weave development, 3d, layers of the body, adding, taking away to the body..


i want to make a whole coat, big impact.. is this possible in the time limit?
only a few pieces will have hand woven fabric.
the width of the loom is a problem. can i design in strips, blocks over the body, piecing together like plastic surgery, building up the body/adding to it in pieces?

Francesca Woodman, muse

I have been finding it really difficult to describe my muse to people during my project. A muse to me has never been a specific person. For me a muse is someone who evokes a feeling and atmosphere. It's not just about style, but about a mood surrounding the body and clothes. I recently discovered the photographer Francesca Woodman. Often using herself as the subject of the photograph, she played with the presentation of the body, disguising, fragmenting and reconstructing through abstraction. Woodman's photographs are surreal, beautiful, feminine and also sometimes disturbing and uncomfortable to look at. I am using her work to illustrate my muse. 

My muse is the woman in each photograph. She is aware of the power of fashion and the way clothes and dressing up can stir up different ideas on the body. She likes experimenting with clothes and the presentation of the body, playing with identity and her sexuality. She likes breaking boundaries and does not mind taking risks with clothes for fear of looking overdone. She enjoys this. One day she will be subtle and feminine, the next more extreme, mixing pieces together, patterns, colours and fabrics revealing parts of her body through sheer garments, provocatively flashing parts of her skin underneath. All done in a playful way, enjoying the way clothes can change her body. She doesn't take fashion too seriously, and enjoys the camp aspect of dressing up. She finds inspiration in odd subjects, objects and materials, integrating bits and pieces into her wardrobe, the old and the new, influenced by music, contemporary culture and the galleries she goes to on the weekend. 

print development

I want to design some digital prints to sit with my woven designs with my final collection. How do I create a digital design that is unexpected? print placement.. not over digitalised. - scanning in my own paintings/drawings to manipulate

following the body underneath, moving shapes around, focusing on parts of the body at one time. I think having a collection of placement prints will have more impact than repeats. 

experimental draping.

folding, manipulating fabric to create mutilated silhouette. 

visible seams, exposing the flesh underneath and the construction of the garment. 

changing the waistline, pinning, tightening, draping, folding

design development ideas. re/deconstruct.

Over the past few days I have become increasingly interested in Hans Bellmer's work, in particular his dolls. He built, deconstructed and reassembled dolls, photographing them along the way. His work was a reaction against the 'ideal body' and race that was promoted in Nazi occupied Germany, during the 1930's and 1940's. His work shows a fascination in the reconstruction and manipulation of anatomy, gender and sexualisation of the body, taking an 'ideal' body and mutilating it, resulting in an unsettling representation of the body as we know it. 


Although body scarring does not change anatomy, it still plays with the body and its natural state. Isolating, emphasising and building on parts of the body physically. Can these two ideas be explored in conjunction in my work? I think they do share common ideas.


One of my favourite photographers has also been on my mind while thinking about this project - Francesca Woodman. She used her body in the same way Bellmer built his dolls; playing with anatomy and the way her body is presented. 

For my fashion design  and textile development I want to design in the same way Hans Bellmer built his dolls and humans change their physical body. I will add and take away parts of a garment, playing with silhouette, panels and design details. I will also explore this through my textiles, creating 3-dimensional structures in areas as though adding to the skins surface.






"DRESS BECOMES BODY, BODY BECOMES DRESS" - Rei Kawakubo


A body discussion - Rei Kawakubo, Comme des Garcons, has constantly discussed the body and our contemporary attitudes towards it through clothing. It is something I am always thinking about as a designer and I think why I have decided to explore it in my own work. Clothing is the intimate connection between our bodies and the world we are in contact with, which is why it is so tied up with meaning and used to explore ideas of the body underneath - ideas that change between cultures and in history. Every season Rei Kawakubo discusses ideas on the body; gender, sex, surgery, body ideals. I am very influenced by her work, however I want to steer clear of her silhouettes etc. For me, my main challenge is to create textiles that play with silhouette, blur it, add to it - not simply pattern cutting. Here are some of my favourites.

Some of my own photographs - playing with the body's outline:

Hans Bellmer's drawings have inspired me to start designing digital print designs. His presentation of the body is both beautiful and uncomfortable, sometimes disturbing, reinterpreting anatomy and sexuality by combining body parts and overlapping shapes. The results are strangely feminine. I love the fluidity and the layering. For my final collection I want to use a combination of woven textiles and digital prints, layering them and using them in different combinations.

initial print designs:

stretch, distort, pull, tighten

initial textile experimentation, 

exploring the tension of the warp and the behaviour of the skin.

Francesca Woodman - My muse