Final Development
Now that I’ve finally conducted enough relevant in-depth historical and contemporary research and responded to it, this has aided me in establishing my ideas for the final(s), aswell as giving me an insight of what I can achieve, allowing me to look back and extract the most successful techniques/processes to incorporate within my finals.
I began by going home and looked through the clothes I already have, to see whether any of them have aspects of ‘reclaimed’ materials/designs/patterns etc. so that I could bring them into the college facilities add my designs and alter them. I decided on using a pair of old ripped denim jeans, as ripping jeans was a massive trend in around the 80s and then faded away, but then was recently brought by to light within the youth fashion, So I thought it was best to use these jeans as they mostly appeal to my my target audience of people of my age (19). Firstly, I had to use photoshop to create the designs that I wanted to incorporate, and I was heavily influenced by Vivienne Westwoods influence on the ‘Punk’ / ‘New Wave’ fashion and the Ancient Asian art that I researched as I felt like these were the most obvious visuals that are still within today’s fashion, and this will aid in making my theme clearer through the use of imagery. I started with designing an image of a skeleton that will have labelled pricing attached all over its body to symbolise how in today’s world of fashion, different visuals cause selected audiences to assume the quality or price of the garments. For example embroidered snakes cause today’s audience to think high-end, expensive fashion as ‘Gucci’ has recycled the ancient Chinese art and restored is authenticity. I also Included a design of the ‘Angel of Death’ which is an angel that is half alive and half dead, and I wanted to use this to symbolise the ‘death’ of the old version of the garments and bringing back ‘life’ to the new, reclaimed/recycled version, and finally the Dragon and Snake designs that I decided on incorporating before.
Once I had created each design, I printed them out and used acrylic paint to paint over each image so that I could stick them down onto the fabric. I then waiting for each one to dry and used water to rub away the paper, which only leaves the black ink on the fabric with the acrylic paint. Then once they were dry again, I cut round each one and hand sewed them all onto the correct places on the jeans. Finally, I wanted to add colour as I was heavily inspired by the bright colours within the Ancient Asian Art, So I used some fabric from the Umrbro hoodie I used to create a response to Martin Margiela, and once again sewed the fabric half way up each leg, and then used masking tape and white acrylic paint to add a white stripe next to each piece of fabric to symbolise the colours of the Chinese flag, which is the origin of the art my designs I included where inspired by.
Looking back on my creations, I feel like I rushed the sewing too much and this causes the outcomes to look unprofessional, but then I thought that this links in with the authenticity of ‘Reclaiming’ clothes, and the rawness behind the beauty in a sense, as it shows the progress through loose threads etc. Overall, I am happy with the outcome and will now continue to see if there is any other possible outcomes before displaying my finals. In the end I am happy with both the jumpers being development work & the jeans being the final as the conveys my chosen themes title the most successfully.