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Moodboard

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Making a swatch

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Draping and experimenting

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Generating ideas - line-up

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Generating ideas

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Patchwork and fashion

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Patchwork Research

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Workshop with Rebecca - Patchwork techniques

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Wordspin - Patchwork

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Reconstructed Piece

I modelled the piece myself as I made it to fit me as an actual wearable outfit.

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Reconstruction

Before I started reconstruction I experimented with several elements from my designs to drape them on the mannequin to help me decide which one to make. I decided to make a skirt based on the underlayer of design 6 in the line-up.

I made the skirt by sewing all deconstructed parts of garment to a basic belt made of a strip of calligo fabric. I used the original belt from garment 2 as belt for the skirt and I sowed it over the calligo. The skirt is made as a wrap skirt that closes with push buttons. I used the original collar and cuffs from garment 1 as assecoires with the skirt and finished those by sewing the edges closed again

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Playing around with designs

For my line-up designs I made rough outlines on tracing paper so it would be easier to visualise how they would look from the back. While I was working on my line-up I noticed that some designs actually would go really well together. So I played around with the outlines on tracing paper to mix and match my designs and see what that would do.

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Artist Research - Deconstruction

There are 3 designers who immediately spring to mind as the uncrowned royal family of deconstruction: Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo, and Martin Margiela. During the ‘80s, a time when the fashion world was consumed by form-fitting dresses, polished glamour and flashy supermodels, Yamamoto and Kawakubo sent shockwaves through the industry with their avant-garde distressed fashions. They sent deliberately shapeless clothes that enveloped the body down the runway, complete with frayed scissor cut hemlines, layered fabrics, and obvious rips and tears, challenging the Western world’s concept of beauty. These pioneering designers revolutionised fashion, paving the way for the likes of Vivienne Westwood and Martin Margiela who looked to this distressed punk look for inspiration. Margiela helped fuelled the fashion revolution, taking the baton from Yamamoto and Kawakubo, and making a name for himself by experimenting with proportions, seams, hems and stitching.

 Yohji Yamamoto

The connection between deconstruction, originally a French philosophical movement, and contemporary fashion design has yet to be fully explored by fashion historians. There is no direct evidence that such ideas were the motivating force in the early designs of Yohji Yamamoto. It is more likely that he combined a mélange of influences: the devastation and rapid rebuilding of Japan in the postwar era; the revolt against bourgeois tastes; an affiliation with European street styles; and a desire, like that of the early proponents of abstraction in fine art, to find a universal expression of design by erasing elements that assign people to specific socioeconomic and gender roles.

Aesthetically, the dressmaking techniques that gave Yamamoto's work its deconstructed look were also related to traditional non-Western methods of clothing construction as well as to the concept that natural, organic, and imperfect objects can also be beautiful. Yamamoto's clothes masked the body with voluminous folds and layers of dark fabric; in addition, they diminished such evident elements of clothing as frontality and clear demarcations between the inside and outside of a garment.

Rei Kawakubo

“I never intended to start a revolution. I only came to Paris with the intention of showing what I thought was strong and beautiful. It just so happened that my notion was different from everybody else’s.” - Rei Kawakubo

Establishing her label in 1969, and showing in Tokyo since 1975, Rei Kawakubo debuted in Paris in April 1981. Before a small audience at the InterContinental Hotel, Kawakubo presented a collection of oversized and asymmetrical garments alongside fellow Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto. In 1978, Kawakubo had resolved to create something new by focusing on materials. Using contrasting textures, fabrics and cotton quilting insertions, she created a new and more voluminous look, different from her previous work. The collection, for autumn–winter 1978–79, was a turning point, as the first created using original textiles.3 By the following year, Kawakubo had extended this desire to ‘start from zero’ conceptually to ‘do things that have not been done before’4 and her 1981 collection was evidence of this maturing and rule-breaking new aesthetic.

Kawakubo’s runway collections of the following year – Holes, autumn–winter 1982–83, and Patchworks and X, spring–summer 1983 – were even more revolutionary. Presented on the official ready-to-wear schedule before press and buyers, the two collections featured garments that were purposely distressed and unfinished, and predominantly black. Holes included Kawakubo’s infamous hole- and dropped-stitch Sweater, created by deliberately configuring the knitting machines to produce this effect, while Patchworks and X featured patches dyed with different shades of black ink (made from charcoal normally used for Japanese calligraphy), alongside exposed seams, intentionally frayed edges and incomplete forms. In an era of body-conscious design and glamour, Kawakubo’s clothes were an affront. Critics called the look ‘apocalyptic’ or worse,5 while others admired the qualities of ‘newness, strangeness, inventiveness and surprisingly fresh thinking for communicating strength and elegance’.

Martin Margiela

During the 1980s, the Japanese avantgardists, with Rei Kawakubo—creator of the label Comme des Garcons—had turned the fashion scene upside-down with their eccentric and ground-breaking designs. Martin Margiela and the Antwep Six would carry on the work, revolting against the luxurious fashion world with garments of oversized proportions such as long arms, and with linings, seams and hems on the outside. The concept of deconstruction (also embraced by Kawakubo) is important for the understanding of Margiela’s fashion statement. Margiela famously redesigns by hand objects such as old wigs, canvases and silk scarves into couture garments.

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Artist Research - Sustainability

UMA NOMAD

Uma Nomad is a small business in the Netherlands run by three sisters. They do everything they possibly can to make their clothing sustainable and ethical.

The fabric: All the fabric they use are waste material, second hand, broken and/or rejected which due to small imperfections, stains or tears cannot be used for their original purpose anymore.

Zero waste: They use zero waste pattern making by fitting the pattern pieces as precisely as possible on the fabrics they're using, using at least 92% of the fabric. With the leftover pieces they make bags to send the clothing pieces in, superhero capes for kids and headscarves. The smallest pieces are used for lining, drawstrings or borders.

Ethical: They have an atelier in India, in which their tailors and seamstresses get treated really well in a safe and comfortable working environment and they get paid a fair wage, by the day. Their packaging is biodegradable and they offset the CO2 emissions of the shipping of their packages by planting trees.

Atelier Borealis

Atelier Borealis was started by Bo Bleeker, who is currently studying at Akademie Vogue in Amsterdam and is graduating this year end of May. She makes commissioned clothing and costumes as atelier Borealis. I’m using her as an artist reference as she is also focussing on sustainability a lot. For the collection she is currently working on for her exams, she is using recycled jeans. When she started working on “waist not” she asked for old garments made out of jean fabric to reuse and upcycle those for her collection.

Stella McCartney

She focusses on creating clothes that are meant to last and believes in creating pieces that are not going to damage the environment. The main focus of Stella McCartney is to push her brand towards circularity, innovative materials and investing in cutting-edge technologies to decrease environmental impact. She has deeply embedded cruelty-free and ethical practices in the DNA of her brand and firmly stands against the use of leather, fur, skins and feathers in her collections. She found more environmental friendly and sustainable alternatives for most materials. Her sustainable approach also extends to her entire business, her offices are number one on the green list and she makes use of renewable energy to power her stores and studios in the UK.

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Line-up

Out of the 12 designs I made, I picked 6 designs to form a line-up and put them in a fitting order.

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Draping, drawing and Designing

Before, during and after the deconstruction I draped the garments on the mannequin. Based on these drapings I did several sketches to experiment on designs and study the details to get a better understanding of the garments and the two fabrics. From this I made 12 designs on croquis. I documented this whole process in my sketchbook.