Senior Collection Process Work

process fashion design inspiration conceptual design Senior Collection

This is the process "book" I created over the summer while researching what I wanted my collection to be about. I was initially inspired when my roommate moved out and took a large mirror out of our hallway which really threw me off. I explored the physical properties of mirrors as well as concepts such as vanity, identity, 2-D/3-D translations, perception, and reflection. I then became interested with the internet, "the machine" and psychological and philosophical explorations in this field as well.

This is the full scroll. Other than these images and text which were mostly gathered from magazines, the internet, and library books, I was influenced by a BBC documentary "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace," as well as re-reading Brave New World and 1984.

This is the section exploring my fascination with mirrors.

This is my dissection of comment culture, and internet identities.

I read some articles about identity and delusion; the vast majority of people have a skewed perception of themselves.

I bought some motherboards and was trying to make information into art. I also heavily became interested in the concept of "ENTROPY" - that everything is progressing towards chaos.

I made this dress out of clear vinyl. I feel like it is a perfect conceptual representation of vanity, reality, and the glass wall which separates us from the world of the machine.

This and the two prior pieces are algorithmic art pieces. They were made by computer where a programmer wrote a code and allowed the computer to change a variable with each run of the code, which created this art piece line by line, and inevitably the computer's rendering was always following the rules of entropy and getting more and more chaotic with progress through the design.

These were the first sketches I did that I felt were on the right track to realizing my concept.

Buckminster Fuller, the architect who designed the geodesic dome.

A painting with a glass overlay with words etched into it at the Kemper Museum of Art.

An algorithm art piece which I felt was the strongest visual influence on me at this point.

My 3-D representation of the prior art piece.

What I thought my collection would look like with the prior explorations in mind.

My extremely time-consuming attempt to work out the prior design 3-dimensionally in cotton organdy and muslin, patching it piece by piece around the truism I created.

The point at which I decided I wasn't thrilled with the turn-out, or cotton organdy.

A really great book I stumbled across called "Everyone Is a Designer in the Age of Social Media."

I was looking into labyrinths and Inception-esque reflected illusion during the summer at one point as a secondary concept, and decided to revisit it after my Google dress didn't work.

I don't usually look at architecture but this seemed like a beautiful representation of my thoughts. When I was initially researching mirrors I was thinking it would be really cool to have the whole collection be 100% light reflective material so you only see yourself and the environment around you when you look at the garments.

This is the line up I sketched for midterm. I was going to color it rainbow-bright but got stuck because the monochrome was beautiful.

This is the pattern I made for midterm of the second look in the line up.

This is a fantastically touchable satin-faced silk organza I am currently in the process of making the prior muslin out of.

For every piece of inspiration I could possibly fathom I might have pulled from, see

http://www.tumblr.com/blog/hannahamundsonseniorthesis password: youwerewarned

For my next trial-and-error patternmaking method, I began by cutting to-scale 4-sided geometric shapes, and taping them together to build volume on the table. After I had a big enough piece, I draped it on the dress form and pieced together the rest of the shapes around the body.

I took them apart and decided to try a new, heavier and non-transparent fabric which ended up being a synthetic suiting that I put thick constructive interfacing on the back of.

I used the front and back sides of the fabric, for an effect I hope to pursue in shiny vs. matte same-toned fabrics for the actual garments, so the piecing effect is more visible.

Here is the same muslin, now with a foiled spandex under-dress. I would like to find something that is also reflective, but probably a woven fabric so it can hold up the heavy volume piece better.