Sportswear-Inspired Design: Week One - Research

 Our next project is on sportswear-inspired fashion design. At the end of two weeks we need six final design sheets of highstreet or designer-style outfits inspired by a sport. The emphasis in the project is in the details. To help with this we spent a day in the west-end looking in sportswear shops for design features and cuts that are on trend and popular to help inform our design work. We visited shops such as Addidas, Lillywhites, and Niketown as well as Liberty's and Selfridge's to see how and where sportswear styles had filtered into highstreet fashion.

Details on Sportswear Research Photos

Sportswear specific clothing took off in the early 20th century in ready-to-wear markets. One of the first couturiers to specialise in sportswear was John Redfern, who in the 1870s began tailoring garments for the increasingly active women who rode, played tennis, went yachting and did archery. Though Redfern intended his designs to be sportswear specific, they were adopted as everyday wear by his clients. This arguably sparked the early 20th century designers such as Chanel, Jean Patou and Elsa Schiaperelli to offer high end sportswear. These couture garments were prescribed to be worn in very specific circumstances.

Since the 2012 Olympics, sportswear influences in fashion are particularly apparent in both highstreet and high-end styles, with designers such as Stella McCartney getting involved and inspiring others by designing sportswear ranges.

From our day out and the images we took we looked at detail and structure to inspire our initial design work:

Using card we created outlines on the stand by looking for patterns in the observational photos we had taken on our research trip. I had never worked in this method before and like he simplicity of the lines that make it easy to follow or challenge traditional silhouettes. I can now use these as a starting point in my design work, taking direct inspiration from highstreet sportswear and carrying it into my final designs with the influence of basic shapes and structure.






Archery: 

 I chose archery as my main sport inspiration for which I would be designing. Because of its lack of pre-existing conventional uniforms and styles, it gives me more freedom to create my own. Archery, though obsolete since the invention of firearms, was revived in Britain as a pastime in the 18th century. Recreational archery soon became an extravagant social event for the nobility. At this time young women were not only allowed to compete in the contests but retain and show off their sexuality while doing so. Therefore, archery came to act as a forum for introductions, flirtation and romance. It is these themes which particularly inspire me and I hope to convey in my final designs.

Deconstruction Project: Week Two

Over the weekend we were asked to make four collage designs using photos of our garments combined with magazine cutouts or any other materials we wanted. I liked my final collages, and worked into a few with drawings and sewing.  The combination of textures and patterns achieved from combining my garments with magazine samples is interesting.

Collage One

Collage Two

Collage Three

Collage Four

 I decided to try and make my deconstructed garment using material from each of my original items and cutting them into triangles which I would then sew together so that they fell in diamond shapes, as inspired by collage three. Due to the strange composition a traditionally shaped garment wouldn't really work to I decided to make a front panel shirt that fastened around the neck using ribbons taken from the bright blue dress and black cardigan I brought in. I had no idea if this would actually work as a construction method but I thought I'd try it anyway, drawing out a final design and making a sample which worked reasonably well:

Deconstruction Design

Therefore I started making my final garment for the project, which took up most of the week as I did all the sewing by hand. I also decided to sew wire into the shirt to give it more shape and make it bend around the body. I used chicken wire as it was what was available to me and moulded easily.

I sewed together 22 panels to make the final piece and then stitched in the chicken wire as a base. As I was working I liked the colour schemes that the  garments I had originally picked brought together, and the combination of textures and some print made for an eclectic design.

I finished making my garment at the end of week two and photographed it over the weekend. I was happy with the outcome but think I could have pushed myself and added  more to it by working onto the fabrics, sewing in patterns and adding colours and design of my own. In general I feel I did not push myself enough or create enough work in this project, yet the patchwork construction I tried was something new and different for me and got generally positive feedback from my peers. Sewing in the chicken wire was perhaps the most challenging part as the edges often scratched my hands. In the end it was effective nonetheless and moulded the garment to the body well, making it more of a stand-alone piece which is helpful because its unconventional design.

Deconstruction Project: Week One

Our first project after Christmas is a two-week one on deconstructed fashion. In preparation for our first day we were asked to bring in items of clothing from several categories: tailoring, eveningwear, sportswear etc. We then spent the day modelling these on the stand, taking them apart and trying different styles to inspire us when making one final garment out of these items for our outcome.

I had at my disposal, two jackets, a dress,  skirt, a swimsuit, a ribboned cardigan, and a scarf.

