Fine Art - Shirts and Fashion

To begin our Fine Art taster project, we were asked to we were asked to bring in and work with shirts, looking at the work of experimental fashion designers for inspiration (to show how Fine Art is linked to, and important to many different areas of art and design). This was not so we produced nice looking garments, but so we started to think more abstractly about how we wear the shirts and how we can create interesting, sculptural shapes using ourselves and our garments. We worked individually and in groups.

To start, I worked on my own, and simply tried wearing the shirt differently, by the placement on my body, and draping it differently. It was very interesting to see the variety of ways to wear one piece of clothing. For this we looked at the work of Rei Kawakubo as many of her designs contain elements that can be worn in different ways.

As a group of three, we looked at combining our shirts together and producing one piece to wear in different ways. While doing this, we also looked at how the way we posed and moved produced different effects and shapes the the clothing.

After that, we looked at how are we and our garments can interact with our environment by combining ourselves, the shirts and an object (a stool). I found this particularly interesting, as we were able to hide the person more, leaving just their covered shape, so despite the shape of a body being recognisable, it looked as if it was just the shirt and stool combined. 

We then looked at using the shirt to cover and protect individual objects (a chair) and areas of the room (the window). This was influenced particularly by Bless Designs who often combined fashion, household objects and architecture, often covering things in fabric, or creating fabric shapes. 

Afterwards, I took my shirt and dismantled it, in order to have each segment of the shirt, to reassemble it, concentrating on how it would look displayed in 2D, looking at the designers Rei Kawakubo and Issey Miyake. I started to think about many different things about my shirt to inspire me, why I was using it (because it was old and falling apart), how it had been used previously (to cover and protect), the sort of fabric it was made with (seemingly quite dense and heavy) and what other shapes it had created (often very curved).  Through this I looked into creating a very strong looking piece, by using more angular, square shapes, in order to contrast the fragility of the actual shirt and to highlight the more protective (through covering) elements of the fabric and resilient look of the fabric.

I then Experimented on how this piece could be worn. The overall look of the worn garment reminded me of "warrior-esque" armour or clothing, particularly Japanese.