Your Surroundings
ISSEY MIYAKE (b.1938)
Miyake is known for his innovative clothing, textile materials, and his pleats. In addition, he "forms garments that celebrate the vitality and movement of the human body...overlaying them with the dictates of couture tailoring to communicate a liberated global aesthetic". (Cruz) In other words, he experiments with innovative textiles and pleats "to produce adaptable clothing that is both functional and reflective of modern simplicity in an egalitarian society" (English 12).
A-POC 1998
A Piece of Cloth is revolutionary because it's a tube of stretch jersey created from a single thread that can be worn by cutting out a shape. Both art and functional, Miyake is creating dialogue between clothing and the user.
Due to his innovative nature, A-POC also had this performance aspect to it. In the 2006 Milan Furniture fair Miyake worked with Ron Arad to modify Arad's Ripple Chair. The result was called Gemini, a vest or a body-seat cushion.
Pleats, Please (1993)
P.P was a range of 200-300 garments where Miyake combined synthetic fabrics with his pleating style to create clothes for dancers. He analysed bodies in motion from William Forsythe's Frankfurt Ballet and wanted his clothes to move where the body moved (English 12). The Coloumbe dress (1991) above was not from the P.P series, but it demonstrates the innovative ways of folding fabric, the technology (it was cut using heat) and to celebrate the human body.
YOHJI YAMAMOTO (b. 1943) and REI KAWAKUBO (b.1942)
Yamamoto Fall/Winter 1981 Kawakubo Dress meets Body 1997
I grouped Yamamoto and Kawakubo together because thematically they are similar. As much as both designers protest against their roots, there is a clear division between East and West fashion back then. In 1981 when both designers had their show in Paris, they wanted to make it clear that "sexuality is never overt", and accentuation of contours of the body is for the amusement of men (Salazar 54). Both designers shocked the audience by presenting seemingly unstructured, and black clothes, in comparison the Western designers presented a form of femininity that is sexualised. Basically what they did was show up in Paris and redefined what fashion is. Similar to Miyake, Yamamoto and Kawakubo pay attention to the fabric on the body, specifically how it embodies the fabric. In other words, clothes that embraces and shows off the fabric. However, what is different between Miyake with Yamamoto and Kawakubo is their emphasis on wabi-sabi, how imperfection like wear and tear, distortions are beautiful.
Vionnet (b. 1876)
Liberated women from corsets, used bias cut to allow fabric's "elasticity...to follow the curves of the body" and proving that "material falling freely on an uncoreseted body was the most harmonious of spectacles" (Kamitsis 11), Vionnet did all that way back in the early 1900's. Using the ancient Greek peplos as an inspiration, simplicity and the female body was all Vionnet cared about.
Sonia, the leading model of the house 1931. Vionnet's achievements can be summarised as:
- popularised bias cut (not invented), cutting diagonally of the grain so the dress clings and moves with the wearer (blog.colettehq.com)
- decorative seams, visible seams, and made dresses without fasteners (easier to take out)
Balenciaga (b.1895)
Altered the female silhouette around 1950's. A tailor himself, he created garments that were fluid and altered the female body (similar to Yamamoto) whilst infusing Spanish culture. Famous for sack dress and square coat, he never made his clothes pret a porter, instead he relies on wealthy people to buy individual garments from him.
Alberta Tiburzi in "envelope dress" (sack dress) 1967 Lisa Fonssagrives in a square coat 1950
Christian Dior (b. 1905)
He didn't go against femininity and opulence like the previous designers, instead, he embraced it and yet changed how women looked (www.metmuseum.org). In his 1947 New Look collection he rejuvenated Paris as a fashion icon. He made clothes that accentuate femininity by padding the waist to make hips smaller, and made the shoulders more prominent.
Spring 1947 New Look A-Line, 1955
CONCLUSION:
Even though I might not head into fashion, I can appreciate these garments from a 3D perspective. Structurally, Yamamoto and Kawakubo deviates from the body most:
- their clothing are mostly androgynous, or distorted
- a vessel for a purpose other than looking and feeling good
- sure, Y3 might be a pret a porter, but Yamamoto and Kawakubo's real intent for designing lies beyond what people would wear for their daily lives
What fashion does that sculpture or any 3D pathways don't deal is the fabric; the closest sculpture could get is varying materials. Take Miyake for example, the process of pleating his garments is already arduous enough, now combine that with how the fibre is made before pleating...Sculpture can never reach that level of detail!
