Alexander Wang A/W 14 & Lauren Bowker

I was already in love with Alexander Wang's beautiful A/W 14 collection, seduced by the strong, andgrogynous shapes and intricate knitwear. I only recently discovered that the garments started off as dark green or black and due to the use of thermo reactive dye, then changed colour to lime green, turquo-blue and purple.

This change in state could be something that links really well to our initial ideas and explored ourselves. Is there an ink or dye that is sensitive to change in lighting conditions? If so, this could mean that fabrics could change when the flash from a camera glares it.

I feel as though the idea of changing colour, shape or form could definitely developed as part of our trend and this collection is a prime example of it working beautifully.

  

Similarly, but perhaps in a more dramatic way, MMU graduate Lauren Bowker has worked extensively with thermochromic technology, dyes and inks.

 

Her leather garments were coated in a layer of the ink and exposed to heat produced from a wave of fire during a performance art style presentation. I am keen to work with fabrics that could change state and the two examples above show the different ways in which this can be done.

Phillipa Wagner's blog shows these two examples and is a source that I often use when looking for contextual references:
http://www.philippawagner.co.uk/blog/15/

Unphotographable

Overall, I feel much happier working in a pair with Beth. I know that we can communicate effectively with each other and I also know that she can be relied upon to work hard alongside myself.

Now that we had decided upon an idea, we felt that the best place to start would be to brainstorm all of the way that garments may be "unphotographable". Ideas include:

Reflection/glaring light

Change in state, colour, shape, form

Sensitivity to light

Contained/ Concealed/ Trapped

Time-limited fabrics

After brainstorming many, many ideas, we felt that it might be useful to start gathering ideas visually and decided to put together some boards of exisiting work to represent our idea clearly.

The first board represents the idea of encasing fabrics within something to protect them from being photographed. Experimentation with ice, gelatine and plastic will help us to determine the next step and help to establish what will work for us.

The second board (above) shows the idea of a garment/fabric being time limited in terms of its existence. We looked at the work of Maison Martin Margiela, 9/4/1615, a collection of garments that are exposed to mould and bacteria, gradually leading to their deterioration.

Similarly, Helen Storey's Say Goodbye features a dress gradually being lowered into highly corrosive acid, leading to the garment disappearing entirely.

We also thought the idea of "turning into a pumpkin" at midnight, a la Cinderella was an interesting thought and could  be something that could be explored further.

We appear to have lots of ideas and now it is simply a case of putting them into practice and applying them visually, pushing them out of the abstract.



Selection of ideas

The slides on this post give some indication of the concept of our trend in more detail. We feel that the shift of consumer buying habits have changed dramatically with the popularisation of the internet and online shoppping. Consumers are more inclined to shop online, cutting out the need for physical, tangible shops.

We predict that there will be some resistance to this. We decided to explore this further and imagined that fabrics could be designed that could not be photographed or documented to be displayed online. This would mean a rise in people entering stores and shops to see the garments made from these fabrics in person, as they would not be available online.

This could lead to stores (mainly aimed at the High-End market) would transform into more of a display/gallery show-space, changing the way we shop completely.

Me and Beth both felt that these two slides were the most important aspect of the trend that we had forecast. The image (above) is a mock up of our trend put into practice on both the catwalk and in an advertising campaign. One of the images appears to reflect the light dramatically, only allowing a partial glimpse of the garment, distorting the silhouette and only revealing minimal information.

The second image reveals slightly more information in terms of colour and shape, however fine detail is lost in the busy sea of pixels.

Cultural Radar presentation

Due to most members of the group being abscent, myself and Beth developed boards that we felt best represented our ideas clearly, paying attention to layout and the relationship between all images on each board.

Cultural Radar preparation.

The first part of the project is entitled "Cultural Radar". This aspect of Future Intelligence involves being hyper-aware of the world around us, issues that aren't directly design based but have a direct influence on design. These factors include political, social, economic, cultural, technological and environmental issues that may provide us with a problem. These problems and issues can then be solved through design.

In groups, we were asked to look at one of these potential issues or points of interest and develop an emerging trend of our own. Me and fellow knitters Beth, Jess, Isobel and Christine decided to brainstorm ideas around the issues mentioned above.

Firstly, we decided that cultural influences such as film and cinematography would be highly influential on the world of fashion design. Popular films such as American Hustle could have a direct influence over design, taking into consideration aspects such as styling, cinematography and mood.

Myself and Beth felt that it was a little one dimensional, so we wanted to push our trend. We decided to also look at technological advancements and the progression and shift from in-store shopping to online purchasing. Could this lead to resistance and brands trying to lure customers back into stores, avoiding the demise of tangible shops. We both felt positively towards this idea and felt that it had more milage and could potentially drive the project beyond the presentation.

Unit X: College 2- Future Intelligence trend project.

Selecting College 2 for Unit X seemed to be a very natural choice for me. It entailed being part of a design team, a part of a bigger machine, allowing me to utilise my own personal skills and draw on the skills of others.

From this, I decided to take part in the "Future Intelligence" brief, focusing heavily on trend forecasting and identification. I felt that working on a trend-led would be beneficial and developing skills that could improve my awareness of trends would help me in future projects, altering the way that I approach future briefs.

Working in groups may be something that I find challenging as I do have a strong sense of vision on my own and I can find it difficult to allow other to alter and change that. However, working in teams is something that I must get used to and embrace the positive aspects of.

The Future Intelligence brief also provides the chance to work with Rianna Phillips, a graduate from MMU who has now developed her own line of fashion accessories, mainly clutch bags. Rianna's live brief involves developing a look book for her latest collection and this will be a challenge. 

As other groups will be taking part in this live brief, it will be competitive. I hope to gain a good understanding of Rianna's brand and developing collection and this will help me to gather ideas that will hopefully work for the collection.