Dara Kiely

Exploring the theme of Story throught the ideas of Cities as stories and Dreams as surreal stories we tell ourselves (Fashion)

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Project Statement; Story

For the Story Project, I chose to investigate the idea that a city tells a story to a person who is walking through it. As so much life passes through a city, each street corner, apartment block or shop front has it’s own story. I also wanted to explore the idea of dreams as stories we tell ourselves and the feeling of being in a familiar place in a dream but it is made surreal in someway. I decided that these two ideas could work together and that they would provide me with enough material to base my six look line-up on. 

I expanded these themes by going out and gathering primary sources through photographing Galway city, where I am currently in Lockdown. I photographed areas that didn’t have many people around, trying to focus on the architecture and colour of the city. I wanted the photos to have a dream-like quality, almost like a person’s memories of a place that could feature in a dream. 

From my photography I designed looks that tried to encapsulate the feeling of the city while maintaining a slightly surreal quality. I put an emphasis on using my photography as prints on fabrics for the looks, while also allowing the shapes and colours that I found in the photography to inform the looks. For this project I wanted to challenge myself, so I decided to design the looks digitally, which is a medium I had not previously explored. This allowed me more scope in what I could design, and gave me more room to play with detailed prints or to take colours directly from my photographs for the palette. 

Overall I was happy with the results of this project and I believe the final Line-up was both representative of my themes and research, while still remaining cohesive. I greatly enjoyed mixing the photographic elements into my design processes and found that it provided me with some interesting final looks. I also enjoyed taking a digital approach on this project, as it allowed me to experiment in new ways that I hadn’t explored before. 

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Here is my finalized 6 Look Line-Up for the Story project. This project was my first time experimenting with the use of photoshop as a design tool. All of these looks where sketched by hand with colours and prints being added in photoshop. This method of illustration allowed me greater scope with what kind of print work I could do on each of these looks, as I used my own photography of the city as printed fabrics throughout the line-up. It also allowed me to achieve greater cohesiveness in the colours that I used. Overall I am happy with the final product, and I think my line-up conveys my themes of the city as a story, and dreams effectively.   

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Reposition Workshop with Giordana;

This week I engaged with a workshop ran by Giordana around the idea of repositioning pre-existing garments in order to create new silhouettes from them. For this exercise I used some coats and tailored blazers, and played around with how they could be combined or draped together. I used mostly pins and the buttons on the garments to combine the different pieces together. Overall I was quite happy with the results, and it definitely made me look at the garments in a different way, taking me outside my comfort zone a bit.  

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More women’s looks that I’ve been playing with. At this stage I’m trying to nail down the 6 looks for the line-up ensuring that they are cohesive as a collection. In these three looks I was again experimenting with the application of my photographs that I posted earlier as prints. I’m leaning towards this lighter colour palette at the moment that came from the latest photoset I did over the more saturated palette I was working with earlier. 

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Two sketches I completed today using one of the photographs posted earlier as a print pattern for shirts. In the left look the photograph is printed on a silk shirt, and paired with high waisted black worsted wool trousers and light pink penny loafers. On the right the silk shirt is layered under a powder blue single breasted suit with light pink fringed loafers. 

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Sketches from my drawing workshop this morning. We where asked to bring a primary source to sketch from, so I chose this image that I’m using for my story project. I found that the workshop helped me in sketching out some of the lines and shapes in this image that could be applicable to my design work 

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Some more sketching done for my drawing workshop 

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Some more photographs I took this week as primary sources. This time I went to shoot during the day as opposed to at night. I think this gave the photos a different feeling. I still wanted to capture the city with a dreamlike quality, so I choose locations that where mostly empty of people, and looked for vibrant colours that would work well as part of the fashion line-up. I like the idea of dreams being a mix of memory and fiction, so I wanted to take photos that seemed like someone's memory of a city. Overall I was pleased with the results, and think that these images will serve as good inspiration for silhouette, colour, and as print patterns for looks. 

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Two more look sketches I completed today, In the look on the left I used one of my earlier collages as a print on a semi-sheer top detailed with knitted sections. I wanted to bring the feeling of layered city buildings into this look, so by alternating between the sheer mesh and knit sections on the top I think I managed to achieve this. For the look on the right I thought some of my photography could work well as a printed denim, which prompted me to sketch this denim jacket and pants co-ord, layered with a pale blue turtleneck and pale blue leather Cuban heeled boots. 

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Some experimentation I did today investigating how architectural shapes that could be found in cities work on the body. I sketched some of these structures out and then applied them over the croquis, adding some colour to help the shapes pop. I found this to be a fun experiment as it pushed me outside of my comfort zone a little, but I’m still unsure if I want to take such a sculptural approach to the 6 look line-up. 

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Drawing workshop with Michelle Molloy 

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Some more collage pieces I completed today, this time using only my own photography and Illustrations. I’m using these collage pieces to possibly inform prints that could work on garments as part of my Fashion Line-Up. I wanted to keep the sense of surrealism that I have been exploring in these collages, so I opted to use more vivid colour to evoke that feeling. The photographic background is my own photography of the city at night, again trying to tie in the idea of the city as a story. 

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Artist Research; Man Ray

Man Ray was an American Visual Artist who spent most of his career working out of Paris. He was a contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements. He worked with a variety of media, but was well known for his pioneering photography, fashion photography and portrait photography. I found his work to be very interesting, and because of it’s surreal nature I looked to it for inspiration on how to incorporate my theme of dreams as stories we tell ourselves into my story project. What I loved about his work is the abstraction of things that are familiar to us, and through this abstraction achieving that sense of strangeness. This is something that I want to bring into this project. I especially enjoyed his work with photograms, as I think they force you to look at the abstraction of the shapes and bend your perception of something otherwise easily recognizable. 

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Some sketches of looks that I completed in an attempt to further investigate how I can explore the influence of the city in the clothes. For these looks I played more with the idea of introducing the photography of the city into as printed fabrics. I also wanted to explore how I could introduce the architectural nature of the city into the garments. In these looks I explored this idea through layered constructions, to evoke the layered nature of a city, buildings on top of buildings. For the suiting I tried using fabrics with check patterns that reminded me of windows in apartments. I also wanted to play with the idea of layering textures, as cities are always full of rich contrasting textures. Overall I was happy with the results, and sketching these helped me further tease out some ideas that I want to carry foreword in the project.  

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Some sketches of looks I did today trying to figure out how to apply my themes to actual outfits. I wanted to investigate how some of the photography I posted earlier could be used as a print pattern. I also wanted to carry foreword the theme of dreams and surrealism into these sketches as well, so I decided to place the prints of the city in a way that they where contrasted, playing with the idea of dreams being familiar yet strange. Overall I was happy with the results of this experiment, and it helped me to try and narrow down the aesthetic I was after a little more.

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Some testings of colour and pattern within male and female silhouettes to inform the line-up. I drew out basic silhouettes and laid them over some of the photographs I posted earlier, as well as a few of the colour pallets I took from the photographs. Hopefully I can use these to work out the colours and patterns I wish to use in the collection  

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Some mark making I did using stencils that I made and spray paints. With these I wanted to investigate what kind of simplified shapes I could get from the idea of the city as a story. I created stencils of a city skyline and apartment blocks, and spray painted over them in different compositions and different repeating patterns. Overall I was happy with this exercise as it gave me some more shapes and patterns to consider when designer the line-up.