V&A Exhibtion

Alexander McQueen savage beauty.

I had the privilege of seeing the Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty Collection at the V&A in London. The collections were overwhelmingly beautiful and striking. There was limited involvement in the exhibition as no photographs were to be taken and no sketching either. The exhibition was also very crowded and you were only allowed to view his work for a limited amount of time. Besides that his themes within his collection were breathtaking and there was an almost magical atmospheric look to his clothes. His earliest work demonstrated a raw and edgy culture to his work.

What I found most striking was his Romantic Nationalism and his Platos Atlantic collection.

His Romantic Nationalism concept came from his Scottish ancestry. The room looked regal and majestic and the classical music in the background complemented his work. I discovered he first used tartan in his Highland Rape collection but soon came back to it 11 years later in his beautiful collection called ‘The Widows Of Culloden’. This collection was a much softer and less aggressive rendering than his Highland Rape collection. 

Platos Atlantic collection was to the end of his exhibition.  I find this work inspiring and creative. The narrative behind this collection was his most fantastical concept. The collection is about if the ice caps melt in the future and the seas have risen.  The dress collection represents what we as a society would look like if man had evolved under water. The dresses are presented as an army of fishlike creatures, a sort of hybrid animal alien form. Within this collection in my opinion he has been able to master the quality of digital printing and there all derived from natural organisms.  From seeing this incredible collection I have been inspired to create narratives in my designs and prints. I think with a narrative to my work it will provide a better understanding and thoughtful process within my collection. I also inforce film within my project so I can identify the narrative with my work though fashion film making.

Fashion film for Rianna Phillips

                 

Fall 15\16

 http://www.riannaphillips.com/

 Fashion film for Rianna Phillips 

I found it most exciting working on the fashion film for Rianna as I was able to have complete direction to how  the model should move and perform with the pages, I also had the freedom to use dynamic editing shots with creating the film. Making this film for Rianna has helped me develop my editing skills with rewinding clips and mirroring shots. It has also given me the opportunity to make fashion films on a professional level. The Music is by Oisin Baber and this music was specifically designed for this film.

 

WORKING FOR RIANNA

Behind the scenes:

Fall 15\16

http://www.riannaphillips.com/

Interning 

Working for Rianna Phillips was exciting and I felt like I was able to claim my own independence interning for her. She directed me to create two films for her new collection. This was a big achievement for me as I specialize my work with fashion film making. The first film to be created is a behind the scenes film that me and my friend Sion (a film student) both worked on this part and filmed the process of the photography shoot throughout the day. I wanted to capture as much as I could from the hair and makeup to the direction of photography. I set both cameras to high brightness setting and a high resolution as from looking at Rianna’s work she has a very clean, crisp look to her collections. I edited the film to show shadows between each clip I did this to show how time of the day goes quickly whist filming. Below is the behind the scenes film I have filmed and edited. The music is by Oisin Baber a student in Bristol that I was able to collaborate with through a connection of my sister. He wrote this music to fit perfectly to the different shots.

  

Lucy Madeline Watson

I came across Lucy Madeline Watson’s work on the second floor of the degree show, she is a student that studies Animation and illustration. I choose not to write a review on another print designer because I was drawn and inspired by Watson’s imagery and motion picture. Watson had displayed canvases of imagery of water that she filmed at a local aquarium called Liquid Indigo and a moving image piece called Cube Projection Mapping based on the poem 'Aquatic Nocturne' by Sylvia Plath This piece was inspired by the line: Deep in liquid indigo. I was drawn to the mood and motion of her work. Her film was complex and well thought out and identified as moving shapes that I found therapeutic and interesting.

Along with my print designs I make fashion films as an advertisement of my print designs constructed in a creative way, I could see a correlation of her theme of work to how I work with my films. I enjoyed the complexity of her creative motion film, I found her work to be exciting as a moving design that morphs into different colours. Her film and her canvas pieces had a mood that gave off a therapeutic approach. In my film work I wish to make my viewers feel something while they are watching the film. While watching her film it dazzled me with the different movements[AP1]  and colours and she has truly developed an exciting piece.

Watson has taken a simple context such as water and made it complex. Her editing skills are advanced with motion picture editing and I feel that she has outstanding work by making her motion picture look like a final finished print design that entails movement. I found her calming blue colours in her canvas work were presented well and her mirroring work to be intelligent and precise.

From the Degree show this piece of work stuck with me the most and I wish to create a film that will stick with people and I want them to be visually moved by my fashion films. I feel that Lucy Madeline Watson’s work has inspired me to create a complex film that entails moving designs. I found it interesting how she displayed her film as a 3D cube and that she thought outside of the box, to display her work. I want to create the same approach in my film work.

