment on and take it off. My favourite design out of these is the last one, which is the one that I want to develop further. 

Homeless Prints

I thought that my illustrations of homeless people were full of interesting shapes and bold colours, so decided to experiment with making prints out of them using photoshop.  

In my first print I wanted to show of the illustrations so I left lots of white space so they could all easily be seen. I also added some chunky, colourful text saying "My name's Beth' I'm homeless and "Can a borrow a fiver mate' to bring homeless my characters to life. I made the text slightly overlap across the images to give the print a layered and animated effect. 

My other two prints were made by layering copies of my illustrations of a variety of different sized and transparencies to create a  full continuous print. Both of these print remind me of camouflage print, which is interesting as I used camouflage in my designs earlier in my project. I really like how these prints look like camouflage as I am hugely inspired by late 90's style st the moment and this print was extremely popular then. This made me think about how a stylistic code can have many meanings, as camouflage print was originally used by the armed forces but now is associated with the 90's fashion. 

I think that these prints are very versatile as they are unisex and could work on any garment. I will definitely use them in my final outcome.    

I can't draw

I was told in my Crit that my drawing style was quite childish and rough and that I needed to work on my drawing skills. I completely agree that I am not the strongest drawer but I have been trying to create my illustration own style which looks deliberately rough and childish, with aggressive crudely drawn faces and crooked teeth.  For some reason I like my models to look like they are angry creatures that are going to bite you. One of my tutors told me to look at the work of Ralph Steadman, Aubrey Beardsley and Quentin Blake, and I was really inspired by thier distinctive rough, yey slightly dark illustration styles.

Ralph Steadman

Aubrey Beardsley 

Quentin Blake

To make it clear of the type of person and image that I wanted to portray, I did an illustration page of my 'muse' for this collection. I used watercolour instead of my usual coloured pencils and pens as I thought it looked more fluid and professional. One of the first things I noticed about Beth when I met her was how beautiful I thought she was despite being scruffy and homeless, so decided to make my character a beautiful homeless girl. I did both a full length drawing and a close up of her face. In the full length illustration, I put her in my favourite orange dress design.

I made her body language look vulnerable and I had her sitting on the floor with her legs bent revealing her knickers and with her bra strap hanging out, which hints to the tragic fact that homeless young girls are often sexually abused, but also in a weird way kind of glamorises and sexulaizes her. I put an empty MacDonald's cup and a sign saying 'Spare some change' next to show that she is quite obviously meant to be poor and homeless. In a way this illustration is more like a styling idea than a reality. 

I drew a close up of her face as a way of getting to know and understand my 'muse', the process was like looking deep into her eyes. I deliberately made her look pale, thin and unhappy. I gave her hollow cheekbones, a pronounced collarbone, bloodshot eyes and a pained expression to show that she is in distress.  I also gave a her gappy crooked teeth because I wanted to uglify her otherwise pretty face and gave her straggly, messy blond hair with the roots growing. This whole look, cheesy as it sounds, is meant to reflect the 1990's 'Herion Chic' look. Disturbingly, one of my tutors commented that it looked like Peaches Geldof, who recently tragically passed away from a heroin overdose, which really disturbed me but got me thinking about whether I subconsciously based my characters appearance on her slightly because I was deeply upset by her death. 

Homeless Dress Designs

These bright orange designs are developments of the rough sketches of designs in my research book using the draped shapes from a blanket which a homeless girl had wrapped around her. Tried to make them look layered, elegant and flowing, like Ancient Greek robes, Indian Saris or the outfits worn by Buddhist monks, to link to other cultural contexts. 

I decided to colour them all bright orange not only because an orange blanket was my original source of inspiration for these designs but also because I have noticed that I seem to use the colour orange a lot and I wanted to emphasise this. Orange seems to be becoming a bit of a design signature for me, I think I am drawn to it because it is cheerful but also quite unusual. It is also gender neutral, which I think suits the androgynous style of my aesthetic well. The last 3 dresses are developments from my rough design sketches inspired by placing some sketches of homeless people on the body. I used the same basic structure, but added colours and prints that I took from my original sketches. I think these dresses are interesting but I need to think more about how they would be put together as they are all very complex structures. They look very wrapped and layered so I could do some experimenting on the stand with tieing and wrapping fabric to create a structure. It is not intentional but these designs remind me of Comme des Garcons in the way that they greatly distort the shape of the body and are almost ugly and anti-fashion. 

