CoP 1

Karen Robinson - All Dressed up

Taken in east Durham for part of the amber collective

https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/karen-robinson-all-dressed-up-teenage-girls-britain/

Youth Unemployment - Tish Murtha

Part of the Amber collective who try and document life in the North.

Robert Clayton was still a photography undergraduate at the University of Wolverhampton when, in 1991, he decided to create a body of work based on the Lion Farm Estate in Birmingham. Unbeknown to him at the time, the resulting images would come to be of historic importance. Estate sought to explore the ironies of life at the edges of society and wound up revealing the ruins of post-industrial Britain at the end of Thatcher's term in office.

Our task was to create a product and brand from a new technological advancement. We had to create 5 initial designs, Ethos or Philosophy, USP (Unique Selling Point), Price, Customer Profile, Final design and logo. The Ethos or Philosophy is a few sentences explaining what the brand is all about whereas the USP features the facts. The customer profile is also used to define the customer, looking at gender, age and occupation so you can understand the basics of who the brand is aimed at. 

We were given Air Reactive pigment to create a product and brand. Air Reactive Pigment changes colour according to different fluctuations in the air and around the body. Things which can affect it are heat, UV, pollution, moisture, chemicals, friction and sound. So this made us think which we would like to use in our brand. We looked into the idea of using the pigment in sportswear and making it react to heat however while doing research. We also looked into using sound, and it could be a piece of clothing which people might take to gigs or festivals. In the end, we decided to do a range so that people could decide on what the wanted their garment to react to, but we decided on only creating a bomber jacket as we thought this could be interesting to have a pigmented design on it, as they are often patterned. Our target customer was someone who was youthful, as a bomber jacket is typically worn by younger customers but is also able to avoid it. As the jackets use Air Reactive Pigment technology which is an expensive material, this means that the garments will be expensive therefore the customer the product is aimed is must have a have a good salary.

This is the logo which we made within the group. We wanted something which represents the air pigment material. The lines link back to sound, and how soundwaves are presented.  The typeface is changing direction a lot, and the ‘R’ is a different colour and size to the rest as well. These changes are representative of the fact that the material itself changes due to the environment around it. The fact that the lines are also in different colour symbolises how the garment changes colour.

Lecture.

This brief was in response to the lecture on Innovative Materials. We looked at fashion designers such as Hussein Chalayan who used his own experience as a child to create his collections. Chalayan moved from Cyprus to the UK in 1978, at 8 years old, which is said to have been an influence to his famous autumn/ winter 2000/2001 in which coffee tables that morph into skirts. The relation between the move and the collection is especially seen within the garment shown with the suitcases. The idea was linked back to those fleeing for their country and how they are able to wear their belongings while. 

This also links to the work of Lucy Orta who created Refuge Wear, (1992 – 93), although a fine art piece and not a fashion garment per say.  The piece was a response to the first Gulf War and offered a protective environment to refugees and displaced persons while symbolically expressing the notion of ‘home’ and the boundary between public and private, although it never went it to production. Though many have come up with ideas on how to help refugees, even today in 2017 there is a refugee crisis and yet they are still living in horrific conditions yet noone is truely using these tecnological advancements to help those refugees in need.

Ella Alexander.British Vogue. 2017. Hussein Chalayan Biography | British Vogue. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.vogue.co.uk/article/hussein-chalayan-biography.

Architecture, Fashion and Textiles Practise + Lecture

The first thing we had to do was go around Leeds College Of Art and take photos of the architecture, which we were then going to use to help come up with some design ideas, in Groups. We noticed while going around the campus that there was a lot of angular shapes so we tried to infuse this into our design ideas. We incorporated these triangular shapes due to the fact (as shown above in the picture) the buildings exterior architecture had very prominent triangular shapes. We then had to produce a garment using pieces of cardboard supplied to us. Using Cardboard can be difficult to try and get the shapes needed however since our garment was very angular this worked in our favour due to the fact we were able to create sturdy angular pieces. 

In our Lecture regarding to Architecture we discussed what architecture is believed to be and its relationship with Fashion. N. Pesvsner stated in 1963 in An Outline of European Architecture ‘A bicycle shed is a building; Lincoln Cathedral is Architecture’. This is discussing the idea that not everything that is made can be considered architecture, architecture is a type of art to be admired a construction like a bicycle is not something to be admired it serves its purpose but isn’t something which people will come to to admire. 

Architecture has many a relation with Fashion, with many collections inspired by it but also through items used as part of garments such as crinoline hoops which were used to exaggerate skirts. Cartoon comic George Cruikshank created a piece ‘A Splendid Spread’ in which he exaggerated the skirts the women wore during the time period.

N. Pesvsner (63) An Outline of European Architecture, Harmondsworth, pg 7

Within the 18th Century, or the enlightenment period, the British Empire began expanding. As seen by the map below the British Empire invaded and colonised many countries, such as India, Africa, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and United States of America. 

Orientalism.

Edward Saïd (1978) Western Knowledge about the East is not generated from facts or reality, but from preconceived archetypes that envision all ‘Eastern’ Societies as fundamentally dissimilar to ‘Western society...’

The ‘Other’ world of the Orient was appropriated by the West as; Exotic and strange. This mainly came from a white middle/upper class hertrosexual view point. A diluted version of Eastern culture was created so it could be easily digested by a western culture such as Chinoiserie.When linked to imperial power these ideas serve to justify and rationalise the treatment of others.

Within his art ‘Fool in a Harem’ Jean- Leon Gerome showed the notion of privilege on part of the white male.

“Absurbity in monuments such as Edwin Lutyens’ War Memorial Arch in New Dehli, in which a colonial power uses the architecture of a dead culture to express its dominance over a living one’- Tinnidwood, A (1998) Visions of Power.

American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen (1857-1926) understands man as a creature with a strong instinct to emulate others to survive. As a social status is in many cases at least partially based on or represented by ones property. Men tend to try and match their acquisitions with those who are higher in social hierarchy. He believed theres a conspicuous consumption, expenditure on or consumption of luxuries on a lavish scale in an attempt to enhance one's prestige. Those who can afford lavishes are bound to be in a social sit than others, cause acquisition of luxuries by definition grants a good social status. ‘Conspicuous’ consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentlemen of leisure.

The ‘Father’ of Economics Adam Smith (1723-1790) wrote ‘The Wealth of Nations’  (1770) where he discussed that the system is automatic so long as there is free trade and competition. East India Trading company had monopoly on trade and Dutch East India Company was its major competitor.