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Context of Practice 1— (New Tech) Innovative Materials

Fashion with human civilisation has been the same progress, from the transmission of textile and hand sewing for thousands of years to the current machine pattern cutting and production, today's fashion industry even made a breakthrough in the new technology materials, 3D printing is an example. Although the current 3D printing has not yet a large area of popularity, but a part of fashion designers constantly attempt to innovation which brought a sense of fashionable and distinctive 3D clothing into the public. Benefit from the combination of liberal design and technology, the traditional industry has become more and more fashionable and a variety of elements to redefine the beauty of fashion.

Considering more and more 3D printing materials have been introduced currently, so whether it is non-professional designers or senior industry experts, the importance of 3D print fashion is essential. Therefore, this practical work contains a concept of 3D to design the innovative products and made the branding stratagem by groups. This brand is called Revokid, ‘Revo’ intended to revolution, so from the brand name means to launch the innovative products, and ‘Kid’ is obvious that the customers are mainly children. This brand is combined with 3D print to make some the bag design with the appearance which children liked and used the lightweight and waterproof material to make it more practical. Figure 1 is the branding stratagem with some samples design sketches. Figure 2 is an introduction of the main product, it shows the two states of this relatively practical dual-use bag. The backpack state can be used almost every day, and considering the schoolwork is, in fact, weighing more and more heavily on pupils, so this bag added a luggage design which also good for some heavy carrying when going for a picnic… This branding stratagem is successful because it combined the idea of innovative material and technology, and it gives an experience of considering how to make the branding stratagem.

Technology to give life unlimited surprises and imaginations. ‘For me technology essentially broadens my language as a designer. I’m interested in languages that allow you to go beyond consideration of the body or “normal” clothing to create new ways of looking. The importance of technology in my work is that it presents a fresh means of expression.’ (Hussein Chalayan, 2004) 3D printing technology in the future may change the life. the 3D print of future will be an excellent technique for fashion designers. It will play a huge role in the process of design and production, and more and more designers will trying to combine 3D print and some other innovative technology with traditional handicrafts to explore the future direction of the design.

Bibliography:

1.Quinn, B. (2002), ‘Hussein Chalayan, Fashion and Technology’ in Clark, H. and Brody, D.  (eds.) (2009), Design Studies: A Reader, Oxford and New York: Berg

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Context of Practice 1 — Art and Fashion

Fashion film is a unique expression of fashion which combined fashion design and multimedia art, perhaps the feelings of the film sometimes are more intuitive than traditional art so that people more interested. First of all, fashion film itself involves a lot of elements, and each element could be a kind of art, such as performing art, music, lighting art, photography and so on. There is no an individual art not absorbed the other because innovation is a new product achieved by absorbing other elements then fused together.

��For me, the criteria of what's a good film and what's a good fashion film are really quite the same, except that [with the latter] fashion has to be the protagonist. Just because someone is moving in front of the camera, it doesn't make it a film. A film has a story.” (Suleman Anaya, 2013)

A good artwork need reflect the intention of the producer, this film is about gender.Today’s social atmosphere is sick, people normally think a girl is cool with her own unique temperament and ideas when she has a neutral appearance, but not everyone can give more understanding to a man who likes to wear womenswear. This social phenomenon is undoubtedly a gender label impose upon people although it is gradually subsided, but its existence embodied that today's society is still not really equality between the genders. This film is taken the idea of fashion can be no gender, people do not need to cater to others and what to wear is entirely upon themselves.The model in this film is Gordon who love the feminine dress because more fit the theme, the feminine style garment he wears made by cardboard which inspired by architecture around college. The film was shot at the corner of the lecture theatre. The beginning of the film is only a black and white tone, shooting the effect of the moving lights on the ceiling, then with the music start take people into the atmosphere. Light is the most direct emotion teller than other elements in a fashion film, after the colour of the light changed with the change of background music rhythm, the light becomes similar to a bar’s light with the model appear, he blurred eyes with a kind of assured as if he is thinking about something. The non-mainstream dressed model squatted alone in the dark corner and smoking, only the music accompanied by silently.

