What do I want my work to embody? Dose the work currently embody that?
“Healing”, is a theme that needs to carry careful thought, reflective sensation, social norms and morals. The material of making a garment, the texture, color, weight, and quality are considered during the design process. I am surprised how do so many elements and influences are contained in a garment, and interact with human body both physically and spiritually. There are so many aspects need to be considered and that makes the object to be meaningful. I like what Korn noted in the article Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: “Often, the most meaningful objects are the most mundane.” This reminds me how nowadays designers are making things based on attraction with powerful color, unique shape and put unusual materials together to shock respondents. This seems like a trend with the idea of refreshing. Designers are making new things to drag consumers’ attention. I myself sometimes throw diverse materials together to create something looks “new”, there are not much thoughts in it but just a “unique” object. It’s even easy to get lost into the realm of “creating unique things”, when I focus on “unique” or “new thing”, I ignored the meanings of making a garment, I don’t consider the function, the user’s aspect and the social influence and environmental issues, which means I bring a garment to the world without responsibility. Yet, what Korn said really make me to think backwards that instead of making “new and unique” things, it’s better to calm down and make the garment useful, bring a good experience to users, to satisfy users’ needs. I think so far my work is on the right track of making comfortable, high quality, keep materials simple and to be protectable to users. Garments with simple shapes and peaceful colors bring less presser from physical and spiritual aspects.
Reference
Korn, P. Why We Make Things and Why It Matters. The Education of a Craftsman. David R. Godine, Boston,2013, p 65.
Systems and scale: How can one relate systems of different scale?
In the field of textile, it plays various roles with a country, a society, a group of people, and a person. Within a country, textile reflects cultural narratives, traditions and religions. Some typical patterns refers to a specific culture, like dragon reflects Chinese culture, cherry blossom indicates Japan. All these narratives are revealed by different craftsmanship like embroidery, knitting, weaving, dying and felting. In a society, there is a tendency with textile, which is more related to fashion. Sometime knitwear is popular, and sometime chiffon dress drags more attention. It’s easy to create a trend in a society as people interact with each other everyday, once a trend is built, a specific style of dressing take a dominant part. Comparing with a group of people, there seem to be more diversity in different groups like subcultural group, minority nationality group, business group, housewife group and so on. Personalities, norms and aesthetics become more obvious in each group. Functions take the important part, for instance, housewife prefer comfortable and washable clothes; businessmen need formal and good quality suit; the northern soul like loose pants and stretchable clothes for dancing. In a group, they support each other and make the perspectives more pointed and powerful with strong personalities. It’s interesting to see how a group of people can be so compelling and emblematic. As a person, textile influence one’s emotion, behavior, sensation, and security feeling. Textile can bring comfort, confident, and a sense of security. It’s all depend on individual life style and feeling, which is deeply interact to the person.