However, all of the designs in this 'collection' are a practise of my method of using visual codes as design inspiration. They are too simple, basic and not developed enough to be used as a final outcome. However I found designing this 'collection' a good way of gauging what ideas I liked from my research and wanted to take further and what I thought was weaker and wanted to eliminated.

Layered Puffer Jacket and Plastic Bag Man and the Workman

I found the outfit of this man very interesting because of all the different layers, shapes, textures and colours. I thought about extracting designs from it but I really liked it as it was, so instead I created an look which was a literal interpretation of his outfit, but cleaner, simplified and more refined. I could probably still refine it further, but I feel it would loose the intriguing simplicity of looking like it was just thrown on. 

I put my workman inspired dress designs into the collection as I thought they were my strongest designs in this high-neck style. I didn't think the ones which were inspired by tracksuits were very impact full. They were more wearable designs than statement pieces. I chose to include my 'City' logo blazer as it was my favourite out of my blazer designs as it was the most simple yet the most powerful. I chose to layer it over one of my workman inspired dresses to create a contrast between two different kind of City people- a smart office worker and an industrial workman. 

Throughout this collection I have used different variations of chunky boots as the footwear. I tend to always draw these kinds of shoes on my illustrations because these are the kind of shoes I usually wear and I like to bring an element of my own personal style identity to my illustrations. However, on my last illustrations I decided to incorporate my 'ugly shoe' design into my collection. 

Fuck the police

I designed two outfits inspired  using the the basic structures of the rough designs in my sketchbook inspired by the layered and panelled structure of police uniforms. I also took a lot of details from the uniforms such as the pockets, collars, badges, straps and the shapes of the walkie-talkies and guns and incorporated them into my designs. My navy blue, black and grey colour scheme was lifted from the stereotypical colour palette of uniforms and the grey tartan and blue camouflage prints were lifted from other uniforms which share this colour palette- school uniforms and Navy uniforms (hence the colour's name is Navy Blue). 

In opposition I designed 3 tracksuits inspired by aggressive 'hoodies'. I really liked the Anarchy logo embroidered  hoodie dress that I designed previously so I experimented with designing a full tracksuit in this style as I think continuation of a theme throughout different pieces is essential to design a successful collection. This tracksuit also highlights how I think that 'hoodies' are the 21st century equivalent of punks, as in this design I have combined the shape of a modern day tracksuit with a logo typically associated with punk culture.

The next tracksuit is really baggy, oversized and draped. It is meant to symbolise how tracksuits are also often worn by slobs who are are overweight and don't care about their physical appearance therefore wear comfortable clothes that conceal their bodies. The draped structure and grey jersey was inspired by an image from my research book of a young man in a very loose grey tracksuit. Essentially, this piece is an "anti-fashion" statement.

My last tracksuit has a roughly drawn council estate print. I made a rough sketch of a council estate in my sketchbook and thought it would be a good idea to experiment with emblazoning it across a tracksuit, as the image is a symbol of what the item of clothing represents.

I have now decided that because my collection is starting to look very androgynous, it is a unisex collection. 

Say what you want, tell e'm who you are

I decided I wanted this collection to be A/W because I wanted it to be quite dark and grungy. The first 4 (and 7 looks) pages of the collection were inspired by the symbolism behind Ciaran's jacket. For the first look, I designed a grey, ribbed turtleneck dress, with grey fur at the bottom, inspired by an outfit worn by one of The Stranglers of a turtleneck and a faux fur coat. Chose it make it grey as a reference to the fact that the photo was black and white. On top of this a used a jacket design from my research book, which said 'say what you want' on the back. I feel that this jacket highlights the point of writing on the back of jackets- to make a statement. I chose to make the style of the jacket a classic biker shape, with quilted shoulders like Ciaran's jacket. I also made it a clean cut and a cropped length to add an element of sophisticating and femininity. I accessorised the outfit with some gold necklaces also inspired by the man from The Stranglers. I think that jewelry can add a very personal touch to an outfit and can show a strong element of a persons identity. 

