During this process, I had a strong point of view in which I was keeping with the theme of ethnic embroideries from select cultures. I looked to Peru, Nepal and India for inspiration with my color story. The motif was inspired by the embroidered vines and my image choice patterns used my drawings of embroidered flowers to bring in the flowers that are combined with vines. While I combined the color pallets from two sources, I think the outcome was successful and translated the bright and vibrant colors that I was aiming to use in the collection. The digital patterns each have a sense of movement across the page or material so they create a vine-like sensation of twisting and moving. The image-choice patterns also add vibrancy and pop from the backgrounds so they look like embroidered flowers. Although this theme is more focused on the cultures that I am appropriation, it does go back to cultural appropriation as a whole because I am focusing on the way that cultural appropriation is a positive. I think this aspect of appropriation works because I learned about these cultures along the way and highlight the positives of a culture though my designs. The four look collection also highlights the patterns by incorporating the ethnically embroidered patterns with the silhouettes inspired by lederhosen. This culture clash is subtle in the collection, but highlights aspects form the different sources and combines them to create a strong and cohesive collection that is truly brought together through the color and pattern.
Original motif process
Inspiration:
Final Swatch Booklet:
Four look collection with patterns
Reflection:
My intentional plan always drew inspiration from my bag that is from Nepal. This bag’s hot pink and colorful embroidery was the center of the inspiration, however, I had trouble finding a cohesive color palette when taking the colors from that bag. I think my intuition came over me when I returned to the images that I sourced for inspiration and created a new color pallet. This pallet drew colors form Indian color powder. At this point, I had too many colors and used my old pallet and the new pallet to create a final and refined pallet. While I did somewhat follow my original plane, I did follow my intuition as well and ended up using various colors rather than a strict formula for choosing colors. Since color was an important part of my topic, I think I had to pull colors properly in order to convey my message or cultural appropriation from my chosen cultures. In the end, I think the final swatch booklet was cohesive because of the various bright colors that I edited down to become more focused. The digital prints contained colors used in my image choice drawings and the patterns mixed well despite the difference in the digital versus handmade qualities.
