Refract

Experimental/multi-media studio  :  3rd year studio, RMIT University, Bachelor of Design (Fashion)

This multi-media studio was interested in the intersection between our digital personas and our 'real world' identities. The curation of a digital persona on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, as a whole separate and often quite different in thought and action to the 'real world' individual fascinated me. I came to interpret that curation as a kind of process of 'refracting' the individual; of 'bending' their identity to fit the coloured and exciting life they wished to portray to the wider world through the lens of social media.

With this understanding, I sought to track and capture processes of real-world and digital-world refraction. Utilising mouse-tracking programs to capture refraction of my own identity (editing Facebook profile, photoshopping profile pictures, embellishing linked-in profile), I plotted a 'map' of digital refraction. I also used photography to capture paths of light refraction through glass pyramids, and found similarities in the jagged refracted paths of the light, and the jagged pathways of my mouse as I refracted my digital identity.

I then wished to transpose this multi-media discourse of identity refraction into a fashion-based outcome. I wished to apply refraction processes to an everyday or workwear garment trope, so as to demonstrate the refraction and elevation of the everyday or banal that is witnessed in social media identity refraction.

Utilising the paths that I had traced out in my mouse-tracking and prism refraction experiments, I traced out polygonal shapes in photoshop on photos of ordinary white business shirts, and then twisted, or 'refracted', those traced shapes to form new silhouettes and garment facets.

Once I had created a number of these refracted garment designs, I took them to the stand, draping to recreate the digitally-refracted garment in the real. The multi-media design process allowed me to develop a unique design platform, and outcomes that represented a cross-over between the digitally refracted and the real-world, and make a commentary about the strange extravagance of the identity refraction process.

Transcience

Experimental studio  :  3rd year studio, RMIT University, Bachelor of Design (Fashion Design)

impression 1 : 'egg'

impression 2 : 'burrow'

impression 3 : 'husk'

impression 4 : 'unfurl'

impression 5 : 'carapace'

Not only is the universe a transient entity, but also we beings within it are, too, forever in transience. Every life is marked by changes and growth, and the impressions left behind by those processes are what mark any being as whom they are. The vestiges of the past build up, to form the story of that being, and can be read both on the being, and in the environment where they live.

Throughout this experimental studio, I became fascinated with various transient processes and materials, and the macro scale view of ‘transience’ as an integral part of the workings of the universe. In the beginning, my research looked into the broader cycles of life, death, and the endless recycling of matter. However, as the studio progressed and I was introduced to methods and materials such as dissolving fabric, different dye and printing mediums, heat treatments, as well as experiments with ice, dust and bubbles, my interest became more centred in the fingerprints that a transient process can leave behind, and how those more subtle echoes that appeared of what had happened before could give a far deeper reading into the final piece. 

This brought me to the decision to explore these fingerprints and echoes via the medium of fashion. I wanted to focus my work on one life form, which could act as a symbol for any life. I chose the cicada, as its progressive phases are so visual that they provided me with plenty of options to develop my designs. My aim was to utilise some of the transient processes from the workshops, as well as building on this range of processes with my own experiments, and transpose them into a fashion outcome. 

I pulled out each of the major life stages for a cicada, then sought to distil the impression that was left behind at each stage as the cicada moved on. By creating the impressions left behind, the wearer is exposed to an intimate reading of the life of the cicada, and individual garments build up atop one another to form a complete outfit, and thus tell the complete story of the cicada. But all things fade. So from this whole image that is left behind at the end of a life, as garments are removed and impressions stretch further back in time towards the beginning, they become fainter and paler.

Line of Distortion

Draped tailoring studio  :  2nd year studio, RMIT University, Bachelor of Design (Fashion)

What is it that defines a tailored jacket? It is the heritage, and all that is derived from that unique history of craftsmanship that was born in the tailoring guilds by those who identified and distilled a garment of style and elegance from the raw materials with which they worked. Theirs is a heritage of quality, of skilled and deliberate process: of building up layers of fabric and interlinings and construction elements to perfect a garment that can, in turn, perfect the body form beneath. It is a heritage that attends to technical prowess and the simple beauty in a perfectly folding break line, in the simple understated elegance of a jet pocket’s straight lines… It is a heritage of patience, and of attention to detail: or care to ensure each padstitch sits in the right place, that every piece is cut and sewn exactly to measure, and that each line is crisp and true from the mitred folds on the vents to the notches at the collar. 

What if that perfectly constructed, flawless piece were to be rent through with the dramatic instance of a fracture? To be broken, cracked, twisted, torqued and tortured along a line that chases around the garment? What would that transform in the meaning of it, of its definition at a tailored jacket?

Designing this line of distortion through a tailored jacket style became a process of combining the organic practices of drape on the stand, with identifying the core tailored elements and aesthetics which needed to be maintained and working the fabric into a form around them. Such core components such as the break line, collar, basic silhouette and so forth were vaguely set, then by allowing the energy of the calico to flow and freely distort along a path that linked these components a more concrete design could begin to emerge.

Experimentation through the visceral methods of drape saw the fracture line flare out at points, waver in others, and chase around the garment form in a range of distortions that manifested in varied forms. Exaggerated hems and bustles drew a dramatic diagonal flow of energy downwards from the slouched, dart-ridden and twisted break line… then swept back up through an askance double vented centre back, hopping along a streak of tucks to an abstract collar line, which dances along the back neckline then shoots off the shoulder in a sculptural flared point…