My Chelsea Textiles Degree

Abi Skinner. 1st year Textile Design student at Chelsea College Of Art and Design

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Image Analysis

This advert is for Elie Saab’s Le Parfum, shot on a busy street, presumably in large city in America. The slim blonde model is wearing a beautiful golden dress floating in the breeze as she struts around in her heels. Although the perfume isn’t actually featured in the shot it has been added to the bottom right hand side of the page. The colour of the dress matches the golden colour of the perfume and the perfume bottle’s angular shape relates nicely to the glass skyscrapers in the background of the shot. Although this scent was launched in 2011 I still see this advert everywhere to this day. Elie Saab is well known for his beautiful dresses and the perfumer, Francis Kurkdjian, who created this scent said, “I felt I had to translate a brilliant femininity”. Back in 2011 Saab’s collection of dresses were similar to the dress used in this advert, both with pale colours and full floaty skirts, why not use one of his dresses in the campaign to promote the whole brand? The floating skirt of the dress has been shot in a way to make it look almost like a flower, this gives you the impression that the fragrance itself has a light floral scent. It also gives the commercial a very feminine feel to it, and with the model standing tall it portrays to the consumer that you need to be confident and embrace your feminine side. An ad like this also gives the consumer the optimistic idea that if you buy and wear this perfume you will be able to look or at least feel as good as she looks! Although she’s wearing a ball gown being shot in the day implies that the perfume could be ideal for both casual day use but also for a more formal evening occasion. Being on a busy street also suggests that you will stand out in the crowd and implies that you too should be making this amount of effort in everyday life. In reality though how practical are those shoes for walking around the city in the middle of the day? 

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Print Blog Task

So for my print block i believe I was meant to do a print task but the tutors didn't actually tell us anything about this so I'm basically improvising!

I went round a number of shops, mainly Debenhams and Primark, both ranging in prices and looked at the types of prints they had. Unsurprisingly there were a lot of florals, this is to be expected, they are very pretty but its a little boring year after year unless combined with something else. 

Here are some of the floral designs I came across:

I quite likes the placement of this print, how its not all over with some negative space, I also like that the flowers are quite large, a lot of the floral prints i saw were on a smaller scale.

I am a sucker for daisies...

Here are some of the more interesting prints that i found. The strange thing is, the most vibrant and exciting prints were all on the mens underwear! I thought this was quite interesting as I would have thought women would be more likely to wear bolder prints, but on the other hand if they're on boxers and socks not that many people are going to be seeing them ( or maybe they are depending on the guy! :P )

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Reflective Statement

Unit 1 has been a really great start to the degree, the Rough guide project was really fun, if not a bit daunting at first, and allowed us to meet new people in an interesting and relaxed way and explore a new area of London. I feel like I have produced quite a thorough sketchbook including various photos drawings and paintings from a number of different places. If I had more time I would have liked to go around more of the residential areas and see how that experience differed to the one I had at Brick Lane. I also really love the fact that we each have our own individual rough guides, this was a really sweet idea!

The lectures and blog tasks have also been really enjoyable and a nice ease into the theory work on the course. It also got us out of university and exploring different museums and galleries, broadening our knowledge about what we were learning about. The lectures and tasks all linked really well together making it easy to get into the swing of it.

Although this isn’t the first blog I’ve had this is the first one I’ve used to actually write on and upload theory work to making it a much different experience to one that I’m used to. On my previous course we had to use reflective journals which I found more difficult than the blog, although I’m not expecting many people to actually read my theory work, I find it easier writing it when its not just for myself. Writing isn’t my forte though so keeping up to date with the blog has been a little tricky, especially when I would much rather be continuing on with my practical work! 

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Drawings from the final drawing day about colour. I thought these might make quite interesting prints!

