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…
