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Contemporary Designer Research:

Benjamin Benmoyal!

Benjamin Benmoyal is fashion designer who founded his label in 2020 and based in Paris. He worked with combining upcycling, craftmanship and textile innovations. All his designs are garments are made with a very unique fabric woven out of recycled audio and video cassette tapes such as VHS. He spent years developing this technique to make it viable on industrial scales. As the digital age made them useless, he is sourcing these cassettes from people and companies all around the world who wanted to get rid of them.

‘’As a former commando paratrooper, I wanted to transcribe through my work the desire to recover the naivety lost during my military service. Therefore, I started his label by creating unique fabrics, woven out of my childhood Disney movies VHS tapes as a symbol of my stolen innocence’’, he said.

Since then, the brand has evolved and Benjamin kept exploring and developing different weaving techniques to create new fabrics entirely woven out of upcycled yarns and materials.

The Fall/Winter 2023 collection is focused on crossing boundaries between womenswear and menswear as well as introducing craft to streetwear-inspired garments. By making hoodies, sweatpants and sweatshirts out of unique handwoven fabrics, this collection aims to democratize craftsmanship and giving a luxury and creative alternative to jersey clothes.

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Contemporary Designer Research: Alexandra Sipa!

Alexandra Sipa is a sustainable and circular designer. The designer explores new and innovative ways to incorporate waste materials into fashion design to interpret and bring light to specific issues around waste, she does all of these while celebrating Eastern European culture.

She is well known for creating one-of-a-kind show pieces made entirely from discarded electrical wires. Sipa releases collections outside of the traditional fashion schedule, due to her belief that the traditional cycles of fashion are not conducive to sustainable practice.

I feel like Sipa is a great designer when recycling and up cycling is put into consideration. However, I wouldn’t wear most of her designs as they seem a bit too extra.

See: https://www.dezeen.com/2020/09/15/alexandra-sipa-romanian-camouflage-central-saint-martins-fashion/amp/

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Contemporary Designer Research:

Ellen Hadokova Larson!!

Ellen Hadokova Larson is a Swedish designer who up cycles existing materials into something new and adds value and functionality to it. She creates her designs by deconstructing vintage and deadstock clothing, then, remake them into new items, flipping the inherent function in the process. Bras which once held breasts now hold keys and lipbalm as handbags. A beach parasol becomes the core structure of a body-sized rosette. 

Ellen being the first designer I researched for my reconstruction and deconstruction project really worked out for me. Her works really gave me insights on what I’m expected to do. Her designs are unbelievably amazing!!

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Week 2&3:

Process Board:

The process board shows the summary of my project, from the main garments to the final pieces. I enjoyed every bit of making this process board. It was really nice.

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Week 2&3:

Reconstruction:

For the reconstruction part of the project, it was easier for me to redesign the final piece on the stand, pin it and sew through on the sewing machine.

First I pinned the front part with pleats and sew through, attached the collar, sew the white band, the attached the tiny white pleats to the back of the cloth.

I think this is the most challenging part of the whole project. I made a lot of sewing errors and I had to deconstruct a lot of times before I finally got it right. Wasn’t as easy as I thought, but it was worth every time I spent on it!! The results is fabulous!!

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Week one:

Deconstruction 2:

Finally, I decided to put my 5 main designs side by side to create a collection line up. The line up really looks amazing, I just feel like I could do better.

After setting up the line up, I then decided to pick my favorite of all in preparation for Week 2, the reconstruction week.

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Contemporary Designers Research:

Stella Nina McCartney!!

Stella Nina McCartney CBE is an English fashion designer who grew interest in fashion at a very young age. At 13, she designed her first jacket. She is a lifelong vegetarian, therefore, uses no leather or fur in her designs. She is a consistent supporter of human right. However, he use of oil-based synthetics still raised ecological concerns.

Personally, I prefer her designs with prints, they are breathtaking and absolutely adorable.

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Contemporary Designer Research:

Sidahmed Alphadi Seidnaly!

Alphadi is a notable Nigerian fashion designer often known as the "Magician of the Desert".

Alphadi started his label in 1984 and his first haute couture line was released in 1985 at the Paris International Tourism Tradeshow. He uses his designs to showcase and celebrate the beauty of the African continent, its rich histories and cultures. He is for the fashion and culture extravaganza. He is the founder of the Festival International de la Mode Africaine (International Festival of African Fashion) or FIMA, supported by UNESCO (1998).

Alphadi's work draws upon cultures and design practices from across the continent. Kuba cloth – originating from the ancient Kuba kingdom of central Africa, Kuba is a common feature in his collections. It is made from woven raffia, with the intricate decoration achieved through cut-pile embroidery. Designs are stitched onto the cloth and then raffia fibre is drawn through with a needle and snipped with a knife to make a dense pile, creating a plush, velvet-like effect.

This dress was created as a homage to Tuareg jewellers and their historic metalwork practices. Inspired by the strength of women, the metal breastplate represents the woman as a warrior, the harsh metal contrasting with a billowing layer of printed cotton cloth.

