Rachel McKinney

First Year Fashion and Textiles Student

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Collars, Ruffs, and Cuffs

This project is focusing on creating a collar using textile techniques, after researching this history of Bronze Age Collars, Kate Mullany and Hannah Lord Montague and the detachable collars, and the collar collection of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. With my love of dress history, I have chosen to explore Feminism through the fashions and symbolism of women in powerful roles and the Women’s Suffrage Movement.  My collar includes traditional textile techniques such as embroidery and crochet, and takes inspiration from Queen Elizabeth I, designs of the early 20th century Suffragettes, and modern female politicians such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Kamala Harris.  

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Professional Practice Block 1 Research Notebook, Part 2: Collaboration and Technology

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Professional Practice Block 1 Research Notebook, Part 1: Sustainability, Inclusivity & Diversity

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Research Notebook For Professional Practice, Semester 2, Block 2- Trend Forecasting

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Design Development Board- 29/4/2021

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Collar Project Final Swatches- Part 2

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Collar Project Final Swatches- Part 1

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Collar Project Sketchbook- Part 2

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Collar Project Sketchbook- Part 1

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A quick fashion illustration of my collar, inspired by an early Cosmopolitan cover.

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Final Product- 22/4/2021

I set up my collar in front of a black backdrop to take some photographs on my dress form.  I felt this gave really clear imagery, and great contrast.  Once I finished the basic product-photos, I also modeled the collar myself and took a few photos.  While I don’t feel quite comfortable as a model and I’m never happy with the faces I make, I’m pretty happy with how the photos came out and how it shows the difference of the collar on a dress form and the collar actually worn on a moving body.

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Trims and Closures- 20/4-22/4/2021

After wiring and binding the edges of my collar, I began to trim the edge and the collar stand with my crochet lace.  At first I was worried that this wouldn’t sit right and would distract from my suffrage design, but I found it not only accented the suffrage design, but helped to bring a bit more of the Elizabethan feel I was looking for to this design. 

Once I closed the collar stand I started to add the closure.  I was going with the necklace style closure that I had created in some of my earlier sketches.  It just didn’t sit right.  It wasn’t very comfortable, and the gold was simply too bright.  It also didn’t hold the collar up quite right, so I had to go back to the drawing board.  I looked at my design and my research, and realised the nicest looking thing would be to use my crochet lace and maybe just add some pearls for embellishment.  I attached this to a strip of bias binding which I folded and stitched closed, with the ends finished.  I stitched one side on to the collar stand and on the other side I added some gold, handmade (because I only had black in stock) eye hooks, with thread loops on the other side.  This closed much smoother, sat much nicer, and I believe gave a stronger overall visual appearance.  

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Final Trend Boards- Professional Practice 22/4/2021

After discussion with Pamela during our tutorials, I made a few edits to my trend boards.  Now that I have made these edits, I am happy with these as my final boards.

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The Making Process- 19/4/2021

Now that my panel pieces are all embroidered, I began putting my pieces together.  I stitched together the panel pieces, interfaced the collar stand pieces and stitched the bottom edge together on the collar stand.  I then stitched the inside of the collar stand into the neck of the collar piece itself, leaving it open so that I can extend the boning channels into the collar stand.  I am currently in the process of hand stitching in my boning channels.  I chose to use Petersham ribbon for this, and prick stitch it in.  In retrospect, I probably would have been better to buy bone casing instead, but my supplier for that sometimes takes 2-3 weeks to get it to me from the UK, and with Brexit customs, I didn’t want to take my chances.  The Petersham still gives a nice clean look, and will still be strong enough to stop the boning from poking through.  I will say I am really happy with how the stiffening has helped to give this collar a bit more structure.  I look forward to seeing the result once I have added the boning and wire around the outside.

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Design Development: Textile Placement- 15/4-18/4/2021

Once I had chosen a textile design that I liked, I began deciding to figure out where to place it on the collar.  I started with some super rough sketches of the textile placed in different locations on the flat shape of the collar. These were super rough but gave me an idea of things like how busy it will look, what kind of direction the design will bring the eyes, and so on.

