Tape Corsets and Wooden Skirts

So finally after twelve weeks of work I have finished my Final Major Project on my Foundation Diploma in Art and Design. 

I've been left with that wierd feeling when a project finishes and you suddenly have more time on your hands and nothing to fill it. A kind of disorientation that you only get when you've walked away from a completed exhibiton or out of the stage door for the final time on the last night of the show. 

So today I guess I'm going to be looking back at the my Final Major Project - I thought that I'd share it with you as I think that it has been a success and I guess it's the reason why I haven't had much time to sew any clothes this month. 

Well. I guess you can't say a wooden skirt has been stitched together, can you? 

I started by researching lingerie and then punk fashion, leading onto fetishwear and nightwear eventually. I then decided that it would be fun to play around with what things were made of - after all corsets were originally made from whale bones! There is more variety of materials used when you look at Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's collections featuring safety pins and skirts made from bin bags, as well as the leather, latex and steel seen in fetishwear today. 

After some designing I decided that it could be feasible for me to make entire outfits from materials not normally used to make garments. Quickly realising that twelve weeks would not allow me to make suitable comfortable underwear from plastic and the likes I decided to have a DIY project, making stuff from things bought from hardware stores. This allowed me to use leather and cotton which were a lot more flexible and made more comfortable gussets!

I started to look at patterns and how the different materials needed to be joined. Some could be joined with the same material such as what became the 'Tie Wrap Vest', above, whereas others needed chains and other bits and pieces added to allow them to move. I had to somehow keep the materials flexible and fabric like so that they could be worn.

Things started to fall together pretty easily and the different materials were visually very good, even if they were not so comfortable to wear!

There was a lot of work on photoday to get both of my models ready! Unfortunately the photos of me wearing outfit one are still at college, I didn't have the time to transfer them onto my iPad. However, there was a lot of fun on the way!

This project has made me realise that not all clothes need to be made out of fabric. I know that this is the extreme, as I know how scratchy the plastics can be, but I fully intend to carry on using multimedia in my own designs (I feel a return to my pop tab project from last year coming on) not as obvious, perhaps, but maybe some metal structures or a worked shoulder here or there.

And that's a wrap, folks! Sorry all the photographs have been different sizes, they've all been taken to put in my sketchbook as opposed to being for the blog.

I hope all your projects are going well.

Toni