I believe fashion adds a new dimension in viewing anything 3D; it is essentially a sculpture within a sculpture that moves, except everybody knows what the inner sculpture looks like and we are just interested in the silhouette. Fashion has ways to describe what sculpture simply calls form. For example, silhouette comprises of form, volume and even contrast. Yamamoto's asymmetry and drapped clothes from his 1981 show might share the same colour and volume as Balenciaga's sack dress, however it is ultimately the silhouette that separates them apart.
What I'll do with all this knowledge I don't know. Technically I cannot translate what I learnt from these famous figures into anything I do now. Conceptually however it did provide me a new way to view garments and sculptures in a new light.
Charleston, Beth Duncuff. Based on original work by Harold Koda. “Christian Dior (1905–1957).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dior/hd_dior.htm (October 2004)
Da Cruz, Elyssa. “Miyake, Kawakubo, and Yamamoto: Japanese Fashion in the Twentieth Century.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/jafa/hd_jafa.htm (October 2004)
Data + Interpretation
Anne Wilson (Beauty in varying lines)
A Hand Well Trained, 2017, hair, cloth and thread
"Found cloth and human hair have been my sources for material drawings for over 25 years. Cloth comes to me from all sides of my family. Some of the cloth travelled with family members who were refugees from Romania during WWII. Some of the cloth is from my Quaker and Canadian ancestors. My materials range from these heirlooms to more everyday found cloth, like commercially produced motel sheets, pillowcases, and restaurant cloth" -- Anne Wilson from www.annewilsonartist.com
- Demonstrates these things:
- uses materials that form her identity
- simple lines of varying thickness that are bold and hold the fabric up (has a purpose)
- As far as textile goes, the different pieces of fabric are all similar in colour
- different bits have different texture to it, like how it absorbs light or how thick the black thread to support it
Normally stitching is joining together fabric to be worn, but Wilson joins them up to shed some light on her background. Stitching itself is sufficient to hold some aesthetically value, and Wilson demonstrates it. Wilson here shows that even its entirely another medium (from paper), bold lines do look good.
Chiaru Shiota (Organised chaotic enclosures)
Sleeping is like Death 2016, thread, bed (this is an exhibition plus installation)
- Shiota uses intricate woven fabrics to create spaces for people, and to materialise her mental ideas
- The fabric can be seen as black entities invading , however it actually creates the space
- we just associate it as being evil because it's black, meshy and dims the light
- It's interesting to see how because it looks like web we associate it with something evil
- Through thread, Shiota shows the audience what is happening inside her mind, even to the point of being inside it
- It's a strong effect to allow people to walk inside your mind, the concept of being inside somebody's mind
- Shiota did some pretty cool things with thread, but what's cooler is her use of installations
- normally installations are just big sculptures, Shiota uses the fact that you have to walk inside one to get the message across
- Shiota reminds us that the viewer's presence also affects the message
- I could use this concept of installation in my future projects
Olu Amoda (environment's effect on materials)
Concrete Lab Door to Yaba College of Technology, 1995
Nigeria's "rate of everyday crimes such as theft, burglary... has increased dramatically during the last couple of decades" (Newell, 43). With that in mind, local metalsmith Olu Amoda infuses art and practicality by making burglarproof gates. Amoda uses scraps of metal found on the streets and other everyday objects to create his gates. Amoda's resourceability and the subject he creates reflect the environment that he is in. Sometimes the material and context tells a bigger story than the actual piece itself.
Newell, Laurie Britton. Out of the Ordinary: Spectacular Craft. V & A, 2007
Your Surroundings + Data
*I'm not lazy for combining these two projects together, I feel these two projects provide a fuller reflection than doing them separately*
In both Day 1 and 2, we use different methods to come up with shapes to then translate that into a garment or textile design. For the first day we went around KX to draw the surroundings, and what I didn't know was later we were going to extrapolate shapes from the drawing. That was the first problem because it was difficult to discern any recognisable shapes from my drawings--this problem persisted for the entire week.
After that we cut out those shapes to form a little sculpture which we did various drawing exercises of. Sugar paper was surprisingly thin and can't hold strong edges, so to create a sculpture with interesting form I curled the paper. Paper that's curled and looped on varying vertices is pretty rigid.
Afterwards we grouped up our sketchbooks and drew our shapes on all the books. This exercise was to come up with more shapes, and I learnt that these methods are ways to come up with interesting shapes without just sitting there--it's like a recipe to up with inspirations.
With the shapes cut out I uses my group's pieces to create a garment. I noticed my partner's chin was quite perpendicular to the neck, so I extended and unified it with her arm in a wave-like fashion. When I modelled I realised that crunching the sugar paper wasn't effective, because it was actually thin and it makes it feel very light and flimsy. I didn't know about fashion back then, so I took inspiration from some of the spaces and buildings I drew that day. I wanted to convey the wide and spacious hallways that KX campus had, the height of the St. Pancras station and the large open space of Granary Square into my sculpture.
