"NEW CONCLUSIONS" SKETCHBOOK

As you may read or may not have. My first project of my fashion course was "New Conclusions" as part of the Fashion Practice and Methodologies module. The task was a research based one, creating mood boards and exploring your chosen subject. So here is a few bits of my sketchbook!

Over summer we were asked to create a box and fill it with, basically things that you like to create a Primary and Secondary research mood board. All of my box items were 3D so my Primary research board was not that great in all honesty. My items were so nice, i did put a lot of effort into collecting them but it wasn't specified what they were actually for. I should probably bring my box home, it's still under my table! Anyway, for my Secondary research i looked at a mixture of my favourite things i find inspiring. Art Deco has to be my favourite movement, the structures and shapes are so beautiful so i focused a part of my board on doorways. Another part i looked at was Fetish wear, i based my Final Major Project on it in College, i'm not sure why i find it interesting but i think maybe because it's different and unusual.

And finally i looked at Structural fashion and Contemporary fashion. Including the work of one of my favourite fashion designers Iris Van Herpen. 

The next part of my mood boards were association related. I was given a word at random and had to stem off from it as a technique of finding inspiration. My word was Hardscape. 

After completing the word association, we were asked to complete a picture association board. I chose a photograph of Anne Boleyn. This eventually stemmed to Henry VIII > Execution > Murder > Rose and Fred West > Prison > Lady Gaga's Telephone Video < Celebrity < Money < Royalty < Elizabeth I. This was another technique of inspiration ideas and i did find it quite strange that i could get Lady Gaga from Anne Boleyn. It was interesting. 

The next board i created was based on Leeds. Instead of basing it on Leeds itself, i looked more at the architecture. The buildings in Leeds are really beautiful, especially the oldest ones. Throughout Leeds there is a wide variety of different types all in one place. For instance in Millennium Square, where there is the strangest shaped building (you can see below), it's very modern and artistic and happens to be next to the Leeds Museum which is vey old and decorative. 

A bit like the picture associate board, i was given a page of strange paragraphs. I had to create a board that tells the story just through photos. 

"Another beautiful sunrise bathed Strathnaver Forest in a warm summer's glow, chasing away the dark shadows of the night. Beyond the tree line, hidden deep in the Scottish wilderness lived a secret world, lost in the history of the once great lands of the Sutherland countries. Carefully nestled high in the trees, hidden in nature's greens and browns, were the homes of the fairies of the old Sutherland kingdom. Duty, fear and maybe guilt had led to this secret kingom's history being re-written, the powerful rulers deciding what their fairy people should believe."

Out of the paragraph i focused on the words "Fairies", "Wilderness", "Forest", "Scotland" and "Sunrise". I also looked at work from designers Alexander McQueen and Givenchy which i think had a 'fairy' inspired fell to them which could relate to my board. 

I was given the word "soul" and had to create a mood board in that theme. Naturally i expanded and focused my theme on Death instead. There are some really great books in the library on death, i think the subject is so interesting. 

For my last initial research board i chose to base it on jellyfish. I looked at jellyfish inspired clothing and tried to create techniques and samples i could incorporate into a garment design. 

We were then asked to extend our 3 initial boards in relation to Theme, Colour and Shape. From my Fairy board i decided to look more at the word "Forest" and looked into the plant life found there. Primarily into Fungi because of the interesting shapes, colours and textures.

For my pages on Soul i looked into designs by Alexander McQueen which i think represented 'soul', as well as Fashion icon Lady Gaga and Skeletons. 

When i got to the Jellyfish extension pages i had realised i really didn't feel as inspired as Soul and Fungi. Everything about Jellyfish is interesting and unusual but i was just not feeling it.

It was hard to decide which board i wanted to develop. Soul is more my kind of style but i was worried that as i had already based my FMP on death, it would be too similar and i would be stuck in that mindset. Fungi was the only other option. I was a little stuck in the beginning of what to actually do because i've not done anything similar to Fungi or even anything none-related to death or sex. So i started off exploring Mould and different types of fungi, and ways i could incorporate techniques to replicate them. 

I even experimented with ways i could create patterns for fabric. 

As part of my design ideas i layered and resized photos of fungi to create silhouettes for garment inspiration.

Fashion Guide layout plan. 

I'm not completely happy with my sketchbook. But i do think i've improved a lot on presentation since the beginning of this brief. My later pages are a lot better in my opinion.