For the next outfit designed a loose fitting black hoodie dress with red Anarchy logos covering it. My initial design for this in my research book was a full length version but I thought that this length would be more flattering and wearable. Over this I put my 'Tell e'm who your are' jacket design, which is another expression of the purpose of customised jackets- to express your identity.

On the next page I added some samples of grey ribbed cotton jersey, grey faux fur, some hand embroidered black jersey and some hand-painted black leather. I decided to roughly hand embroid the anarchy logos onto the black jersey and hand paint the the lettering using acrylic paints as a reference to the DIY aesthetic of Ciaran's jacket and punk culture. 

A collection inspired by some random people

As I had already gained a lot of material from my research I decided it I was now ready to go straight into designing. I noticed that I had a lot of quite complete and well developed design ideas in my research sketchbook already, and they all seemed to have a strong theme. 

The emerging theme seemed to be the connotations of working class culture. Ciaran's jacket has strong connotations of 20th Century working class youth rebellion. He explained his dad used to be an anarchist but is now ironically a policemen, which brought up the theme in my head of youth culture against the police, which is extremely relevant in modern Britain, particularly after the London riots in 2011 and the fact that the newspapers are always full of stories of youth crime.  I also featured a lot images of young people wearing tracksuits, which are the stereotypical outfits of violent youths. This made me think about how young people in tracksuits have become a very threatening, frightening image of modern society, which effectively makes 'chavs' and 'hoodies' the punks of the 21st century as they are the contemporary youth rebellion that send shock-waves across the older generations. 

I also looked quite heavily at workman's uniforms, and used them as design inspiration. Being a workman is a stereotypically working class profession, so this made me notice quite a strong theme emerging. At this point, I have also noticed that although I originally intended to be a womenswear designer, my project has so far been very masculine as it has featured a lot of strong male stereotypes. This could either work well as a contrast or I may decide to do menswear as a final outcome. 

My other main source of inspiration was homeless people, which is nasty as it sounds, right at the bottom of the scale of social class. I really want to explore and develop this theme as I think the idea of glamorising something which is the complete opposite could be very interesting. If I made some garments inspired by homeless people I would like to use quite expensive looking fabrics, and make it quite sleek and sophisticated looking for an extreme contrast.  

This is the introduction page of my design sketchbook. I selected the people who's personal style inspired me the most to feature on it. I wanted to show where my initail design ideas came from. I wrote "A collection inspired by some random people' in a bold, clumsy colourful font as it reflects the aesthetic I wanted to create for this collection. By writing some 'random people', I wanted to emphisase the ordinaryness of the people that I was using as inspiration. 

After photographing Beth and exploring the theme of homelessness, I decided to photograph more homeless people that I found aesthetically interesting. These two men in sleeping bags  were also photographed around Brick Lane, whilst I was on my way to the Whitechapel Gallery to see the Hanna Hosch Exhibition. I was drawn to them because of the interesting, organic shapes of their sleeping bags and the clashing colours and patterns in their mishmash of blankets, plastic bags and rubbish.

I drew them out onto tracing paper in the same style that I did with my drawing of Beth the homeless girl, detailed yet roughly drawn, with bold a bold and minimal colour palette. I thought this illustration style worked really well for the theme of homelessness as it had a gritty, rawness about it. I also wanted to show a continuation of a theme throughout my project. 

I really liked the blobby, organic shapes that the human forms in sleeping bags created, so I experimented with placing them on the body to generate design inspiration. I thought the initial shapes were interesting, but they needed refining in order to look like a garment, so I did some quick sketches in pencil of some more structured designs.



I plan to develop these sketches further and add colour to them. I noticed that the shapes and structures of these designs are almost abstract pieces of clothing, and push the limits of what a garment should be. I would defiantly like to have element of this in my final outcome.