Week 3

The Body in Cloth

The collection name I've chosen to encompass the work in my graduate collection.

Developed Ideas:

• Textile and Adornment incorporated to support a zero waste patternmaking approach.

• What if I toiled in blank silk fabrics, and then used these to make dyed/cyanotype/patchwork undergarments?

• Visually and thematically inspired by the feminine form.

Further...

Reusing Toile Materials

What developed as a mental block for me following my last project was the time it took to develop a geometric, innovative low waste pattern, because of the fact that I had to constantly consider how the fabric waste sections might be converted into my secondary garments. (Undergarments.)

I did, however, still like and want to stick to the concept of having primary and secondary garments (primary being clothing and secondary being underwear; in relation also to waste management; however now I consider that this might also apply to the level of material saved in each category.)

I also noticed how in developing a low waste collection I tended to still generate a large amount of waste during my toiling process. I toiled first in calico, which in large pieces can generally sometimes be reused, but is inherently still wasted and never worn; and in like materials for later toiles; which can effectively mostly not be reused much. Note that toile materials, particularly in early stages, are also sometimes drawn on and manipulated a lot which can also make them more unusable.

I did discuss in the last project modelling a bit more in paper in early stages of design - this is a recyclable material.

Now, I intend to develop a Primary zero waste collection; developed with inspiration of the formatting of pre-existing zero waste patterns (including my own and those of historical and contemporary zero waste designers). I also intend to develop a Secondary collection of undergarments, generated using the textile waste of final toiles (in like materials) from my primary collection garments.

Each early Primary Collection toile will be made from calico, which may then be used to make all final collection Secondary Garment calico toiles. Then, final toiles in silk fabrics from the Primary collection garments will be used to create final garments for the secondary collection garments. Given that I intend to work in sustainable natural fabrics, and excess materials from early and final toiles which haven't been able to be used for secondary garments, patchwork and accessories will ultimately be biodegradable as an entirely last resort.

The fact that I'm designing a secondary collection of undergarments to be upcycled from used fabrics instead of being entirely zero waste means that they're slightly more of a product range, as well as being artisanal clothing. This means that the patterns may be graded up and down to fit different sizes after my collection; and any leftover and unused fabric waste may be used to make these further pieces.

The collection will be visually inspired by the feminine form, through historical and contemporary artwork. Modelled with inspiration from Holly McQuillan, textile applications, techniques and printing practices should support these waste management processes and outcomes.

Still to do:

- Read through and analyse Holly McQuillan's Zero Waste in textile applications PHD to further refine my own opinions of how strongly handcraft and textile inputs will now feature in my designs.

- Read through and annotate Nude: Collections from Tate to clarify the mood and theme.

Construction Timeline

Structuring my project in this way does serve to make the process and the sustainability values through construction a lot more carefully considered. What this means for me is that a non-linear process like this requires me to works structurally when toiling and constructing. Firstly, because zero waste design can result from processes of patternmaking rather than initial design, lots more small scale modelling and half scale toiles can be needed.

Then, once toiling, I should always have a second toile for each garment before cutting up the first for my secondary garment toiling. The toiling process should follow as below:

1. First Primary toile(s) in Calico

2. Final Primary toile in like fabrics to final - plain silk? (so as to be used for undergarments)

3. All Secondary toiles from Primary toile calico. (Smaller garments require less fabric, can make multiple toiles.)

4. Final Fabrics Primary Garments

5. Final Fabrics Secondary Garments from Primary garment final toiles fabrics.

(Any printwork and metalwork accessories& hardware construction to be done before and during final construction.)

This construction layout will aid me in developing my personal working timeline for developing the collection.

Annotations

Starting to analyse what I like about these nude drawings which have stood out to me most. I think that the form of the reclining woman starts to really associate with my theme of The Body in Cloth: Comfort. Then seeing an image like this: an exposed and unapologetic feminine form transposed onto an Issey Miyake garment through print really starts to represent the direction which I hope to take in this collection.

I looked at these images as a way to follow through from my minor work, which studied anatomy visually and played with the idea of layering of prints with anatomy: eg. skeleton, muscle tone, skin and form. A lot of these prints I did also played with symmetry, which let me to look at things like lung structures and Rorschach art, which both also print very beautifully. These structures then start to bear similarities to textile forms, looking like yarn, which is where I moved to analysing next. I am somewhat skilled at techniques like crochet, and also think weaving, embroidery and deconstructed thread structures could look really good as incorporated techniques in my design. I've also got technologies like felting, flatbed knitting and lasercutting available to me should I choose to incorporate them. (Especially being aware that techniques with yarn/thread are very low waste, since a person only cuts the length of yarn which is required for use. )

I intend to take inspiration from innovations in pre-existing zero waste patterns for my primary collection, so that more of my creative energies can be expressed in innovating and adapting different forms rather than starting entirely from scratch. Zandra Rhodes is a great inspiration; given how the clothing is constructed around the textile designs to form a really linear outcome with great bias drape.

