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Looking back through my Final Major Project, from first deciding on the theme ‘Reclaimed Clothing’ up to displaying the finals, I feel like I have achieved my end goal of creating new garments from old, recycled materials/clothing, to express how elements of past styles and movements are borrowed from and interpreted by subsequent fashion movements by incorporating recognisable imagery that displays the designs that shaped today’s world of fashion and by replicating infamous textile techniques to enhance the ‘Reclaimed’ visuals. Throughout the project I Incorporated different mediums to establish the most successful, but being caught up with getting everything done on time deterred me as I was stressed about not being able to expand my ideas due to lack of time left from being caught up on the previous project. However, in the end I feel like I stepped out of my ‘comfort zone’ and stepped away from the computer, to put my practical techniques to use, and this has been one of the most impacting aspects of this coarse as it has shown me how to expand my skills and knowledge, as well as sticking to what I know, alongside time management, updating my portfolio, ensuring people can find my work online and a lot more positive points. At the start of the coarse I was only interested in creating digital prints with incorporating portrait illustration most of the time, but throughout the coarse I have learnt several different techniques/processes that have aided me in establishing my own style inside of college, creating my own clothing brand outside of college, and selling freelance graphic work.

WEEK 1

For the start of this final major project I have been mainly making amends to the last project as I recently found that there were a few mistakes and some things were missing, but outside of college I was planning on my final major project and trying to establish a theme that would be appropriate for what I’m passionate about. I really wanted to take this freedom in the final project to express myself with what i like and work on the visuals that i think look the best and most unqiue. I then went on and made my plan for my Statement of Intent and began to write up my first draft.

WEEK 2

In these last 2 weeks I have learnt about multiple new artists and how to construct a SOI. Also, I have decided on basing my final project on the theme of ‘Reclaimed Clothing’, looking deeply into how elements of past styles and movements are borrowed from and interpreted by subsequent youth movements, and what makes clothing authentic or original. To help adapt my ideas, I also created a mood board of high end clothes and accessories with brands that I enjoy alongside.

WEEK 3

This week I have mainly focused on finishing my SOI and researching specific artists. Midway through my week I started to respond to Martin Margiela by using the facilities at college and painting with acrylic paint.  I wanted to base my design on the logo of my brand, which is just an abstract ‘F’, and I began by painting the shape of the F with white acrylic paint onto black fabric, then using red paint to add a blood-like overlay to the design as I decided this would be a successful way of conveying visuals of old and new”. Whilst looking at his work I discovered that he obviously has an interest in ensuring that his garments express visuals of authenticity, by incorporating techniques that expose the flaws of the clothing. This is something I have achieved within my response and want to take forward when producing my finals.

WEEK 4

This week I conducted some in-depth targeted research on selected historical and contemporary fashion artists/designers and graphic designs to expose their techniques and intertwine them within my own work by extracting the most successful and relevant aspects and experimenting with them to establish the best visuals for my final(s).

WEEK 5

In response to my research I found on Demna Gvasalia an old sweater in my wardrobe which was oversized, and an old ‘Umbro’ hoodie, which had embroidered stripes down each arm. From looking at the result I feel like this experimentation has been successful as it has shown me that combining these two selected visuals can create a piece of ‘reclaimed’ garment that appeals to the correct audience, which in this cause is either ‘street fashion’ or ‘high-end runway fashion’. And from this I am going to continue to distress my garments and leave some oversized to fit my theme of ‘reclaimed’ by bringing back theme two trends.

WEEK 6

This week I took a step back from developments and decided to do some extra targeted research

I wanted to conduct some research on what recent events/trends involve ‘reclaimed’ or ‘reworked’ clothing to give me an insight on todays version of reclaimed clothing, to discover what aspects of historical fashion they have recycled and why it appeals to their selected audiences. I went to these three places and added them to my bibliography.

ASOS RECLAIMED VINTAGE ONLINE STORE

THE BASE PROJECT

URBAN OUTFITTERS URBAN RENEWAL

WEEK 7 & 8

Now that I have conducted some relevant, in-depth research on my theme subject of ‘Reclaimed Clothing’, I felt it was time to incorporate the techniques, processes & inspiration I gained within some of my own creations. I aimed to experiment with embroidery, printing techniques, imagery and visuals to see which aspects I should include in my final(s) as I want them to convey the correct visuals clearly with anything clashing. On reflection, by creating each one in the way I did, I feel like I was successful in choosing the correct visuals for each one and this has shown me a various amount of things when it comes to deciding on which imagery, colour and materials to include within my final and what fashion group I want It to appeal to.

