Last week when I had dinner with a group of friends it occurred to me that I really do miss textiles and I often wonder why I don’t make time to sew up another garment. Oh that’s right, I love designing but I’m not much of a seamstress. In fact, I suck at it and don’t have the patience for it. One of my friends pulled apart her year 12 dress and made a whole new one out of it whilst my other friend is getting back into sewing by making patterns and blogging about it. It was nice to hear all of this which got me inspired.
Last year someone told me they thought my art would make good connections with the fashion industry and it made me think of how I could take my art to the next level. Also, undertaking last semester’s Ideation for the Object/Jewellery Design elective confirmed one thing: Fashion IS wearable art. It pushed my thoughts and perceptions far beyond my imagination and it has now brought me to this crazy idea of integrating my art onto clothes, literally. I’m keen on pursuing this idea as I can’t describe my love for merging art, design and fashion into one big ball of goodness. This will give me a chance to further explore textile and refine my sewing skills.
The last thing I made was a military-inspired trench coat and that was almost 3 years ago when I was completing my VCE. It felt like yesterday when I stayed back at school during the holidays and spent 6 hours working on it in an almost empty classroom. I took advantage of the textiles room every single day in term 3 by coming in during lunch breaks, staying back after school and whatnot…all in desperate need to finish this on time. My textiles teacher was kind enough to let her students in anytime, she’s the best! I loved her also because in my lowest points of making this garment she made me realize there’s always light when there’s darkness; nothing’s hard in life, only you make things hard for yourself. I hated but loved making this trench, boy I seriously couldn’t have made it any harder for myself but it was all worth it. Even if I didn’t get into Top Designs 2012 the journey was still worth it.
In the spirit of throwback Thursday, here are some sketches and photos of my developmental work for the 3-year-old trench. You’ll also notice I added some studs, of course I had to.
My love for Burberry introduced me to the world of high-end punk fashion. It’s this kind of fashion that made a huge influence on other designer brands like Louboutin, Valentino and MCM which they all share one particular thing in common: spiked luxury goods. From Burberry’s studded trench coats, Louboutin’s spiked footwear, MCM’s spiked bags to Valentino spiked everything, it’s more than evident this sharp metallic aesthetic will forever be an ongoing trend. What I’m loving about this look is that it’s translating into street fashion thus becoming more colorful and fun yet still maintains that edgy spirit. They say the embellishment is 100% less functional and 100% more fashionable but to me, they’re both. Spikes are dangerous, don’t mess with them.
All uni assignments done, now bring on the holiday work. But first I’d like to make a toast to completing what I would say has been another crazy (but good crazy) semester…
Here’s an attempt to make fashion meet art. It’s meant to be a shoulder piece but it wouldn’t hold on the shoulder so I attached an arm strap made of vinyl from last year’s Pandarosa workshop. Now it’s more of an arm piece which doesn’t look as pretty but hopefully the colors hinder the ugliness of the vinyl strap. This was a fun project from my elective where we had to use left over material to make a piece of “wearable art”.
Whacky times with uni people.
Early in the semester our tute did Tom Wujec’s Marshmallow challenge to build upon our team skills. In groups of 5 we had to build the tallest-freestanding structure in eighteen minutes using 20 sticks of spaghetti, 90cm of tape, 90cm of string, and one marshmallow which needed to be on the very top. Can’t believe out of the five groups that did this, ours was the only one standing!
Can’t say no to a game of pool.
More whackiness.
In the morning of my very last submission, I bumped into my high school friend who I haven’t seen in 3 long years and I was excited to finally hear about her business ventures. My buddy Judy Christine is a freelance Makeup Artist and Fashion Stylist who’s currently a student just like myself. I can’t wait to see where she goes in the future, good luck Jud!
A right-brainer by day and occasional blogger by night, you've landed on a place where I live and breathe all things art, design, culture and fashion. You'll find me documenting my life in the creative field, endless travels with friends and family and a bit of food.