Below is a selection of the work I did throughout the day:

 While working on these we were encouraged to focus on the details in the garments and the ways in which they are constructed. Understanding this is important in making high quality products, and so we photographed and photocopied our garments and their detailing and studied them in our sketchbooks:

When we started this week I was a bit slow getting my work together and so it took me a while to get into the project and start to produce my best work. I understand the importance of the technical skill a project like this will teach us, however I found the starting point a bit thin for development purposes and so didn't produce as much work as I should have. I hope once getting past the back from the holiday feeling I will be able to step up the standard of my work.

12 Days of Christmas

Brief:

'Please produce 12 photographs or 10 second videos, instagram-style, of your Christmas holiday period. Try to use what you have learned so far on the course, and incorporate fashion items that say something about you and your surroundings. Be creative, use colour and light to give strong images.'

I took a slightly different approach to this project from what was outlined in the brief and took my pictures in a snapshot style of my Christmas surroundings. Some are immediately and obviously to do with the holiday and some are more specific to my personal experience. I feel that my surroundings do say something about me but I chose not to incorporate fashion items into my original photos, wanting to have a more abstract take on the effect of our surroundings on fashion. 

Original Photos (in no particular order):

Photo 1. 

1. The shadow of my grandmother's Christmas tree on the curtains; an unconventional tree of hanging baskets of poinsettias and various bird decorations.                                                                      

Photo 2.

   











2. The view out of the front window of the car when driving to visit family over the holidays. I felt the road lights made a nice comparison with typical Christmas lights.    

Photo 3.

3. A section of the thousand-piece puzzle of the Renoir painting 'Luncheon of the Boating Party' that my sister and I took it upon ourselves to complete whilst staying with my grandmother over Christmas. 

Photo 4.

4. Tangled Christmas lights, typically only half of which work. A snapshot image that is easily associated with Christmas for everyone.

Photo 5.

5. Around New Year I visited a butterfly sanctuary whilst staying in Herefordshire with my aunt and uncle. The butterfly wing patterns obviously make beautiful prints.

Photo 6.

6. A reflection in a puddle of myself and trees. I like the dark, block colours of this photo, taken at dusk and feel it makes an effective motif.

Photo 7.

7. A turkey carcase, which, in its previous state, would have been easily recognisable as a Christmas image. However, a close-up of the remains inverts normal associations with the theme.

Photo 8.

8. Christmas tree branches, taken close up and at the end of the holidays so the branches have dried out and are dying.

Photo 9.

9. Another photo from the butterfly sanctuary. In this one the butterfly is in motion, surrounded by greenery and flowers in contrast to the concrete floors in the previous picture.

Photo 10.

10. My grandmother's birthday is three days after Christmas Day, so is part of the whole holiday experience for me. I took some of the left over birthday candles and melted wax to create this motif,  with typical pastel colours from the candles and a circular design that mirrors the way the light from the candle reflects in the darkness.

Photo 11.

11. Holly is traditionally associated with Christmas and the winter period and this is juxtaposed with blossoming pink flower buds that I found. Taken with a flash at dusk, the colours stand out starkly against the darkness.

12. Finally, the reflection in a bauble with the lens flare of fairy light behind it. It is a bright asymmetrical photo with typically Christmas colours of red and green dominating the image.

Photo 12.

After finishing my photos I took them and, to incorporate the fashion requirement of the brief, used the skills I learnt in photoshop tutorials to transfer the images onto items of clothing, creating a collection. I edited the images before transferring them to create patterns or change scale, often altering the colour tones completely. The catwalk images that I transferred my photos onto are sourced from Google images.

Fashion Images: 12 days of Christmas collection:

Dress: Photo 1

Skirt: Photo 2

Trousers: Photo 4

Dress: Photo 3

Dress: Photo 5

T-Shirt: Photo 6

Jacket and Shirt: Photo 7

Skirt: Photo 8

Trousers: Photo 9

Dress: Photo 10

T-Shirt: Photo 12

Jacket: Photo 11

The results are varied and there are I a couple that I did not like the end result of, often because the original photo was just too incompatible with a fashion item and difficult to create a pattern with e.g. the trousers from photo 4.  However, there are a few that I thought turned out well e.g. the butterfly wing patterned items, and the skirt created from photo 2, which I like because of its atypical design (a traffic jam being something I have never seen printed on an item of clothing before). With this project I wanted to show how everyday, inanimate objects and sights can be incorporated into fashion prints, straying away from the conventional flower patterns etc. to create more individual pieces. In some cases I feel this was achieved, though perhaps not exactly in a way in keeping with the requirements laid out in the original brief.