As always I come up pretty late with roundup posts, even
though I’ve had my fair share of free time and good internet to write this I’m
deciding to do it on a teary train journey after an emotional trip home for
reasons that I don’t feel like delving into atm.
I was inspired by Mayagoo and her semester roundups posts to
write up all the projects I’ve done this year in uni, as well as some other fun
things I’ve been working on.
Project 1.
Introduction to Fashion – Love and Hate Project
I struggled a lot with the start of uni, it took me a long
time to get my rhythm together and find my people and the same goes for my
first project, I didn’t really understand the project and took a lot of time
figuring out how to process and work through my ideas. The brief was to take
pictures of things you love and hate which seems like the stupidest theme to me
as I generally don’t think to take pictures of things I hate and that became a
struggle to get inspired by pictures I’d taken last minuet which resorted in a
really shit sketchbook to begin with. I only really liked the workshops in the
first semester, knit, print and sewing where I just got the chance to make and
do things rather than struggle, and I mean struggle, through pattern cutting.
My final piece was a knitted full length dress inspired by the shapes of
Swedish architecture and the layering of slate and despite the heartache of
fully fashioning and patronising metal work technicians I actually love the
dress.
Project 2. Black and White project
After a full garment to make for the first project our
lectures let us relax a little with a textiles project based on the theme black
and white… I’m never going to be a minimalist and I get so bored by ‘monochrome
fashion’ (just because you do a variation on a 1960’s black and white check
mini dress it don’t make you saint Lauren) the idea of a whole project on black
and white depressed me creatively for a long while. My theme was a mix of body
‘horror’, surreal black and white photography, kinda gross stuff like braces
and teeth especially and old weird horror movies like Spider Baby and Twins of
Evil. I think this project was probably my weirdest, having to explain that the
knit pattern I created that ‘looks like its inspired by florals or light
delicate prints’ was actually taken from a Richard Avedon photo of a naked guy
covered in bees wasn’t my finest moment. Out there themes do generally interest
me more though, I’m not interested in doing fruit inspired collections or crap
about structural architecture, concepts not clichés please.
The finals outcome for this project was a collection of
textile samples and mine were mostly weird treated knit samples, lazercutting
or embroidery. They were all supposed to be a bit surreal, creepy to the touch
kind of samples that make you feel weird but still like you want to touch it.
Side Project
COS Research booklet
Part of our degree is Professional Practice module which is
should really be titled ‘lets not leave these students with no prospects once
they graduate’ aka: lets learn how to perform properly in industry and sit
through boring powerpoint presentations. As you can tell I didn’t really enjoy
this module as much. The biggest project was to make a trend booklet for the
company COS and I chose the environment and survival, even though I kind of
hated it my booklet was one of the few sent to COS and to one of our twin unis
in Europe for them to look through so I guess that was pretty cool.
(I couldn't figure out how to turn off the guidelines while taking screen shots and my subscription for adobe suite has run out so apologies)
(the spaces are for textile samples and paint charts that I stuck on once printed)
3rd Project – Topshop Digital Wave outfit
Ahh consumerism, my least favourite part about studying
fashion, market research is literally my least enjoyable activity and just
reminds me how much my degree and hopefully future career depends on coercing
people into spending money on things they probably don’t really need. This brief
was to design an range of outfits for Topshop based on a WGSN future trend and
make one of the outfits. I chose Digital Wave because really a trend based in
bright colours, futuristic textiles and retro styling was probably the only one
I was going to pick really. Once again I mostly stayed in knit but mixed it up
with some other textile ideas, making a clear plastic denim jacket with black glitter
trapped inside and a body con sporty knitted dress underneath with bright
electric coloured stripes. I actually loved this make, even if it was a bit hap
hazard, a lot of the working out was done while I was making the final thing
and some of the seams on the jacket might have been glued down afterwards but
who really cares right?
A whole first year gone and this is what I've gone and done.
I might do an outside of uni catch up post aswell as I did do a lot of stuff outside of uni this year and especially this summer
xxx
Rosie