Additionally, I went out with a friend of mine and we borrowed a DSLR from college to take some pictures at an abandoned building, as I felt this was the right scene to shoot at because the aspects of debris and chaos will fit well with youth/street theme. We captured many angles and different lighting whilst there and covered all the designs on the hoodie and jacket, we also took some pictures of the building to allow the audience to see the scene of the shoot, and to make the audience more aware of the theme. I then arranged the images and added a vhs overlay so that they had the visuals of a ‘Lookbook’, (which is a short visual book brands release early as a teaser for their audience) and so that they match the scene of the shoot as it looks old an run down, just like a vhs. I feel like our images match that perfectly and now know what aspects I need to incorporate within my final to appeal to the correct audience and to convey the correct message/theme, So this has been some successful experimentation and I will now move onto creating my final and deciding on what to include.

WEEK 9

As I felt like I didn’t have enough research to back up what I’m trying to achieve with m finals I opted to do some extra research on Historic Asian Art and the high end brand Gucci. Before starting on my finals I wanted to conduct some in-depth historical research, on a form of ancient art that has been reclaimed in modern fashion so that I could gain inspiration and extract aspects that I could intertwine with my finals. And I found that The most used animals are snakes and dragons as they’re believed to bring luck, and these are the two that I want to incorporate within my finals as the inspiration gained from the ancient Asian art that I researched has had a huge impact and shaped todays high-end fashion, as the brand ‘Gucci’ has recently brought to light.

WEEK 10

Possible Alternative

Now that I have created my final piece(s) I wanted to experiment with the technique of display, as I want to ensure that I am enabling the correct visuals when it comes to portraying my theme’s message.

So, I took some pictures of my customised jeans and imported them into Photoshop so that I could create a piece of digital advertisement to display my creation. As I’ve linked my own clothing brand into the project, I thought it would be best to incorporate it within this piece by acting as the company that are selling my customised jeans. By doing this it will allow me to discover which is the best technique to display my final, digitally or practically, by looking at several different aspects.

I went for a simplistic layout for each poster, just showing my designs of the dragon and the snake, as I thought the colour and direction of the image would match the simplicity of the rest of the design well.

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.

Week 1: make amends to previous project whilst thinking of a theme for final major project.

Week 2: decide on theme title “Reclaimed Clothing”, what it will involve, what research will i will conduct, and create a moodboard for inspiration and SOI. 21/04/2017

Week 3: conduct in-depth contemporary, historical and cross-cultural research and obtain techniques and inspiration for finals 

Week 4: use inspiration from research to create initial ideas/thumbnails and think of possible outcomes for the final 

Week 5: develop initial ideas, involve more visuals/techniques from research and conduct some in-depth experimentation which each technique 02/05/2017

Week 6: continue to experiment, whilst reflective on each week. 

Week 7: expand on ideas I experimented with, as well as reviewing which processes and techniques work more successfully when it comes to portraying the correct message/theme 

Week 8: conduct group crit and mock interview, then write up the responses whilst continuing to experiment with materials and visuals 

Week 9: decide on what is going to be involved in the final(s) and begin to arrange the direction and resources needed.  16/05/2017

Week 10: start to create & transfer designs that will be incorporating on the final and gather the correct materials needed. 

Week 10: use created designs and start to intertwine them with my final(s) 

Week 11: make final adjustments to finals to establish the most successful visuals as I don't want anything to clash, whilst reviewing everything in reflective log 20/05/2017

Historic Asian Art/Gucci Research

Before starting on my finals I wanted to conduct some in-depth historical research, on a form of ancient art that has been reclaimed in modern fashion so that I could gain inspiration and extract aspects that I could intertwine with my finals.

In today’s high-end fashion it is evident that most brands are highly influenced by ancient Asian art, mainly by the animals that symbolise deeper meanings. So I began researching historical Asian art to see where today’s brands have obtained there inspiration from and It wasn't hard to see designs that were recognisable due to todays recycled version being known worldwide, The bright colours mixed with the authentic techniques create very mystical visuals, in a sense where the audience automatically knows there is a deeper meaning behind the visuals. 