The story of this film is not much, but the viewer can guess the story through the music, light, composition and the model's action and facial expression. Back to semiotics, in fact, the theme is clear that fashion is no gender although apparently not everyone able to understand, but the model gives a sense of confidence that makes people feel nothing wrong, the most importance is people accept themselves. Art comes from life and above life, the intention of this fashion film is also derived from some unequal social phenomena, so in this view the film successful because whatever the garment, lighting and environment, they are consistent the theme and let the viewers get the meaning.

The intentions are the same while fashion designers and artists in the creation. Fashion and art have always been one, they cross over each other.

Bibliography:

1.BOF, Suleman Anaya, As Festival Opens, Diane Pernet Discusses the State of Fashion Film, 2013, https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/fashion-films/asvoff-diane-pernet

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Context of Practice 1 — Architecture & fashion

Beautiful things are always connected each other, fashion is no exception. Many fashion designers are enthusiastic about travelling, and they get inspiration from the local people’s wear, the local culture and architecture. The relationship between fashion and architecture has been inspired by each other for a long time, although both original fashion and buildings are designed to provide shelter to humans, but so far, both have developed as an art. From this point of view, the relationship of them is harmonious and unified. Whether the medieval French fashion was inspired by the Gothic style, or the design of pleated skirts which popular in recent years, the inspiration is also from architecture, the architecture structure changes and the three-dimensional modelling are providing a new silhouette for garments. Christian Dior said, “I wanted to be considered a good craftsman. I wanted my dresses to be constructed like buildings, molded to the curves of the female form, stylising its shape.” (Christian Dior Quotes) This shows architecture has a role in fashion inspiration, if the architecture is aim to proved people an accommodation, then garments can be the smallest architectures.

The cardboard garment in these two pictures was inspired by architecture, at the beginning, everyone went out to shoot the architectures around the college, and then back to the studio to draw a couple of designs, after the group discussion then finally elect one to made which is the one in the two pictures. (The original manuscript has been lost) The inspiration of the cardboard top was from the architectures on right side and top left corner in Figure 1, and the button inspiration comes from the left bottom. In the production process, everyone in the group did different things, some people were responsible for the cardboard cutting, some strung the finished cardboard pieces together. After completing the garment in Figure 1, this dress was sprayed with a black paint (as Figure 2 shown), which inspired by the colour of the church on the right side of the second picture. therefore, from an objective point, this work does match the theme, and the inspirations entirely from the architectures and reflected well. But because of the shortage of time, this work has not been fully improved.

After this practice, it is easy to found that building an architectural sense is of great help to fashion design, but more important is to understand the cultural heritage behind the appearance,. Architecture and fashion always can not exist in a separate art form, and they are bound to be linked to the ideological, emotional, and cultural of a particular period, and restricted on material, structure and technology. Architectural design and fashion design embodied in the design ideas, the work shows the designer’s inward world, they transmit their insight of the extraordinary but wonderful life through architecture and fashion.

Bibliography:

1.Christian Dior Quotes, Brainy Quote, https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/christian_dior.html

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Context of Practice 1 — Gender

The contemporary fashion is largely inspired from the late 60s and early 70s fashion, young consumers and people who addicted to that period are committed to a revival that moment. At that time, the neutral style fashion largely belonged to the part of the rock musicians, like Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie. But now, perhaps with the society becomes more and more diversified, the dressings which different from general style has been accepted by the public, so the gender blending style has become one of the mainstream of today's fashion. In fact, as early as before the First World War, the neutral style of womenswear was born with the launch of Chanel's design, and also YSL’s smoking suit can be another example. Until today, both menswear and womenswear all have gender blending design, such as Gucci, J W Anderson, Vetements and Moto Guo ... In these brand, some designs have both simple and uninhibited style, and some are minimalist style but contain charming essence, they always showing the free and easy features of the unisex.