Using a strip of Téra-Téra cloth on the jacket, Alphadi updates this classic skirt suit. A handwoven fabric traditionally made in Tera, Niger, this vibrant cloth is used historically to cover brides on their wedding day. Alphadi references this history, creating a design to represent a strong woman, fully independent and dynamic, pursuing her dreams.

From hats to waistcoats, Alphadi is regularly seen wearing his own designs. He often wears a shallow, rounded hat decorated with embroidery – a style which is popular in many regions in Africa – known variously as the hula, fílá or kofi.

I love everything about his design. Even though the inspiration was drawn from traditional wear, they look absolutely modern. I think he is a creative and very good designer. His designs looks like the innovation of our African attires.

Reference: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/magician-of-the-desert-alphadi

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Contemporary Designer Research:

Imane Ayissi:

Imane Ayissi is a Cameroonian dancer, performer, model, and eponymous haute couture fashion designer. He worked with other brand before he founded his own label in 2004.

His designs are merge of the contemporary and traditional style. He was known for his consistently colorful creations that feature simple yet eye-catching silhouettes. His designs are also characterized by their distinct element of “African-ness” which often elegantly unite traditional African tribal art elements with Parisian couture principles.

His designs relate to the human form; volume, movement, pleats and draping are some of more prominent features of his collections, elements he employs due to their universally flattering nature. He’s also conscious of environmental issues as they pertain to garment making, making it a priority to make use of natural and organic materials with the lowest possible impact, favoring materials like cotton, vegetable tanned leathers, or textiles dyed with natural ingredients or printed by hand—often producing on the continent where possible.

Ayissi is regarded as the first Sub-Saharan designer to officially show at Haute Couture Week in Paris in 2020, where he presented a collection that received near universal praise.

I really love his designs, the fabric prints and how he is obviously carrying along the traditional African attire with the contemporary style. His designs are what I could really wear.

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Contemporary Designer Research:

Anna Hoang!

Anna Hoang is the founder of a fashion brand, ‘Anna Quan’. She is a contemporary Australian womenswear label designer that defines epitomists simplicity, femininity, and subtle luxury with her designs. Her inspiration is from every day life, she is more interested in designing wears that creates practical solutions to how we live our daily lives. She is very much into minimal aesthetics.

At the early stage of her brand, she worked more on a signature design of a shirt with extravagant cuffs. Later on she took a turning point and widen started going beyond that niche. The reason for this according to her was her visitation to the Paris showroom and seeing how other designers have built their own collection and brand. From this statement, I couldn’t agree less that seeing other people’s work will encourage you to do more and I intend to push more of this into my work in the future. I really think it would help with the ‘reconstruction’ and ‘deconstruction’ project.

I looked into this designer because I genuinely want to make sure my reconstructed outfit is something I could wear, maybe not every day outfit. For me, everyday outfits works better as I hardly visit places that requires extra fashion.

However, after researching through her design, she might be too basic for what I really like but they are all really cool designs.

More Designs:

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Week one:

Deconstruction:

After deconstructing the two garments I had, I proceeded to using the stand to reconstruct the garments in different ways.

I enjoyed every bit of this process. I was literally having fun while working on it.

Below are some of the designs I worked I reconstructed:

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Fashion/ Textile Discipline:

For this project, we were instructed to get two garments from home or a second hand store. I got mine from the second hand store as I barely have enough cloth to spare.

I’m definitely eager to see the results final piece I will reconstruct from the two garments above.

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Week 1:

Garments Observation:

I did well to do all the required process of my garments observation and I jotted them down in my sketch book.

Below are the pictures of pages from my sketch book that justifies my Garments observation stage:

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Movement Statement!

For the ‘Movement’ brief, I decided to keep up with my first semester idea which was about butterflies. Earlier during my ‘temporary’ brief, I was all about the butterfly wings and it’s structure. However, I concentrated on the motion of the wing this time.

Fashion and Textile: For this elective, I started by trying to figure out more about a butterfly’s wing and the beautiful lines and shapes which I find very interesting. The whole process led me to the clear similarity between the flutter motion of a butterfly and that of the heart flutter.

Photography and Moving Image: For this elective, I concentrated more on capturing the motion of a butterfly which led me to an abstract effect formed when a butterfly flutters in a very rapid manner. I consider the abstract effects a visible vibration (if that makes sense).

Animation and Motion Design: For this elective, I had to choose amongst list of storylines I wrote in order to develop it into an animation. I animated a body suit with kaleidoscope.

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Animation and Motion Design:

I tried out another stop motion animation whereby I have a group of butterflies fluttering. It’s so satisfying.

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Animation and Motion Design Elective:

Final Animation:

For my final stop motion Animation, I worked on a croquis on a bodysuit with an attachment to the front part of the suit. The attachment at the front has few fluttering butterflies on it which gradually flew off the bodysuit.

The final animation is very far from what I imagined…it looks so unrealistic.

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Animation and Motion Design Elective:

Task 5: Hero Shot!

I made up my mind on slow motion animation and below is my Hero shot.

Having the illustrated model on an orange stairs with the background butterfly designs.