Seminar #3 Revealing the Self - Travelogue

We were asked to write our own travelogue for this week seminar. Mine is about my trip to United Arab Emirates, Dubai and how I saw fashion in there.

 Last year with my family we travelled to United Arab Emirates, Dubai to spent our Christmas holiday.  First thing I noticed as our tour guide was telling us about the city on our way to hotel that they like in Dubai to have everything the biggest in the world (buildings were fighting to be the tallest and also fastest built, even Ferris wheel “London Eye” was going to be the biggest in the world).

I could not help but notice how everyone were dressed, especially women. Women were all wearing burka. Some of the women were all covered and you could see only their eyes and for some of them you could see their beautiful faces. For coming from Finland this seemed really overwhelmed for me. Not only that these women have to cover themselves, but not to be able to express through clothing and to look all the same. It took me couple days to start looking more closely these garments. They seemed to me first only black and all looking the same when viewed from a distance, but when I looked closely I could see that they were all different. I could see different fabrics and also amazing handwork on the garments. Some of them had embroidery on them made with black on black so I could not first notice it from distance and some of them had also small beading on them. I also noticed that women were expressing their fashion style also through brooches, bags and shoes. This of course is what I saw in tourist are, but I don´t think that everyone has that luxury.

Through whole trip I was questioning from myself how should I been dressed in this vacation. Even I don´t think anyone should be right to say how I dress, but the mood and the feeling I Dubai made me uncomfortable.

So should I respect my own ethics or as a tourist should I respect their culture? At the same time do I then respect only men´s thoughts or the women´s thoughts?

Seminar #2 Fieldwork

The set text “Reading the Landscape: describing and interpreting field sites“ indicates how the fieldwork can be used in your own research. It recommend of using notebook for writing or sketching all your thoughts down, which you might not remember afterwards. Also by sketching what you see or what are you interested makes you to look the object/view more closely.  The main point is to put everything down and not leave anything out even you won´t use that in that specific project, but you mind come back to it in your other projects. (Phillips and Johns, 2012)

Me myself the most important design tools are my phone and small black notebook.  I take pictures anywhere I go with my phone. It can be architecture, textures, fabrics or interested garment in streetscape. To my notebook I write things what come to my mind or I draw shapes of clothes I think I could use in my coming collection, but I also research capture lot of pictures from social media, internet and books.

I think in fashion designer take lot of inspiration from past fashion style periods and modify them into more modern designs. I think found fashion images are important to understand history of fashion.

I don´t know how would I use soundscapes and/or smellscapes in your own discipline. 

I will be continuing my developing practice research subject to my final project. I´m interested of technical aspects of design and in my last project I was researching different pleating techniques and I developed different hand pleating techniques and used on of them in my final garment. For my final project I fill be researching more pleating techniques and I will be visiting Ciment Pleating workshop as my “fieldwork” research. My own find text "The art of folding: Creative forms in design and architecture" gives me the basic knowledge of heat-set pleating method, which Ciment Pleating workshop is using. In this pleating method pleating happens using two already pleated sheets of Kraft paperboard that fit together perfectly as a mould for the fabric. The fabric would be placed carefully between the Kraft paperboards and next step is “the most delicate part of progress” where from both end of the table person will be shaping the pleats by hand. For the last the paperboards are rolled up and put into a steamer. Temperature used in the steamer depends of what material will be used. (Trebbi, 2015, pp.68-71) In my fieldwork I will observe the working method, interview the staff, taking lot of research pictures and I will also try how different fabric materials will work with the pleating method.

 Reference list:

Phillips, R & Johns , J. (2012) “Reading the Landscape: describing and interpreting filed sites”, Fieldwork for Human Geography, London: Sage, pp. 115-142. File 2.6MB

Trebbi, J-C. (2015) The art of folding: Creative forms in design and architecture. Spain: Promopress.

Seminar #1

My last developing practice project concentrated on understanding how the different pleating methods work. In that project my goal was to discover the new structural forms of the pleats by manipulating the fabric.

My aspiration for the project was to create pleating technique to create a new silhouette through reconstructing and modifying the structure of the body influenced by contemporary architecture. I took my inspiration from architecture to experiment with shape and texture and taken them to develop different hand pleating techniques, creating pleating samples. My intent outcome was to create a pleating technique and use that in my final designed garment.

At this point of new project I don´t know yet where my research or design process is going so it made sense for me to look the relationships between architecture and fashion design.

I have chosen text by Jörg Seifert “ Woven Architecture and Constructed Clothes. On Blurring of Boundaries Between The Second and Third Skin” for my research. The author splits the intersections between architecture and fashion design to five different sections.

1.     The metaphorical level

2.     2. The level of the design process

3.     The material level of the designed objects

4.     The material level of the objects

5.      The functional level of the objects (Seifert, 2009, p.209)

The author in every section subject explains the subject through architecture and fashion aspect and brings up things which are not that clearly taken from the other design practice. The author tells in the text “ the curved façade of the Selfridges store by Future Systems, completed in Birmingham in 2003, is covered in its entirety in sequins – a design element which has long been common practice in fashion design” (Seifert, 2009, p.212)

Work from my own developing practice project. Pleating samples inspired from architecture to create shape and texture.

 

Architecture Image: 

King Fahad National Library, Gerber Architekten Accessed at: http://www.detail-online.com/fileadmin/_migrated/pics/DP2014_Gerber_03.jpg (Downloaded: 22 November 2016)

 

Architecture Image:

Vents, Heatherwick Studio Accessed at: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH_uIFyPrEnqHceKuWwDPhOduYBSDBFVVhqD7E87TBoZRJn64IiVRhtzJZcBcr2eraA9lCEXJ8x95RSvWfsalXiRMRE3-i4f7cwlBURVwk537u4h7d5gg3gWMRV1uiosGf0CaQYRneVJwJ/s1600/Heatherwick2.jpg (Downloaded: 22 November 2016)

 

Architecture Image: 

Brick Pattern, Marc Koehler Architects

Accessed at: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/1b/97/9f/1b979f976b3fd53fc56be1ad3b5f0d2e.jpg (Downloaded: 22 November 2016)

 Reference:

Buxbaum, G (2009) Sashion in context. New York: Springer Verlag GmbH