Photoshoot Experimentation

Now that I had ordered several different concepts for my brand hoodie design, and also created a few pieces with the theme of ‘reclaimed fashion’ I wanted to see how they would look when put to use in advertisement etc. and this will allow me an insight to how the visuals would work if they were actually sold, Meaning I can establish the pros and cons before the public release and before I create my final for this project.

http://daniellelvermeer.com/blog/upcycled-fashion-companies

http://www.dazeddigital.com/tag/demna-gvasalia

http://inhabitat.com/martin-margiela-artisanal-reclaiming-clothing-design/

http://www.vogue.com/article/need-it-now-vivienne-westwood-recycled-bags

https://www.biography.com/people/vivienne-westwood-20624587

http://thenotepasser.com/blog/2014/12/8/reclaimed

http://www.gq.com/story/snake-print-embroidery-trend

Experimentation

Now that I have conducting some relevant, in-depth research on my theme subject of ‘Reclaimed Clothing’, I felt it was time to incorporate the techniques, processes & inspiration I gained within some of my own creations. I aimed to experiment with embroidery, printing techniques, imagery and visuals to see which aspects I should include in my final(s) as I want them to convey the correct visuals clearly with anything clashing.

I wanted to include the work I have been conducted on my brand outside of college work ‘Featured’ and what I have learnt from experimenting with direction, marketing and finance. The theme of my brand was street, as I want it to appeal to the youth of todays society, so I created some designs with graffiti-type visuals to act as the logos for my brand and I was heavily inspired by Vivienne Westwood introduction of Punk fashion, by including aspects that would be typically seen on heavy metal fashion/artwork. I ordered a various amount of concepts from a website that sells garments with your embroidered or screen-printed design on (www.clothes2order.co.uk) and discovered that paying more for better quality was definitely worth the money when trying to appeal to this selected audience. Also I wanted to establish the balance between good quality and affordable fashion. I then went on to order different, newer designs in each technique and discovered that the newer, more punk influenced themed designs were more successful when asking around.

So from this I can easily say that the kids in today society are heavily influenced by the Designers I researched and the events within music that have morphed todays trends, as the majority of people my age all fit into certain categories when it comes to music, and there clothing conveys the same messages.

Moving on from my brand, now that I knew for sure that Music played a big part in morphing the fashion world, I wanted to create an illustration type piece(s) and include aspects from that certain persons ‘category’.

I chose to create illustrations of an infamous duo ‘Playboi Carti’ who is a rapper signed by ‘Ian Connor'. So I transferred both my designs using acrylic paint and fabric, then put my recently acquired embroidery skills to use by overlaying each design with different shades of threads, and then finally sewing them onto a denim jack and a white ‘Thrasher’ hoodie, which is a already established Street brand known globally. Also I Incorporated my freelance graphic logo on the hoodie and the paint on the denim jacket so that each one fits their selected ‘fashion group’ successfully.

For the hoodie I wanted It to appeal to ‘Street Youth Fashion’

& for the denim jacket I wanted It to appeal to ‘Punk Fashion’

Reclaimed Research

I wanted to conduct some research on what recent events/trends involve ‘reclaimed’ or ‘reworked’ clothing to give me an insight on todays version of reclaimed clothing, to discover what aspects of historical fashion they have recycled and why it appeals to their selected audiences. Firstly:

ASOS RECLAIMED VINTAGE ONLINE STORE

ASOS Reclaimed Vintage is a collection of reworked and authentic vintage clothing. Rare vintage fabrics and designs are updated onto dead-stock retro shirts, vintage t-shirts and sweatshirts, alongside a range of original vintage pieces.

THE BASE PROJECT

The Base Project is building bridges between artisans in the developing world and the US fashion market in order to create jobs and support community development projects. Their first line of hand carved bracelets look like they are made of horn, but are actually made from repurposed discarded plastic pipe. The pipe is collected, hand-cut and carved by local artisans from Northern Namibia. Their travel bags are made of repurposed fabrics, hand sewn by a women's cooperative in Ghana, Africa. 

URBAN OUTFITTERS URBAN RENEWAL

The Urban Renewal section of Urban Outfitters is rife with cool "renewed" items for home, men, and women. It's a good selection of items made from interesting materials like this vintage mud cloth made into a large pouf  (shown above) . Or this jacket (shown above) , originally the liner to a French military coat. These Farmhaus Reclaimed Wood And Screw Rings (shown above) are crafted from reclaimed wood and vintage screws in Philadelphia.

