Self Initiated Brief

This week I have been looking into my own self-initiated brief, for a while I have been inspired by modern lifestyle and urban areas. This has come from moving to a city and my recent trips to New York, London and Paris. I also feel it has a relationship with my dissertation including sportswear and contemporary lifestyle with fashion.  

Initially I have been gathering visual research through online blogs from city fashion bloggers lifestyle, urban photography on Pinterest and contextual research for a rough guide of inspirations. I then followed this through to take some of my own initial images to draw from and abstract.

Primary Image

I have been abstracting the movement components from my images through to my drawing using a range of media including oil paints, paint pens and fine liners.

I would like to express the glass colours and reflection look from my images for a modern urban style. Using whites, ice blues, cream, and a hint of pale taupes. I would like these to represent cool crisp modernism from relation to my imagery. I’ve ordered silks, viscose’s and cotton yarns this week to express this further as they create a drape. I have chosen to work with a draping fabric so I can explore the movement from my visual research through to knit.

I am created a body of samples this unit to be used for womenswear spring summer, I will do this on the fine gauge knitting machines 10 and 12. I have chosen finer gauge machines as my photography and drawing shows a delicate approach to my concept. I feel a heavier gauge machine would be too textured for my work. I am also constructing garments. I would like 3 full looks for the degree show therefore 1 to 2 garments need to be constructed by the end of this unit. I think this will really help me with scale and proportion when sampling, to consider how it can be constructed as a garment. 

I have also been influenced by sportswear contextually and would like to bring this look into my samples somehow. I am going to try out different ways to do this by trying similar techniques as used in performance wear or through the way I detail and trim my samples. This could mean I need to bring in a brighter colour into the pallet or draw in a more linear and flatter form and not textural.

Alexander Wang Spring 2015