Moving into more of an upcycling style which is relevant to my secondary collection undergarments, these historical silk map garments (bra and panty set) were constructed in WWII using silk maps in order to manages economies in fabric quantities while sill achieving a desired and beautiful outcome. This contemporary example on the right - a silk shirt by Raeburn - has clearly been inspired by the former concept and executes this very well. It was at the point of annotating these pages when I considered that I could develop 'secondary' garments using reused textile waste from final toiles.

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Moodboard - First Iteration

Storyboards and Colour Values explored. Click to enlarge.

Shapes and Colour values:

I've been adoring the anatomical etch shapes and prints which I started to develop in my previous minor work, particularly from a visual perspective. I believe some combination between these etched shapes and the historical/contemporary life drawing I've been examining would work really well from a mood/style/visual and printwork angle.

This particular collage was a layering of colour tones and textures that particularly speak to me. The yarn textures, an image sourced online from presumably naturally dyed colour tones, are arranged to mimic Katie Paterson's Fossil Necklace (2013).

Colours

Fabrics should be chosen soon, as well as doing colour and textile sample tests with any fabric prints I might be interested in.

It is important in particular that fabric is chosen early, because once again the widths of fabrics need to be known before finalising a zero waste pattern. Excess width in a final fabric can always be used to make binding for ties and finishings; but not having enough width in fabric can't be worked around.

Developed Colour Values

As of this far, this moodboard best represents a combination of shape and form, colour and mood with visual inspiration, which I wish to portray through my work. I'll next be looking at drawing more of these forms and examining the line work and shapes of form: this ought to translate into may design and work, given how I intend to use zero waste patternmaking techniques to express these ideas though garments.

The colours I've chosen mainly express my wish to incorporate cyanotype and van dyke as a method of textile printing. I was very inspired by the colours in the central image - Sir Matthew Smith's Nude, Fitzroy Street, no 1. I think that these layered colours like vermillion red and emerald green would really support printwork and the royal blue and ochre brown print colour tones for some striking feature garments. At the same time, I hope that the colour story still leaves room to have enough neural tones to support the collection and really compliment the range of natural fabrics which I hope to use - particularly in creams, burnt umber browns, soft and sheer chartreuse, and black and possibly white.

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Holly McQuillan - Analysis and Thoughts

Zero Waste Systems Thinking: Multimorphic Textile Forms

The following is an analysis and through process through reading McQuillan's PHD published text, as well as pulling out academic quotes to use as reference to support my own body of work through my proposal. (Form my readings, this is a series of collaborative textile explorations.)

McQuillan identifies as the cause for her sustainability practices a 'rapidly unfolding environmental crisis and dominant response in the fashion industry', in suggestion that the industry is aware of the need for a more circular, non-linear fashion economy and thus solutions are being explored and developed.

She identified the three sections explored in her work: Transition Design, Post-Anthropocentric Design, and Design as Future Making. She also follows paths of inquiry with consideration of how they link to work of designers such as Issey Miyake's A-POC, and other designers who explore weaving of shaped pattern pieces; moving into a space of whole garment weaving herself.

Through McQuillan's enquiry in aim of expanding a design methods base in the realm of zero waste design, she discusses 'micro-manufacturing contexts' and looks towards industry future proofing through new practices. She considers that the traditional cut-and-sew making style can be expensive, intensive and exploitive, time consuming and wasteful.

She mentions her previous work Make/Use, which is an open-source resource of zero waste patterns, available as a sense of 'social fabric' which moves into a more holistic space of garment construction and design at cut and sew level and beyond. Given that my own work will be more cut-and-sew textile based, this is especially relevant to me research base. I choose to continue to operate at this level as I believe that the traditionalist handcraft techniques that I wish to incorporate into the work are inherently sustainable, given how these are techniques that must be preserved. I should not be able to use these techniques as well if I moved into the more technology-reliant process space which McQuillan goes on to work at.

McQuillan asks questions such as Why Zero Waste? - Attributing it to environmental crisis. I feel that in approaching design in a more4 non-linear process, we have cause to step back and understand what areas in these linear processes are the worst cause of waste construction, and therefore approach these with a more considered sustainability strategy.