Demna Gvasalia Response

In response to my research I found an old sweater in my wardrobe which was oversized, and an old ‘Umbro’ hoodie, which had embroidered stripes down each arm. From this I cut the stripes off the Umbro hoodie and used masking tape to stick them so that they were overlaying the previous stripes that were sewn onto my green oversized sweater, and began to hand sew them in. I hadn’t had much experience with sewing at this point, but I could feel myself getting more educating with each piece I incorporated this selected within and this helped speed up the process throughout. Once I had hand-sewn each stripe on, I ensure that they was a piece of extra fabric over hanging at the end of the sleeve as this is what I was inspired to do from my previous research, and finally used a sharp knife to distress and cut holes in various parts of the sweater to aid in giving the garments more ‘old’, ‘worn out’ visuals. As I wanted to try and combine aspects of poor and high-end quality fashion just like Gvasalia did to establish what results I would get from doing so and if they were successful.

Demna Gvasalia ‘Vetements’ Artist Research

The second artist I have chosen to look at is a Georgian designer named ‘Demne Gvasalia’  who has led design teams at Maison Martin Margiela and Louis Vuitton and is currently he is the creative director of Balenciaga, and head designer of Vetements. I am going to look mostly into his work with Vetements, as this is the brand where he was influenced mostly by reclaimed clothing. Evidentally he was heavily influenced by oversized clothing which has recently become mainstream in todays fashion again, and I know this style of fashion very well as this is how I chose to wear my clothes, and most people my age, with the same interests as me do too. I looked more into his work with the brand ‘Vetements’ and it seems to be heavily influenced by the ‘street youth culture’ of todays world with a twist of aspects from the fashion runway, as there as graffiti/street type visuals, alongside abnornal fits/sizes, which are usually only seen on the runway. 

This has inspired me, as it has shown me that people can deconstruct an item of clothing based on the visuals involved, for example aspects from the runway make the audience think the garmeant is more expensive, whereas raw materials and techniques and seen as ‘cheap’and ‘poor quality’, and Gvasalia has enhanced this almost perfectly by combining both the visuals to create a high-end, runway type hoodie, which could be seen as street fashion, or luxury fashion. 

Martin Margiela Response

In response to my Margiela research, I wanted to create or alter a piece of clothing in a way that would aid the visuals in conveying more elements of authenticity to establish which aspects contribute the most and why. To begin with, I wanted to experiment with the technique I discovered within my research of picking the threads out and letting them drop, So I acquired a hand-sewn sweater that I had recently brought and started to pull the threads out. By doing this I discovered that I did aid in giving my jumper more authentic/vintage visuals by exposing the under-layers of the jumper, and I feel this will intertwine well within my project as I want to include as much detail as possible when designing/directing my finals, but at the same time make sure the audience are aware that my garments  expose historical trends/styles.

As I felt like this wasn't enough for this selected technique, I moved on to another piece of clothing. I chose to alter a hoodie that I recently designed, which includes my freelance graphic logo on the front, as this already has contemporary aspects to it, such as the flowers that interweave through the logo and the framed designs, which have both become more mainstream visuals in recent fashion again. Also as I have my own street clothing brand named ‘Featured’ outside of my college work, I wanted to intertwine that within this project as I have first-hand experience with the marketing and direction of the brand which will help when researching and experimenting, and I feel it is a good way to enhance my final(s) within this project to see if they would actually be successful in today’s world by advertising them as a part of my created brand.

Martin Margiela Artist Research

To be able to create a successful final(s), I will need to conduct a range of in-depth research on relevant artists to gain inspiration from, and this Is why I have chosen to analyse Martin Margiela’s work as he is one of the most Impactful designers in recent fashion and has Incorporated many aspects of ‘reclaimed’ clothing within his work, by doing exactly what I’ve set out for myself, taking old and new materials, and combining them using a variation of techniques to create garments with outstanding visuals.

Now that the Art & Design foundation coarse I am attending Is coming to an end, I have been asked to gather all the skills and knowledge that I have aquired over the year to conduct an in-depth final major project with a theme of my choice, to expose and intertwine the techniques and processes that I have obtained and enhanced, on a subject that I am passionate about and see myself being involved in, in the future. I have decided on basing my final project on the theme of ‘Reclaimed Clothing’, looking deeply into how elements of past styles and movements are borrowed from and intepreted by subsequent youth movements, and what makes clothing authentic or original.This means I will conduct in-depth research on selected historical and contemporary fashion artists/designers and graphic designs to expose their techniques and intertwine them within my own work by extracting the most successful and relevent aspects and experimenting with them to establish the best visuals for my final(s).