In order to make a unisex to express the understanding of gender, this unisex garment was produced by a men's T-shirt. (It should be a shirt, but bought this T-shirt by mistake, luckily the process of changing a menswear to the unisex garment are the same.) In order to make the men's T-shirt more unisex, one of the most common ways is made the oversized garment more fits the body, so the first step of modifying the T-shirt is to join darts. To one step closer the unisex, the bottom of the T-shirt was cut into irregular shape and added some ruffles which very common in womenswear. The collar design added a very feminine detail and the left of the front added some flowing tassel design which made by different colours and types of fabric, and finally made a hollow design on the right arm of the shoulder which can usually found in womenswear. These design details all very common and popular in womenswear, so joined in the T-shirt can be made the rigid menswear becomes more unisex.

The version of the garment is still relatively unisex although the design details joined a lot of women elements, so generally it a truly unisex garment. Therefore, from this point of view, it is successful. For the gender blending style fashion which more and more people keen to these years, this kind of designs give people the most intuitive way of expression, women dressed in profiled coats with tough lines do not seem blunt, in a similar way, menswear can add more feminine styles which are more fashionable, and they can even wear skirts. Unisex is breaking the rules of the traditional gender label in people’s mind which has a big impact on people's views.

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Context of Practice 1 — Sustainability

Fashion is a popular style or practice, especially in clothing, footwear, accessories, makeup, body piercing, or furniture. As the definition of fashion has made the decision of its gregarious features, thus ignoring the concerns of sustainability. The study found that 15 percent of fabric is wasted in the manufacture of a typical garment, this percentage if multiplied by the total annual production of fashion, it will be a massive horrible figure. Therefore,"sustainable fashion" has increasingly become an important topic in today’s fashion industry. There are many ways to achieve sustainable fashion, zero waste design is one of them. “Design using zero waste principles seeks to reverse this, by utilising 100% of fabric, this elimination of fabric waste within the manufacturing process reduces the environmental impact of the garment. This leads to less pollution from pesticides, less water diverted, less diesel burned, less energy expended, less dye pumped into waterways and less greenhouse gas released.” (from studio lecture power point by Liam Jefferies) A lot of brands began use zero waste design principles, which can be counted as a good way to eliminate thousands of tonnes of garbage each year.

This garment was made in context of practice session and used zero waste principle, the theme is Dadaism. Dadaism is an important genre in the development process of western literature and art in the 20th century, it was the product of the first world war and destroyed the old European society and cultural order. As a literary movement, Dadaism does not last long, but it spread to a wide range and influenced all modernist literary genres in the 20th century. Dadaism advocates denying everything, destroying everything and overthrowing everything. Collage is a manifestation of Dadaism, some typical artist like Hannah Hoch often use images from magazines to make collage, usually deliberately combined into anti-logical works. So in this garment, the use of some different colours of irregular fabric pieces to sew together as a design detail is similar to collage and more appropriate theme. So this work on the basis of zero waste that means it cannot miss any piece of fabric, then cut out the rest of fabrics into small pieces to make the details after finished the main use of the fabric to reflect the Dadaism.

This work is successful if from the views of zero waste and the theme Dadaism. Through the zero waste making process, it is easy to found that the use the principle is difficult, but zero waste still very important for sustainability. As the lack of time and capacity, to achieve zero waste, this design can only use the rest of the fabric to make the details. Hoping next time can through some new pattern cutting method to achieve zero waste. Although fashion is essentially contradictory to sustainability, but fashion also needs to continue to innovate and break through, therefore the pursuit of maintaining a innovate basis for sustainability is what the contemporary fashion really need.

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Context of Practice 1 — Semiotics

The image has always existed in the human civilisation society as the important carrier to disseminate information, it becomes a linguistic culture. In the early days of human society, people rely on the text to carry out the information dissemination because there is no the rise of new media such as television, the internet… As people entered the information age, the use of images become very common because the image is more intuitive and vivid than the text. Also, because of massive information input, only the images which have deep meaning, cultural and creativity can attract people’s attention.“We shall therefore take language, discourse, speech, etc., to mean any significant unit or synthesis, whether verbal or visual: a photograph will be a kind of speech for us in the same way as a newspaper article; even objects will become speech, if they mean something. This generic way of conceiving language is in fact justified by the very history of writing: kong before the invention of our alphabet, objects like the Inca quipu, or drawings, as in pictographs, have been accepted as speech. This does not mean that one myth treat mythical speech like language; myth in fact belongs to the province of a general science, coextensive with linguistic, which is semiology.” (Barthes, R., 1957, page 395 & 396)

