Final Collection- Balenciaga AW 13/14

As a group we all came together to create a final presentation board to show to the class. This included fashion illustrations of some designs which summarised the concept and look of our collection, images of print and textiles, accessories, and the flat drawings for all the garments in our collection. We also made a quick mock up of one of my designs. Overall I was really pleased with the collection, I think it is fun and exciting, but still wearable, and I think still Balenciaga.

Womenswear designs

I'm sorry that I have been so bad at updating my blog lately! I've been really busy but I promise that i'm back on it now and will be much more reliable.

I tried mocking up some garments to give me an idea of shape and structure. I wanted to buy some neoprene but this is £20 a metre, so instead I  used sheets of foam board which were more like 80p a sheet.

Having looked at the structural element that I wanted to include within my designs I wanted to focus on developing these. I looked at neo-geometric conceptualism and the influences drawn from technology, deciding to create a built up texture to my garments so that it seems as though they have been pieced together, almost like computer motherboard or other electronics.

Design work- development

I moved my design work on to focusing on silhouette and taking a more garment based focus with this. Being inspired by the strong side silhouettes Balenciaga created. Our promotion and textiles people developed concept boards which then formed our colour scheme enabling me to add colour into my designs and better envisage the direction of our collection.

Design work- development

I moved my design work on to focusing on silhouette and taking a more garment based focus with this. Being inspired by the strong side silhouettes Balenciaga created. Our promotion and textiles people developed concept boards which then formed our colour scheme enabling me to add colour into my designs and better envisage the direction of our collection.

Balenciaga initial design work

As womenswear designer I chose to focus on shape and silhouette, taking shapes from images of the 90s such as game boys or cassette tapes and translating these into designs.
By look at these shapes and suprematism as an art movement in how these shapes are put together, collaged etc I was able to develop quick designs focusing on the silhouette created and on the structure of the garments.

Balenciaga influences

We were given a quote as the focus for our collection and from this my group chose to focus on the words broken and rewound.
We were inspired by the structural elements in Balenciaga clothes and the influence on silhouette and redefining the body of a woman, breaking away from her nAtural form. We also chose to look from this at the late 80s/early 90s period as we were inspired by the idea of broken electronics, rewound tapes etc. And felt this would steer us in a great direction in terms of visual references.

The Balenciaga design team have died in a plane crash, you're in charge.

This was our brief for the next two weeks. In groups we have to creat the aw13/14 collection for Balenciaga with womenswear, menswear, textile, accessories, promotion.

We began by looking at the history of Balenciaga and the original work of Cristobel as well as the reinvention of the label by Nicholas Ghesquiere.

Me in a mood board

We had to create a mood board which describes ourselves, our personality, our reason for wanting to study fashion. This is mine:

I wanted to create something with colour and texture to support the images and to build up a more 3D and comprehensive representation of me. I tried to choose a range of images, from travel to art and of course fashion, to widen the visual representation of my personality. Fashion is one of my main interests in life, but fashion is nothing without the influence of the outside world, of other creative practises etc so it was important to me to incorporate aspects from other disciplines.

I would be interested to know, for those who knows me well, which bits of the mood board you can match to my personality. Do you think it describes me? There are particular images which to me suggest aspects of my personality, such as the stomping foot showing my determination to succeed and achieve what I want.

I have a website

I decided to create a website, to act almost as a portfolio of all my art and design work, and to showcase myself and what I am about as an artist/designer.

 CLICK HERE TO VISIT MY WEBSITE 

The web address is: georgiadoe.weebly.com

This is some shameless self-promotion here but if you happen to know anyone creative or working within the creative industries who might be interested in me please pass it on. The more people see it, the more people will discover my work, the better. 

Thank you. 

Geometric Gems

Last week we were supposed to have a pattern cutting session but unfortunately the tutor couldn't get in to college so we were sent out in to the big city to do some trend research. We had to visit a range of shops from department stores to high street shops and identify trends that we could see running through these. We had to choose a trend that was of particular interest to us and then develop a concept or mood board for this trend. This was what I developed: 

 I noticed a lot of geometric prints available at the moment, structured garments with fierce shapes and lines, reflecting the angles in the prints, and this combined with the delicacy of embellishment, often also in geometric or angular forms. Anyone who knows me will know that I love anything that sparkles or glitters and I am also partial to an 'out-there' print or a couple of clashing colours so I chose to create a concept board for what I am calling "Geometric Gems". 

I loved the use of deep, rich jewel tone colours, reflecting the nature of the gems in the rich fabrics used as well as in the heavy embellishment. The clash of print, colour and texture creates a fusion of modernity with a pared back silhouette leaving the focus of the detailing and allowing the prints to speak volumes.

I have to acknowledge that the main inspiration for this trend stemmed from the legend that is Miuccia Prada. It was the definitive gemoetric prints and incorporation of large gems that kind of sparked this interest in me to look into this more. Wandering around Harrods I quickly began to notice more and more of this was cropping up, but I initially saw it in Prada.

On a kind of side note, the Harrods' window display at the moment is like a dream. It is literally my ideal world captured behind a series of glass windows. I think I will have to do a separate post about this so that I can share my admiration with you all. 

Recognise these?

So I just worked on some more prints for garments, playing around with the prints that I created during the heat press work shop. I think they translate really nicely but unfortunately I don't think we have a heat press big enough to actually make these. It's great to see how everything can pull together though and how one technique or skills translates into another.

Photoshop- More prints

Today we had another day of photoshop, working on creating our own prints using the techniques we learnt last week, and then rendering these onto garments and creating digital illustrations with these.
When is was creating the patterns a lot of the time I would look at it and just think they looked awful. I was wondering if Mary Katrantzou has the same problems when she creates her striking prints.. But actually when I rendered them on to garments I think they actually turned out quite alright.
Here's 3 of my final designs:

Heat Transfer Press

This is definitely one of the most interesting things that I have learnt so far on the course. We had an afternoon workshop on using the heat press and in less than 2 hours I think I was able to create some really interesting prints.

They are created by positioning textures, flat objects, paper with has been pre-painted with fabric transfer paint etc on to a piece of fabric. This works best using man-made fabrics as the dye fuses better with the fibres and also using copy paper for the colour. These are then pressed in the heat press from 20 seconds et voila!

 The texture has been captured in such detail in some of them, particularly with the netting, that it looks almost as if the netting is still there. I really love the layering and the build up of colour by pressing one set of objects, and then pressing new colours over the top of these. These prints have a really unity between them in the style that i have created, almost accidentally, playing with pure experimentation.
We only had a short session on this but it something which I excited to explore in the future and feature within garment designs.

Knitting Machine Workshop

We learnt how to use the knitting machine. It was really complicated at first but once you get the hang of it it's so easy. I'm glad I never wasted my time learning to knit with needles!

So that you have a basic idea of what the knitting machine is like, here are some pictures:

 The knitting is basically done by wrapping the yarn around the needles (casting on) and then sliding the handle back on forth across the needles. This creates your basic knit, and you can go on to create all kinds of different knitting techniques. We only covered a few but it was really interesting and I am definitely going to be making people scarves for christmas!

A few of the techniques we learnt our shown below in my samples.

Basic knit 

Fringing

 Lace Holes

Ladder holes










Honeycomb