Once I had decided on a rough idea of the placement, I went through and did a more detail sketch of the front and back as it is boned and worn.  Again, it’s still more of a rough sketch, but it gave an idea of how it will sit on the body, to help me get a better idea of whether I liked this placement or not once it’s on the person.  I really liked how it looked in these sketches, so I began my embroidery on the pattern pieces.  I traced out my pieces, and basted around the seam allowance.  This allowed me to measure where each motif corner should line up with the piece next to it.  I also stiffened the fabric as well. I had tested earlier in the week a few ways of stiffening, both with interfacings and with liquid stiffeners.  I ended up going with two layers of the PVA+ water mixutre that I usually would use in my millinery creations.  The first layer I applied before embroidering, to allow a bit more manipulation for the textile itself and to fit it into the hoop easier.  When I finished the embroidery, I then added the second layer.  It really helped that it was a sunny day with a breeze when adding the first layer, because it really sped up the drying process of the stiffener.

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Trend Forecasting: Protest Fashion- Professional Practice 4/2021

For Professional Practice we had to look into the Macro-trend of Protest Fashion.  I started off by looking into the history of Protest fashion.  The historical elements that stood out to me were the fashions of the Suffrage and Women’s Rights Movements, and the Civil Rights Movement.  What I thought was interesting was that the early Suffrage movement and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s used the idea of ‘dress your best’ as part of their sartorial protest language.  

I was really interested in the idea of fashion around the women’s rights movement, from Suffrage, to the 1970s, to now, and looked into that deeper.  In the 1970s we saw women throwing away the items that were seen as oppressive and objectifying- lipstick, garters, bras, and stockings.  Now we have seen things such as the Women’s March, where women wore “Pussy Hats” to protest the vulgar comments made by Trump and to de-stigmatize the word “pussy.”  We all know white was seen as a fashion symbol for the Suffrage movement, and I drew connections to modern politics.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore white when she was sworn in as the youngest woman elected to Congress, to pay tribute to the women who paved the road for her.  We have seen other women in politics wearing white, such as Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, and Kamala Harris during the 2020 election.  Many women, including myself, chose to wear white on Election Day in both years, as not only a tribute to women’s suffrage, but as a symbol of the work that still needs to be done in the women’s rights movement. 

With these ideas in mind, I created a trend based on Kamala Harris’s iconic looks- pant suits, pearls, and of course a pair of chucks, to signify the fashion of the new wave of feminism in Politics.  I feel like this board still needs some refining, but I’m happy with what I’ve managed to come up with so far.

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Print and Embroidery Combination- 12/3/2021

After yesterday’s workshop on making design decisions, I decided to begin refining my ideas for my embroidery designs on my collar.  Ruth had mentioned combining print and embroidery and I really liked that idea.  I had been attempting to make lino blocks of my motifs for printing over Easter break, but I was struggling to get the smoothness and thin lines on the blocks, so I had already been trying to think of better ways to print.  This time, I chose to use the crayon method that I had learned from Ruth during the first semester project.  I started off with my original designs and was able to trace them through the fabric with the crayons, before embroidering in the elements I felt would be most visually appealing in embroidery, such as the sunflowers and the eyelets.  I simplified portions of these designs to make them easier to adapt, but they still had the same essential feel. While I loved the effect of mixing these two techniques, I wasn’t sure I liked these motifs as they were, especially when draping them onto my mock up to see how they would sit.

At this point I looked at what I liked most about each motif, and combined them.  I kept the symmetry and geometry from the eyelet motif, as well as the eyelets themselves, but worked in the Art Nouveau style Tudor rose into this motif. I added some line below it that would lead over the curves into the neck of the collar, and designed it so that I could repeat this motif on each panel.  While I originally was only going to embroider the gold portions and eyelets, I found as I was working that the purple portions looked nicest embroidered as well to work into the purple eyelets, so I used a simple running back stitch and loved how this turned out.  At this point, this is my favourite iteration of this design.  I feel that it’s simple, but also combines the propaganda imagery of the Suffrage Movement with the Art Nouvea style of the time. I also feel that this will fit the shape of the collar the best as well, and also will sit nicely with the lace trim.