Friday 2 October 2015

FASHION: Collages and Stencils









For the introduction to fashion, we looked at how the world of art and clothing coexist and depend on each other. Looking at some quite extreme cases, we saw how art has inspired fashion designers to create pieces either based on or similarly styled to a particular piece of art.












The point of this was to try and inspire us to adapt one of our own favourite pieces of art into a piece of clothing. We started off with creating stencils of particular pieces of clothing (i.e. shirts, t-shirts, jeans, skirts) and layered them over different parts of the artwork we chose. The effect of this was an abstract crop of a larger piece of art that appeared as it would if it was printed on the clothing. A more professional example of this could be seen above in a dress by Yve Saint Lauren which was inspired by a piece by Piet Mondrian and opposite is a piece by Albert Kriemler inspired by Claude Monet. I wanted to look at Andy Warhol's work for this use of stencils as I felt it would work well. One of the pieces I used is his collaged portrait of Mick Jagger shown below.


















I quite liked my outcomes below as I believe they captured the abstract element Warhol's work typically has due to the harsh cropping the prints take on the templates.


Furthering on this idea, we looked at working with collage to create a more 3D look to it with different textures. For this, I looked at other pieces of Andy Warhol's work as they have a nice abstract layered effect which I wanted to create through collage. One of the pieces I used was his portrait of Judy Garland.



Shown below are the 4 outcomes I produced using the collage style, I tried to work with tearing and layering to not only create a unique "shattered" look but also to create depth that could compare to how the collages would look if created into a prototype. Each collage consisted of a photocopy of a model and a photocopy of an Andy Warhol piece which was then torn and stuck into various shapes and then experimented with using different texturing techniques such as looping (top left), folding (bottom left) and layering (bottom right). The piece in the top left is then an original attempt by myself at recreating a similar look to the sketchy Warhol style using tissue paper and felt tip pens which were selected to be similar colours to the collage in the top left.



To finish off the week, it was time to create a functioning piece of fashion design inspired by another piece of art. The piece I chose was a painting I saw in Tate Modern by George Condo titled "Big Blue"



Due to the layering of colours on this piece and the shape that element creates, I wanted to recreate that. I started with sketching some ideas.


I found this process quite easy as the piece I chose I instinctively saw the shape of a dress within it and so went with that. Due to the limitation of working with paper that we were set with, I thought the best way I could achieve my design efficiently and successfully was to use coloured tissue paper. I then taped out the shapes I wanted to stick the tissue down in using double sided tape and got to work.



I then wrapped this around a mannequin and started to shape the dress.


Once complete, it was then modelled on one of my classmates to photograph for my sketchbook.


Despite having no experience or real interest in Fashion, this week has taught me a lot about the industry of both production and promotion and has interested in the way it was approached as it was not what I was expecting. I am relatively proud of my final piece but I do believe it could have been better if given more time in certain areas such as the shaping of the tissue paper. I also could've used more material to really gain the layered effect I wanted, despite achieving something not too far off in this piece.

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