It wasn't evident then, but looking back it was quite clear my strength lied with 3D and not drawing. If I had enough time I would find ways to accentuate certain body proportions, make them larger and sharper than they usually are--I simply wanted to create exaggerations on the body till they lose their original shape, kind of like Kawakubo's Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body collection.
Day 2, we placed our personal objects with narrative behind them in interesting ways to sketch, and again because we need to have some shapes. This time we used a viewfinder because we needed to zoom in. It was here that my tutor said my lines were not confident because I went back and forth again and again. It was the first time I heard that and I realised it was true; there is beauty in straight bold lines, because they are confident. An out of proportion drawing with bold lines are better than a proper drawing with itchy lines.
I applied hand lotion and bubble wrap to the acetate to create slight shadowy surface. I added some colour by layering some bits of orange acetate. The result resembles some microbes on a petri-dish, and it didn't work out well on a body.
My next set I gave a direction using coloured acetate and treated the lotion and bubble wrap as a base layer; this made the triangles the centre of attention. The result was significantly better:
- The crevices formed where torso and arm meets slightly breaks up the linear quality of the shapes
- The triangles suggest some sort of motion, and are not just meaningless blobs
I approached my tutor because I still didn't get what exactly textile was, and she told me to be a textile designer wasn't about the composition of the textile or fabric itself, instead it was simply graphics on a garment. Textile designers need to have a sense of delicacy when handling materials, but more specifically how to express different textures just by using 2D materials.
Questions for day 2:
- Aside from the drawing methods mentioned above, I can also create texture by altering the medium. For example to show texture I can sew into the plastic acetate, or make little cuts then turn the paper out (I got all these ideas from looking at others). I'm not used to being delicate when handling materials, and this week taught me not everything can be done in am impulsive and messy way.
- When you want to sketch something to either practice drawing, study or document something, you would want to use observational drawing. Illustrative drawing is drawing with the actual image inside your brain; your hands give life to an idea or image. You would want to do an observation sketch to capture a subject and study it, whereas an illustrative drawing is to show an idea to people.
- Pros:
- meeting new people and making more friends
- more ideas generated, being tossed about, end product is something refined (ideally)
- Cons:
- everybody in the group must be willing to contribute, otherwise it'll be hard getting ideas out
- slower to come up with ideas
- awkwardness
- language barrier
- Pros:
Your Interpretation
Questions:
- Well now I know what textile is. Previously I thought textile was all about studying the composition of the fabric and how it's made, instead it was simply about shapes and colours on the garment.
- There were the continuous line and blind drawing exercises that really helped me in realising what was wrong with my drawing. During those exercises we would switch the material and the results were usually colourful sketches with varying line thickness. These exercises can't really be a project by itself, I feel they serve better as daily drawing practices.
Last day we were tasked to combine fashion with textile and the result could be anything, as long as it relates to fashion. Working in a group we constructed a neck to torso piece with overlapping wave-like structure. This was basically my second chance for the Day 1 project. Again, since there were only sugar paper I gave the garment strength by twisting and bending around the body. Once there was a basic shape I gave the the waves a direction (they all face towards the same way).
Gary makes the foundation around the shoulder and collar first, then wraps the paper around to make it secure. I originally wanted something to stem out from under Emma's chin, but after some experimentation we realised coming from the back then making a visor is more interesting.
While it all looked pretty good in front, the fact that we used the back only to connect bits wasn't very appealing. Similar to the front, we created flowers and waves that covered where all the papers converged.
Working with sugar paper in a 3D way was like a breath of fresh air again. I felt I was working blindly in this week; no matter what I did everybody seemed to be a step ahead of me, everybody seemed to know something that I didn't. I felt like I was in Mars honestly, I was unable to manipulate the material freely and was behind all the workflow assignments because I was simply reading and researching. Fashion isn't something that I want to avoid in the future, like I said it really does add a new dimension in seeing things 3D. Instead I just want to study more of it, not really be in the field but to be knowledgable enough to apply it over to other fields. In the future, I want to incorporate different paper textures onto the piece. Similar to Miyake and pleating, I will apply some paper pleating to any future projects that deal in form. I folded a paper span, and what drew me to it was how complicated the process was; folding was only part of it, most of it was using the creases to "pop" each little triangle into shape, using the paper's strength.
Book: Jackson, Paul, and Meidad Suchowolski. Folding Techniques for Designers: from Sheet to Form. Laurence King Publishing, 2016.