LOST IN THOUGHT
My first third-year collection that was featured in the Melbourne Fashion Week Student Collective Runway
This video was made to be a mood board for the collection. It helped to visually explain the things I wanted to explore in the range. I made the video before I started designing the collection so the overall feel isn't the exact same as the finished product. When I first started the collection I was angling for something a little more unsettling and creepy, which eventually become more playful and strange.
This collection was for the first semester of my final year. The collection brief was to create a runway collection that would be submitted to the Melbourne Fashion Week Student Runway - Collective. The pressure to create a truly unique collection was very daunting and I spent a long time brainstorming for a theme. However, I ended up thinking of so many ideas that I couldn't pick a single one, so rather than picking one idea I used the concept of ideas and a physical embodiment of my ideas as the inspiration for this collection.
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I went through a lot of experimentation trying to find techniques that would fit the theme, and two things I'd always wanted to try were weaving and making something out of plastic. I spent the next several months weaving and experimenting with different types of plastic and how I could combine these two different techniques. The plastic had such and interesting transparency to it, while the wool and weaving created a very textured and tactile looking garment. Combing the two materials made for such an interesting combination of styles that the final results were a whirlwind of colour and fun.
The final collection had to be three outfits for the runway. The first outfit consisted of an orange top with only one woven sleeve and a pair of pants full of pompoms. The weaving for the sleeve took three days to complete, and the the second sleeve on the top is closed at the end because it is an extension of the body rather than a separate piece on top of it. Four hundred pompoms were made for the pants alone in this collection. An additional fifty to eighty pompoms were made for shoes and accessories in the collection.
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The second outfit consisted of a pair of plastic bloomers, a spandex bodysuit, and a coat that was made with forty-eight individual weaving's. The coat is made from a scuba knit fabric that was backed with a fusible batting. Every seam in the coat is reinforced with boning to help hold the shape of the coat. It's really heavy.
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The third outfits consists of what looks like a single dress but is actually a top and a dress and a plastic coat. The top and dress are both completely woven garments, they were made by turning a stretch garment into a loom and weaving directly onto a dress form. Each piece took three weeks to weave by hand, making a total of six weeks to finish the whole 'dress.'
These are the Work in Progress shots of my making the collection. It shows off the amount of work that went into making these garments exists and helps show how they are put together.