Unit X: Graduate Collection: Anxiety States

My Unit X project will be a personal exploration into anxiety through feelings and emotions, expressed through experimental, textured, hand-rendered, printed and woven textiles. Through individual experience, a feeling of worry, nervousness or unease about something with an uncertain outcome has become my life. My aim is to express my feelings into colourful printed and woven textiles with as much positivity as possible, (almost as a form of art therapy for myself). My intentional context for these samples will be for high-end fashion, conceptually looking at ‘wearing your fears and worries’. 

My initial inspirations have come from artists such as Heather Day, Heather Chontos, Kindah Khalidy and Ashley Goldberg that explore very chaotic art; art that I feel represents my feelings and emotions at their best. I've explored ideas around expressive womenswear that I'll be able to create through chaotic prints and textural woven samples. Bold colours and a textural interaction will be the most important aspect of this project.

The drawing; something that I never used consider as significant as other advancements within projects, has become a very important phase within my development. Using mixed media such as paints, markers and papers, I have freely explored my feelings through chaos and colour, and feel that these will be a great basis for my positive project as they are lively and fun. 

Using my drawings as initial fashion illustrations allowed me to process composition and context, and visualise the bearings for my sampling. It also enabled me to think about scale and decide that I want to work big (a new challenge for me). Whilst, drawing up some simple garment shapes assisted me in considering what kind of garments and the type of material I'd like to start sampling on. My samples started with weaving, which was my specialist media for my second year. A simple white 2/16s mercerised cotton, threaded up on straight, gave me the chance to use my chosen chunky yarns and for the bold colours to shine through. MY first woven fabrics consisted of a considerable amount of inlay. In the image below, I've started to experiment with tying in knots of yarn to make a textural tufting effect. 

The sample below was also woven on the same warp, with a multicoloured inlay of yarns pulled into small knots sit on the fabric. In relation to my drawings, I thought that this was a great start in consideration of detail. However, I have always felt restricted in the way that I work with weave. I feel that I don't have the technical mind to create large shapes on peg plans, and it doesn't leave much space regarding composition unless you inlay. This has moved me more towards digital print and embellishment as I feel it creates a lot more opportunity in creating my desired, imagined effect. I'd love to experiment on the tufting machine and with some hand embellishment such as sequins and beads. This enables me to still create the simple detail, create texture and keep my samples really fun and playful rather than flat.

This project was really important for me in the fact that it helped me decide that on one hand I enjoyed weave but felt that exploring with print suited the end result that I sought. 

The images underneath are my first digital design experiments. some of these were taken from textures that I'd drawn and re-sized, but mostly were taken from parts of my drawings that I'd 'Indexed' on Photoshop in order to create block colours. I had fun in developing these, and didn't seem to overthink them as they're only development samples. I think that this has had the desired effect as they're very 'free' in their style. I have decided to have these digitally printed on cotton canvas so that they have a boxy to the considered garments such as shirts and culottes. I now plan to embellish these using the tufting machine and using beads and sequins to give them a metallic, playful look. 
  

Before I decided to do each sample on cotton canvas, I experimented with different fabrics like crepe de chine (also in my portfolio). But this allowed me to decide what my prints looked best on. I also started to explore a range of placement prints to repeat prints which added an extra variety to my collection. Overall, I am really happy with the way that my development samples have turned out. I feel the colours show a positive, fun vibe, whilst the prints have fulfilled my concept through colour and areas of emotion by expressing the calmer times as well as my most anxious times. For example, this can be seen with calm surroundings of the anxious shapes. 

I feel a change in colour palette was needed to keep things fresh and contemporary. By removing a few select colours and adding a mint green and a navy, it completely changed the look of the collection. With a similar variation in composition I carefully considered prints that would compliment each other and that stuck to my initial concept. With every intention of embellishing these digital prints too, not being too extravagant was important. 

 

Context for this collection was extremely important. Since Unit X in my second year, I have become increasingly interested in fashion. This is not something that I would probably want to continue after University, but I enjoy contextualising for fashion and believe its much more experimental. For unit X I really wanted to push my boundaries and shoot my own garments to transfer my designs onto. The garments I chose were mostly boxy which suited my fabric choice of cotton canvas for my prints. 

When I first started weave, I was always more interested in design for interiors, and this is something that I can see myself going into after uni. I’ve done some quick visualisations of how my work would look within interiors, specifically cushions. I feel that the designs look much better as placement prints on cushions. Showing my work in an interiors context was definitely important to show diversity within my portfolio.

My degree show statement reads:

'My practice consists of a combination of digital print, weave and embellishment, with a focus upon a textural interaction. 

This project was very personal to me; it explores the light and shade regarding the struggles of mental health issues, and translates them into positive, playful and bold outcomes, designed for an eclectic fashion context. My investigations stem from every day dispositions and first hand responsiveness to my surroundings, which consistently motivates my research, development and drawing, whilst colour theory provides me with a visual outlet to my emotions.

My future intentions are to freelance within the creative industry.'