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John's final drawing day was quite a strange one, we first started buy drawing a partner only using cubes and then only using squares. This was really fun and a really interesting way of working, I would love to develop these techniques further and try it again. The second part of the day got a bit weird though! We had to draw our partner contained within a small box with weird characteristics that they wished they were (a mermaid for example) this was quite a fun idea but in practice I didn't really get the hang of it, I'm not sure why but that task just wasn't for me! Overall it was a really fun day though. John's classes have definitely been interesting to say the least!

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My friends and I with our paper hats!

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Our 4th and final drawing session with Will was quite a strange one! We had to bring in a number of different items of clothes and use them in different ways. For example we had to reproduce a hat out of paper, create a character who has to be wearing an item of clothing, turn an item into something else, and combine our items in a group and turn it into another animal. These were very strange tasks but were really fun! Will's sessions have definitely been the most enjoyable over the weeks, I'm definitely going to miss them! 

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These are my favourite weave samples created using tapestry weaving techniques. I really love them and actually think they're really cute!

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Weave Rotation

Weave was my third technical block, I was slightly apprehensive about weave, I had already heard from others that it was awful to set up so I wasn't looking forward to that part of it! The making of the warp wasn't as bad as people said but the setting up of the actual loom really was awful! 

Weaving was fun though, quite slow but also therapeutic. I did however start to get a bit stuck, i wasn't really sure how i could develop them and wasn't sure of what other techniques to do, I felt a bit limited... Some of these were made on the loom and some were made using tapestry weaving techniques which I did over Christmas. I'm pleased with some of my samples but on a whole I'm not as pleased with them as some of the samples from my other blocks. 

I wish that I had had knit over the christmas break instead so I could have spent longer on that. Don't get me wrong though, I do enjoy weaving but I prefer just sticking to my tapestry weaving rather than bothering with checks and stripes on the loom. 

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Theory: People Leave Traces

Our last lecture of the term was about memory, nostalgia, loss and death. This lecture was slightly disjointed, hopping around different concepts and ideas, making it slightly confusing!  This was done so to link with how memory can be disjointed and how we often need clues to trigger it. Many things can trigger a memory, obviously seeing an old photo or touching an old object or piece of clothing are very strong triggers but smell or taste and sounds can also be very strong triggers. I’ve often found that if I’m watching an episode of a TV show whilst doing a piece of work, (very unproductive I know) I will often associate the episode with whatever I was doing and by re watching the program I will often get a flash back to what I was making or vice versa . Interesting huh? But how reliable are our memories? Do things twist and change in our minds over time? If so why would that be? You can often forget how things really used to be. One particular quote from the lecture stood out for me saying,“Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, and the past perfect!” by Owens Lee Pomeroy.

Clothes are often the thing most closest to us, physically I mean, therefor accumulating a lot of memories along the way. If only clothes could talk. The idea of buying second hand clothes is interesting, some people may love it, finding it mysterious, the idea that the item had a story but you will know. But on the other hand you never know who has worn it or what they have done to it! The same problem arises with clothes being shown in museums, parts of the story are often lost in translation. When it comes to old garments going on display should they be left how they are? Or should they be renewed/ mended, stripping them of all human trace? It’s the same with other objects with museums, we often loose the personal story that comes with them.

Our lecture moved onto looking at the Foundling Museum. The Foundling Hospital was the first home for abandoned children, allowing mothers in bad situations to give them a “better” home. In many cases the mothers gave their children “tokens” so that they could identify them, once they had grown up, if they were ever able to bring them home. These tokens were however taken away from the children, loosing all meaning and their story behind them. The children often had their names changed too making it almost impossible for the mother to find their child if they ever came back, although it was quite unlikely they would do. Many of these tokens are still on display at the museum in glass cabinets. Its ironic to think that many of these trinkets were worthless in cost but were incredibly important personally, but they are now stripped of all personal worth and are sitting behind glass like expensive jewels. The museum is very honest about its history though, it has first hand accounts from people who grew up there, many of which aren’t very pleasant to hear. The museum is very beautiful though and well worth a visit. Although it cost £5 to get in, there was a lovely lady working there who spent a good half an hour (if not more) talking to us about the history of the museum and hospital, well worth the entrance fee!