She also defines the circular economy, explaining how materials, especially materials in combination, can be particularly difficult to recycle > problematic. She also mentions the goals of large fashion conglomerates like H&M - these sustainability goals are formed without reference to the way that growth limits the effectiveness of a circular economy.

Her work is transitioning away from an anthropocentric design view. (Designing with humans being at the centre of importance.) A quote from Mathilda Tham and Kate Fletcher's Earth Logic, 2019, states how 'fashion should centre Earth and not growth'. The foundations for existing garment construction methods were developed in the context of a small scale cottage industry model which bears little resemblance to the context these methods are used in today. With this said, the relationship between technology and form is longstanding, when considering the analogue-style weaving loom technology McQuillan herself goes on to use.

McQuillan identifies how zero-waste geometric style garment design features through history - with Grecian clothing in draping, Indian Saris, Scottish Kilts. These are volume based shapes. She also considers that the foundation for the current tailor's matrix is made up of rectangular plots.

Flat pattern-cutting approaches may be replaced by flat or fully fashioned knitting, and less traditionally, fully fashioned weaving. McQuillan explains that the need for simplicity drove the aesthetics and fit of the open source resource Make/Use; as it was developed as a user centred approach. I think that where my own zero waste designs will differ and become interesting will be in a more visual inspiration (the female form) driving the aesthetics and fit of my own designs, as opposed to a need for simplicity. I hope that this will help to develop much more interesting and avant-garde forms using the same zero-waste cut-and-sew techniques to appeal to a slightly more specialised target market.

The way that my own style of zero waste design and production, as explored in my past work and through my ongoing graduate collection, may look if adapted to industry; may be an industry weaving size-specified lengths of cloth, to meet an industry-sized requirement for graded sized cloth requirements for a product range of graded zero waste patterns for garments.

Case Studies: On page 54, McQuillan underwent an experiment within a fast fashion brand to explore incorporating zero waste design. She worked with a patternmaking team in oder to attempt to make a pre-designed garment less wasteful, by economising the pattern cut-lay. In doing this, she was able to make a minimally wasteful version in which the fabric yield was reduced by 10%. However, the design was found to be less preferable and ultimately unused by the company, as the increase of seams and therefore sewing time was found to be a greater expense as compared to the expense saved in the 10% reduced yield of a comparatively inexpensive fabric. This, to me, clearly demonstrates as how a zero-waste process succeeding must begin in development at a design level, rather than only approaching a design afterwards at a patternmaking stage in an attempt to make it more sustainable. This is why my own design process is partially includes a Form Follows Process design function.

McQuillan's further work practically explores her work in fully woven garments, constructed in layers which may be cut and dissected to fold out in an origami style to add form to pattern pieces. This process using weave technologies allows her to confront and overcome traditional limitations of a conventional rectangular based angular tailor's block; such as that of a bodice pattern.

McQuillan then moves from this process into a space where she is creating fully woven amorphous tunic shapes with layering of pattern through complex weaving technologies , and then cutting apart layers of the design for dimension.

My overall view of McQuillan's work is that, through a traditional source of technology, the loom weaving (and division of many layers to create an accordion style fold-out dimensional garment) works at a level which is too complex in comparison to my own Design Based Approaches. My personal interests - waste management, zero waste on a cut-and-sew basis under a form-follows-process design style aims to embody my specified chosen theme visually;The Body in Cloth; through sustainable processes, rather than being entirely based on technology and textile innovation. However, I do still strongly align with McQuillan's observations of the importance of ingrained industrial change in the conventional fashion community, as well as a shift away from anthropocentric design.

Make/Use - 'A modular system for zero waste fashion'

McQuillan's Open-Source database, available to the public with zero waste patterns and processes in a product range, is something I've referenced as inspiration often in past design, and will be a fantastic starting point in finding zero waste pattern lays from which to be inspired as starting points for my own design and patterncutting. The above image demonstrates a t-shirt as a part of the modular collection (as McQuillan explained above, designed for simplicity for a user-centred approach) - the shirt is designed with incorporation from screen printing technologies to print the zero waste pattern and seal exposed seams/cut lines, and the database explains construction methods such as the insertions-stitch embroidery as shown above for a flat joining technique. These methods align with me so well as McQuillan combines print techniques, handcraft, and modular innovation sustainable patternmaking very successfully. I'm interested to see how my work differs from hers, given that I place slightly more focus in a specified visual inspiration and outcome, and I intend to design the collection to be supported by interesting undergarments as a way to feature a second waste management technique.

