Fashion - 3D fashion

We were given 5 minutes on each manikin for this exercise and in that short amount of time, had to create a garment or outfit made from the remnants of yesterdays garments inspired by art. 

This cape below features my own spiral creations that involved using scissors to create curls in the paper as you would when wrapping presents. I found that it worked surprisingly well on the white cartridge paper we were given and I used that to my advantage. The garment below was simple to put together and we placed the curls around the neck of the manikin whilst folding under the edges of the brown paper to give the edges a more crisp appearance, because by the time it was our go to make something it was pretty battered. 

We then tried our hand at making an accessory from the paper and card. It's often easy to brush over the accessory aspect of fashion when in reality jewelry, head wear, bags and shoes are massive money makers for designers and their brands. When adding clothes to these manikins its easy to forget these accessories, but we played around with these loops to create a dynamic neck piece. 

This was a more elegant creation. A cape created by attaching slithers of brown paper was slung around the waist and connected with a white strip to give a clingy and well fitted skirt. The irregular hem line is a stylistic feature of this garment and the fact that it's not perfect is endearing. The composition of the cape that resembles feathers is beautifully constructed and seems to flow with the direction of the body and hug it well, making this a garment that the wearer would feel confident and comfortable wearing.

This is a very busy garment and is essentially a dress intended to give a real 'wow' factor. Everyhing is everywhere and it contradicts the saying that 'less is more' because here, 'the more the merrier'! It has an interesting construction by leaving the breasts on full view but with #freethenipple soon to reign, this won't be a problem on the catwalk; work it. Pleating the paper around the skirt is a valuable technique that we learnt whilst creating this dress as it adds volume and shape to this garment. 

This garment was all about the placement of individual element to create a floaty and feminine dress. The scrunching of the paper was an amazing way to create huge amounts of volume and could potentially be used to create a full out meringue dress. The huge folded feature on the front of the garment shows of the back of the wearer which makes this a sensual outfit for the observer and those observed.  The pleats all point to the centre of the figure and do a good job of training eyes there which instantly makes the wearer the centre of attention in this garment. 

I love the design below as it instantly catches the audiences attention with the bold spikes protruding from the right shoulder. The curl of the piece to hook onto the back of the wearer is clever and adds to the illusion that this is based on a mythical creature of some sort. This could easily be adapted into a coat, dress, neck piece or top; all beautifully striking. 

This exercise despite being fun and fast paced, was to swift for me as someone who prefers to focus on the design aspect of clothes production. I found it hard to work with paper although I now certainly see the benefits of its ability to be manipulated and re-worked with its disposable nature which will mean I consider it for prototype use in the future. The paper however fails to emulate the drape and properties of different fabrics which are the essence of fashion design and creating a wearable and unforgettable piece of clothing. This activity certainly got the class's creative juices flowing and introduced everyone to a new concept of design.