Elain Mair

When I came across Elain’s work (print design student for high fashion) I was mostly impressed by her row of print designs. She had a rack of carefully prepared prints and images supporting her designs and a photograph of her designs on a garment. I was impressed by her collection of luminous colour print designs. She chose her colours well for each print design and had made all of her prints look unique, with a correlating theme through each design. From my observation she had playfully created prints from her own painting and photographs and had mirrored them to create final corresponding designs. I identified her designs as a floral theme enriching in repeated print and print placement. Elain Mair has the ability to take an organic raw object such as her floral designs and manipulate the object, transforming the object into a modern futuristic design using bright complementary tones, complex lines and edgy shapes.  I am inspired how she is able to take an organic object and make it look exciting and bold. I find her drawing and designs crazy and expressive but there is still a high quality of profession and neat craft. I was mostly impressed by her business card and her logo that was displayed on the front. It had definitely showed contemplation and careful thought. I found Mair’s work to be a high standard and I felt that her work did not represent a work of a student but a work of a designer that works for a high street company such as Topshop. I find her work to be that of a professional designer work, her identifiable skills of Photoshop and Illustrator are diverse. She used good range of primary resources and her theme of work authenticated as electric and energetic. In Mair’s work I found that she is able to take organic natural colours and collage theme with futuristic metallic colours. From seeing her work at the degree show I was inspired by her ideas of taking the organic and natural and making it manmade I wish to demonstrate a strong theme in my work that show a contrast of two different ideas that can be created into a correlation. I was also impressed by her bold metallic colours that crafted her work as exciting and vibrant I wish to use bold vibrant colours that transforms my designs into a concept that is electrifying. For my degree show in a year to come I wish to develop my Photoshop and Illustrator skills to as a high level like Elain Mair.

Grace Davies

I was attracted to Grace Davies’s (print design student for high fashion) work at the 3^rd year degree show, her work demonstrates a theme of materiality and an investigation of new and innovative materials used in architecture and design. She demonstrates ‘Manipulated Materials’ I find this concept inspiring and diverse. Grace both had a look-book and designs on the wall, what had drawn me to her work was the materials such as foam and wood upon the floor to me this signified original thinking and a bold but confident statement to demonstrate along with her designs. I am inspired by her quality and complexity of her print designs, in my designs I wish to work as Grace Davies does within her highly complex detailed print designs. Grace Davies’s look-book was outstanding in my opinion she had taken the concept of future forecasting and developed it to her strong ideas with material and colour. I was attracted by her bold colour and shapes that she produced in her look book it made her portfolio exciting. She demonstrates high quality concepts within her look-book by mixing drawing, pictures of materials and print designs to create a collage that almost tells a story about her development of her work. Her consumer is aimed at a high fashion audience and I find it highly intelligent how she is able to demonstrate raw materials and manipulated them to a high fashion quality. As I wish to show my process of design through film I feel that Grace’s work has inspired to demonstrate modern designs that take upon the future of fashion.  It is clear that she has experience in fashion and textiles and she is inspired by exciting shapes and colour.  I find her designs almost therapeutic to the eye as she uses complementary colours that show a rhythmical balance in her designs.  In my work I wish to manifest bold and complex ideas that demonstrate a modern theme. I could see a connection in Grace’s work that shows a process that is modern and edgy approach in her designs that I feel is similar in my process of work. Davies has inspired me to create a look-book along with my final designs and a film that demonstrates movement, and rhythm within my concept. I was impressed by the hard work that had gone into her degree work and her work showed thinking outside the box and that is how I wish to approach my degree work in the future.

New York: Flavor Paper

The most influential part of my visit to New York was visiting the studios of the company of Flavor Paper in Brooklyn. Entering into the studio, the appearance of the inside the building was exciting and dramatically shaped. Flavor Paper is now a modern print studio that just started out as a small print house in New Orleans.

The company Flavor Paper was discovered by young designers in Oregon just days before the equipment and designs were about to be destroyed by the then owner called Ted. From the visit I noticed the print designs had a very pop art nesh to them that were inspired by Andy Warhol. The Andy Warhol series is a collaboration with ‘The Andy Warhol X Foundation for the Visual Arts’. Flavor paper has access to Andy Warhol’s work with the exception of his wallpaper. Flavor Paper honours and develops the icon Warhol to create amazing imagery, ranging from rare to iconic paintings, silkscreen prints and film stills as inspiration for the collection.

What I noticed with their print designs is they are able to renew old imagery as a repeating print or by using bold acid colour. From what I gathered from the visit they try to create print wall designs that are not yet on the market. These are designs that don’t fit into any sort of audience but they stand as a unique design market. The visit illustrated to me that it is possible to create your own designs without an audience and that their designs are entirely what they wish to create. I find this inspiring and I think there are very few companies that design with what they want to design without having an audience as a base. This line of design I think relates to my practice as I found the design themselves visually interesting and I felt they had a fine art quality that I try to reflect in my own print work. I was interested in the concept of creating different smells and infusing them into their wallpaper hence naming it Flavor Paper. I was inspired by the use of using old machinery and hand screen printing to create modern designs. It showed that by using hand screen techniques they take great pride, passion and care into their designs. Visiting Flavor Paper has made me think differently in that by adding something different to their print designs they are creating their own market such as the flavor in the paper.

I think with my understanding of my practice it is important for me to create something different with my designs that will  make my designs stand out and have a unique quality to them. Visiting Flavor Paper has helped me and inspired me to create designs that are not on the market yet. My visit there was so influential that in the future I wish to be working in a studio company that create and develop their own designs in such a different manner.