FMP: Moving towards fashion focus

My first movements in starting the larger, A3 fashion sketchbook was creating a wealth of fabric samples to document; with a growing visual narrative throughout. I wanted to group certain experiments together, displaying what kind of textures and references I was attempting to re-create and also likening certain materials and effects to the work of designers that had inspired me in previous projects.

One of the main examples here was Balmain, which as a brand has always caused me to think of the textiles and the garments of another place, resembling the real world but through a stylised window. For example Ss 17 creates a void like space inside its garments, with thin, soft blurring of the models skin and fragmented, irregular textures cladding the outside of the body. In many ways this resembles my illustrations in how they become soft and curved at points yet harden and become rough at others irregularly as to form complicated, multifaceted perosnalities or detailed and varied garments. Across different collections, Balmain seems to take this idea and output it as if coming from different worlds in every new collection, built from different materials and elements. This seems like a good foundation to base the designing of a garment around, connoting that people within a group or demographic can actually stem from different backgrounds yet be connected by a shared goal. Also, as I begin to research my intended target audience of young people engaged in music and art, I realised the diversity of fashion that can exist in these groups.

Then, on an entirely contrasting note, I wanted to research the costume design of the film ‘Pandorum’ which I have recently found visual connections to within my work. Essentially, the iratic, depraved and insane race of characters that is effected by extreme paranoia whilst trapped in space, linked to my visual depictions of anxiety and mental illness in its jagged and decayed aesthetic. I feel that if these characters represent the rejection of sane humanity, then their appearance can be looked at as the raw chaos of the human mind. Therefore, the cloth rags and splintering metal of their costuming becomes significant to the depiction of a personality and a mental state, by acting as the extreme case of what I’m looking at. It was in fact these visuals inspired by the film that caused me to test he effect of heat pressing and stretching bin liner and black plastic, so that it resembled these glossy and deconstructed looks.