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Our drawing session with Will this week was all about primary colours. We did a number of exercises involving painting with the colours, blending them, mixing them and layering them. I really don't like using the primary colours on their own, I think they look garish and ugly together but it was really fun anyway, something different. We also had to paint on top of lidl bags and make a giant collage of Henry VIII, I'm still not really sure why we were doing it, and it was definitely a waste of plastic bags but it was really really fun nonetheless! I especially enjoyed making the giant group mural, they all came out really well! I think the main purpose of the day was to not be afraid of using colour in our work, something which I need to improve on so I'm glad we did this!

Overall it was a great drawing week, they keep getting better and better!

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Our third session with John was quite mysterious, all we were given was a tiny picture and we had draw it blowing it up to A1 size. We all had a piece and we all had to draw it with one of those giant graphite sticks. We then laid them face down in order (they had numbers on the pics) and John stuck them together to make a giant drawing. None of us had any idea of what we were drawing which was quite strange, I thought it was drawing a neck, turns out I drew Nelson Mandela's wrist! We unveiled it by unraveling it from one of the stitch rooms, surprisingly it came out really well! I drew the 3rd from the bottom on the left hand side. I really enjoyed this exercise and it was really nice to make a collaborative piece, our class is so big that it was great to do something as a team! 

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Drawing Week 3

Day one of our third drawing week was about collage, we had to bring in papers from different sources and photocopies or pictures of some of our objects. We were then given a word, I got "separate" and had to create collages based on that word and our Box Clever Collections. I wasn't really sure about what to do at first to I started making strange animal bodies out of other animal bits! Here are also some other collages. I didn't really like this session as much, I like trying out some of the other slightly weird tasks, things like this i feel like I could have just done at home...

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Collecting the Exotic

This lecture looked at the idea of oriental and western cultures and how they were and are still portrayed differently. The concept of the Western world, is obviously about geographical location but can also be seen as a set of ideas and concepts. We looked at the idea that throughout history the western civilisation has often been portrayed as “better” than the orient, a blue print for everyone else to follow but why is this? 

During the lecture we were shown a number of different paintings the orient had been portrayed, often including women showing a lot of skin, relaxing and/or laying on the floor.  During the time of which many of these painting were being produced western women had to act prim and proper, dressing and acting a certain way. To the western civilisation at the time, the women being shown in these paintings were perceived to be very promiscuous or dirty or inferior.  We learnt that during the 19th and 20th centuries things such as “human zoos” were popping up, this included foreign, oriental people being transported around for the western public to go and visit. These people were seen as an amusement for many upper class people, but why should “different” have been seen as “inferior”?

But has anything changed these days? Or are we still obsessed with the idea of exotic? We moved on to look at how fashion trends and photo-shoots these days are addressing this. It is clear that in some cases we still are obsessed. Every summer the “tribal” prints and jewellery will be on sale with slogans such as “wild thing” plastered everywhere. They may also include coloured stick thin models, should we really be encouraging this? There are real people still in the world wearing prints and jewellery who can’t afford to eat, are malnourished and are stick thin through no choice of their own. Are we as a society just ignorant to these facts or do we choose to ignore them?

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Knit Technical Block Evaluation

My second technical block was Knit, I was really excited about knit even before I started because I suspected I would probably want to specialise in it later on. Over the summer I bought a knitting machine so I was really looking forward to properly using it! The first week and a half was spent learning techniques mainly on the machine but we also had a hand knit session too. This was really interesting to learn all the different things that you can do with the machines, things which I previously hadn't had a clue about! We then used these and other techniques to make final samples based on or projects. I'm really pleased with mine and I think the tutor liked them too! I used both hand and machine techniques and used a range of different yarns. I really enjoyed knit which has already solidified my decision to specialise in it! 

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Last knit sample I promise!