APA references: (Use in Proposal PDF)

McQuillan, H. (2020) Zero Waste Systems Thinking: Multimorphic Textile-forms. PhD Thesis. Edited by L. Hallnäs. University of Borås. http://hb.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1478307&dswid=-429

McQuillan, H. (n.d.). A modular system for zero-waste fashion. make/use. https://makeuse.nz/

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Secondary Garment Mockup Idea

Following this newly developed concept of making Secondary garments, as undergarments from toile textile scraps for a more non-linear approach, I made this bra as a trial garment. I made this using self printed viscose silk textile scraps, generated during my minor work last semester (using a cyanotype printing technique). The piece is lined using brightly printed gold, which I think adds a beautiful pop of colour. I've also used a metal buckle as a feature centre piece, which I etched and hand cut from aluminium as a part of the project. I feel as through this really demonstrates the direction I'm wanting to go in, even if the fit and the printwork may not be entirely correct.

Earliest Range Ideas

As zero waste processes can sometimes require a form follows process outlook I intend not to be too final in my range plan (and I feel that I should certainly do some experiments with volume and fabric manipulations): these are my earliest ideas.

Primary Collection: Entirely Zero Waste Main Garments

Written in red - areas where I may begin to gain inspiration by studying existing zero waste patterns and designs.

- Gown?

Similar mood to McQueen SS2003? Maybe exploring/embodying lifework explored in life drawing imagery?

- Denim Jacket

I've always loved the idea of bringing raw denim principles back into my design. This could also feature elsewhere in the collection for cohesivity: (such as a skirt??) I intend most of my range to be made in natural fabrics such as light silks, using techniques like bias cuts, so having a heavier weighted fabric. Loose fit to make a dressier garment like a silk gown more casual.

(Should consider that this will have to be one of the most structurally made garments, fitted sleeves etc, so should take the greatest amount of inspiration from other existing patterns for this garment. (Also consider that natural denim can be brought in both selvage and wide lengths. This means that a pattern may be formatted either way. Working with denim also means the fabric has structural weight and has a weave which is very directional, which doesn't lend well towards zero waste patterns that format pieces on their sides , cannot have any reverse pieces to be flipped over due to the clear wrong side of the fabric.

Possible beginning sources:

ZWW collared shirt - observe how fitted sleeves are broken up into strips with angular edging, and convex & concave curves to allow for a sleeve bridge and

https://www.zww.fi/kauluspaita

- Denim Skirt? Raw organic indigo cotton denim. Lower priority but may help to balance the collection.

Materials can be dyed if needed? Natural dyes like onion skin etc can be very delicate and impactful.

Secondary Collection: Undergarments made from final toile fabrics

(This may be a small selection of fabrics to match the varying weights of final fabrics desires: eg. a canvas style fabric; a light silk, a mid weight natural fabric, a stretch cotton??)

- Canvas Corset? Or similar? Designing primary clothing in denim will require me to use a heavier weighted material in later toiles to gauge the correct weight and drape that the final garments will use. Given the level of detail which may go into a final toile for a primary collection, like a denim jacket toile; I may choose to construct detail areas of the toile to a high standard - eg the button placket; which could then become an upcycled section re-assembled in a secondary garment like a corset. Whereas most secondary garments will be underwear which uses smaller sections of fabric from the toiles, a larger piece like a corset might include upcycled sections from the toile, like seam lines through the pattern pieces or a button placket.

These garments should definitely work symbiotically with the primary garments in the collection by complementing the designs - they may be worn over the clothes as feature pieces too, and/or distribute fabric volume when worn over a primary piece.

- Mid weight cotton bra - (neutral colour) with brightly coloured print lining inside cups.

Further secondary garments - Accessories

Moving from a zero waste platform in Primary Garments into waste management and handcraft techniques in Secondary garments also paves a path for using sustainable handcraft techniques like patchwork, which may manifest in accessories.

I also drew this small sketch for what this might look like:

This takes into consideration the fact that I might use etched metal print plates (such as aluminium, copper or brass) during my textile printing process if I make any textile prints, as I did in my last semester minor class. I'd always liked the idea of using these after printing with them, to make some sort of avant-garde garment or accessory. Here, I've sketched the idea of using them in a little purse bag.

Gloves?

Gloves are another accessory piece I've always wanted to incorporate into a collection. Working with small scale waste pieces may make these the perfect garments.

More to be considered during designing process.