3. Circular Open Source Fashion¶
Questions about the assignment:
1. Can we use lacing/tieing?
2. Are we allowed to use any hardware?
First Samples and Project Approaches¶
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My Process¶
I took a cut shape I already had and tried to make a coordinating piece with a male insert so the original keychain project could be made using interlocking pieces in addition to sewing. I realized that all points needed to be the same interlocking shape, so I folded the shape into eight peices to cut it like a snowflake. I had to fuss quite a bit with the shaping of the male pieces.I moved-on to the basic male and femal circle shapes rather than continuing to work on getting my star shape to work. The random flowe shapes could be pulled to give them dimension and make them into abstract floral decorations.
Inspiration: research on artists or projects that work with modules and zero waste systems¶
I have always been interested in modular clothing approaches that make it possible to add and subtract panels that make one type of clothig into another. Italian designer Flavia La Rocca makes modular clothing that includes zippers and hardware for adding and subtracting interchangable pieces, making it possible to customize and style her clothes in many ways. This brand is committed to sustainability, using recycled materials and a "made-to-order" production model to minimize waste. flavialarocca.com
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Research & Ideation¶
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I like the idea of using strips of fabric for this project, and the curved and organically shaped strips in these two pieces of research.
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Credits: alta costura; malesherbes, Atsushi Nakayama 2014ss (woven top)
Mondrian Inspired¶
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Appying Mondrian's Work to My Project¶
The classic 1960's Yves Saint Laurent dresses, based on Piet Mondrian's 1942-1943 Boogie Woogie series, inspire me in approaching working with fabric strips. It could be interesting to see Mondrian's series of paintings as interlocking strips. His graphic approach to this series could be "copied" through working with fabric strips with a male end on both sides, inserted into slits in garments. The strips could be made in primary colors.The garments could be taken apart and reassembled into different stripe variations, to echo Mondrian's painting series which has been an enormous infuence in fashion pieces through the decades.
Second samples¶
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The process I used to make this 1/2 scale samople included:
1. Draped a basic women's shift dress in muslin on the 1/2 scale form.
2. Patterned the draped dress in white paper. Originally I added bust darts, but realized with the lacing it would be too complicated to work in the darts with the lacing which, without a lot of fussing, will lie flat. I did not want teh extra complcation of lacing a shaped darted garment.
3. Drew what I saw as the basic proportions of the white and black to the red, blue, and yellow, eyeballing them rather than measuring to be sure my interpretation of Yves saint laurent's dress was inlcuded into my garment.
4. Anastasia recommended that I make the base garment in white rather than black, which seemed like a great idea, so I used this plan.
5. Found white pile fabric we had already, which was a bit lightweight and shapeless to hold the shift dress out, but nonetheless I wanted to recyle fabric and this was my best option. I also found primary colored cotton plain weave fabrics that we already had to use for the colored areas.
6. It was easy to draw Yves Saint Lauren't design onto the white pattern
7. Tricky parts of making the pattern.
1)Figuring out where the over and under lapping of the colored fabrics would happen
2) deciding the measurements for the distancing of the black lacing. The distance needed to be fairly specific since it was going need to hold all the pieces together securely .
3) Deciding what would need to be laced and where to make a sturdy garment
8. I decided to use black grosgrain ribbon to lace everything together. The lacing took me a few hours, it was not a fast process. Using a sturdy lacing fabric when scaling-up to full size for this design might be important in the approach to making this dress truly functional.
9. With the help of a student, I transferred my design to AutCAD so I could laser cut the garment. Making this design in software was quite time consuming. I could have cut everything out by hand faster than working in AutCAD.
10. I laser cut the white, red, yellow, and blue pieces.
11. I laced it all together.
12. As I knew, the final dress did not hold out the 60s shift dress style. After the presentation I realized I could have used my paper pattern as a base underneath to demonstrate the shape. My final photos are of the dress with a paper version under the fabric to stiffen it.
Mondrian-Inspired Laced Project Process¶
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Final Dress, titled "Mod Mod-U"¶
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Presentation on Tuesday, October 7, Feedback:¶
"Textile Academy 9:11 AM Amazing!!! Alex, I also like the idea of finishing with the flower! I think that further research in the material is definitely essential, but I believe there is a lot of potential to have it and reconfigure it!"
Elements to complete if/when I decide to continue working on this project¶
1) Re-cut the 1/2 scale dress in a heaveier weight fabric. I plan to use velveteen which I already have in all the colors.
Challenges in Moving this Project Forward¶
2) There would be significant challenges in making this dress idea into a more finished product. The idea would be to move awy from the classic Mondrian to a novel design for a modular approach. Where to have the holes for lacing and how to keep the garment stable with all these holes would be a challenge and need to be carefully worked-out. The original idea is to have a dress that can be made into multiple garment designs, which would mean a series of holes for lacing. Where these would need to provide design variations would again be a challenge to work out.
The process of testing and laser cutting my designs, including the machine settings, material type and thickness¶
Machine settings: 50 mm/s at 50% power
Material type
1) The white body of the dress: a pile weave knit, most likely 100 % cotton
2) The blue, red, and yellow sections: plain weave, 100% cotton, the weight of a cotton calico
3) The black strips are black 5/8" grosgrain ribbon
Thickness
1) The white knit has a little bit of weight to it. The ideal fabric would be heavier to help to hold the shape of the 1960s shift dress. I already had the white knit so used it to be sustainable.
2) The blue, red, and yellow fabrics are a lightweight cotton, the same weight as muslin or cotton calico.
3) The grosgrain ribbon is ribbed, so has a little bit of body to it.
Open Source Project Link¶
Go to Fabricademy Opensource Circular Fashion to download a PDF of the project design file.