Therefore semiology has an irreplaceable role in the visual communication, people are more aware of the semiotic images because it joined a certain meaning makes it easier to remember. This picture can be an example, it chose from different images in a magazine to made this collage. The intention of this collage try to express the relationship between substance and spirit. The lady in the picture has lots of luxury goods, such as diamonds, golden… But it is easy to see her eyes are vacant, that means she is unhappy. Everyone long for honour, money, but sometimes people did not realise they are the shells if they don’t get the chance to figure out what really excites them and gives them pleasure, the immovable sculpture in this picture is intended to prove this idea. as the one in the picture if without spirit. So this image tells people is not supposed to so focused on achieving external, substance is not the most important thing in life.

In a semiotic view, this collage is successful, because it has a connotation and visually to transmitted the intention. After did a light research of semiology and a practical work, it is obvious that the use of semiotics is increasing in communication, and normally semiology explained by social emotions and personal experience, especially for image analysis. So semiotics is carrying a sense of meaning, any perceived meaning can be explained by semiotics. It provides a critical view of reading all kinds of images, and also cultivating and improving the visual attainments of viewers.

Bibliography:

1.Barthes, R. (1957), ‘Myth Today’, ‘The New Citroen’ and ‘Plastic’ from Mythologies. in Lees-Maffei, G, and Houze, R. (eds.) (2010), The design history Reader, Oxford and New York: Berg

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Context of Practice 1 — History of  Fashion

After researched the history of fashion from 1400-2000, it is easy to find that fashion is a form of rapid development changes by times.

For example, after the outbreak of the Second World War, due to a series of social, economic, political and aesthetic factors, so that the production and wearing of clothes changed, it has a far-reaching influence. More and more civilian workers were put on military uniforms, and even carry gas masks and armbands. Military uniform is one of the most powerful images of the war, and their presence in the social situations in the UK was growing. Correspondingly, civilians dress is also no longer so formal. As the government shut down a large number of theatres, recreational activities plummeted, evening dress gradually retired social stage. Although the wealthiest not join the army in the early stage of the war, they quickly customised uniform in Huntsman, Gieves in Savile Row London, and even slightly cheaper uniforms in Austen Reed, Hector Powe. The uniforms with excellent pattern cutting and quality quickly have an important place in high society which always led fashion, and also led to a substantial decline in luxury clothing sales. Womenswear has become more slimmed and streamlined, the popular clothing including soft and durable wool suit, shirt skirt and two pieces of dress which can be replaced. The trend of slender body cutting, the garment with springy legs design, flat buttocks, straight neck and wide shoulders were popular even continued to the spring of 1944.

After that, Dior’s collection ‘the New Look’ launched, to be honest, the revolution was already taking root because Although the fashion at the end of WWII has attractive and useful, the woman still miss the former magnificent and the romantic, everyone was looking forward a revolution of fashion. Christian Dior became a celebrity when he brought women back to ‘feminine charm’ after World War Two. This proved Fashion is a form of change characterised by a rapid disappearance caused by social atmosphere, not only Dior’s new look can be an example, but also the rise of Burberry was due to the manufacture trench coats for the Navy, and Chanel’s  simple style was influenced by the changing status of women’s social roles after World War One，fashion needs this kind of opportunities.

New media, new technology, new styles… the end of the Great Wars’s decade was a time to be looking forward, as well as a time for sacrifices of years and achievements of years past. Fashion reflects on past experiences… and quests for what comes next. (Adlington, L., 2013, page 239）

Fashion has strong social influence. It is not only reflected in how people dress and the other areas of material life, but also in the field of people’s mind in an era.

Bibliography： 

1. Adlington, L. (2013) Great war fashion: tales from the history wardrobe. United Kingdom: The history press