Financial District: Fashion Design Final Project

The first problem I found was waste of power over night. Financial District has more high-rise office buildings, and I found a lot of them left the light on overnight. The building across my apartment is Deutsche Bank building, and I can see clearly that no one’s in offices, but the lights were on. This is a waste of energy and causing a light pollution for people who live around.

The second problem was the overload traffic in lower Manhattan. Financial District is the at the tip of Manhattan, where the roads and street are all gathered together. And all those oneway stuff makes the traffic even more confusing. Broadway in Lower Manhattan is like a parking lot everyday around 5 pm.

This is the third problem in my neighborhood, which I chose to work as the final project. People who work in Financial District wear a uniform (shirt+suit+tie), which creates a dull and non-artistic image for the neighborhood. Inspired by more artistic neighborhoods like Soho and the East Village, I’m redesigning the traditional men’s shirt. To display the design and improve the neighborhood’s image, I will wear the shirt in the Financial District, and mix with the businessmen during rush hour.

I started my design with 3 rough sketches. The first one was the one I liked. It’s regular neat pant, and has two hidden pieces covered with zips on both sides. Once the zip opens, the pant would turn into a baggie pant. The Second design is a carnival dress. I was thinking about bringing a strong awareness by wearing some extraordinary outfit on the street. The third piece I drew was a baseball jacket. It has a contrast between office outfit and sport life. The overall idea that time was to make a strong contrast from wearing business outfit. So I did a little too much that I brainstormed everything that is opposite.

This is my mood board. I try to express the eliteness of the businessmen work in Financial District, so that I researched about tennis and shirt styles. I was inspired by a men’s fashion magazine call which I was reading. The magazine has a overall theme about artistic, fashionable, and elegant men. The color palette is included in the mood board. I choose camel, light blue, and navy dark blue to be my major color. These indicate sunshine, young, artistic and experienced knowledge. I use black, white, gray as the accent color, since these are the classic colors for gentlemen. My goal is represent the businessmen in a energetic and artistic way.

These are the 3 colored sketches. I totally changed my direction of design as I did more research. The goal now is not only designing pieces for bringing the awareness of the problem, but also designing a new uniform for businessmen who work in m neighborhood. The first piece is a over-length shirt. The major part camel and the collar and cuffs are white. The bottom of it should be long enough to reach the bottom of a short. The next sketch is a coat, inspired by italian policeman’s uniform. I changed some little things based on that, such as the batches, pockets, and reduced a layer. Mainly I took the wrapped shoulder design, because it makes men’s shoulder look wider. I designed it for some experienced men and they usually look serious. The third one is for female. I inspired by Vatican soldier’s uniform.

Italian Policeman

Vatican Soldier

My fabric research(fabric name, price, source)