When my best friend moved back to her home country, she gave me an origami flower she had made. During moments of wondering if we will every meet again reminds me of the flower growing or withering. Experiencing new milestones was hard, and knowing that we both were going to change and witnessing that as a mystery was going to be mind-bending. There is this in-between point of wondering. Each entrance and exit my friend makes into my life rests in my head, as if a new seed has been planted.
When keeping in contact with my friend the idea of time zones was on our minds. We would be talking to each other in the most random moments at the most random times. Thus, I wanted to create a dress /coat that combined the idea of how style is an expression that has changed overtime, yet still is a subject that we see all over the place. With the flower my friend gave me as an inspiration, I created a flower that represented the shape of her country’s flower and my state’s flower. I also took another project I did based on a study of twelve different angles of the flower she gave me to use as part of the textile to incorporate the inspired flower seen in different points of view.
The first step to conveying the story was planning out a design:
I sketched a lot, looked for reusable materials*, took measurements of a couple people to get a idea of how to make a unisex size, and then started to do a demo piece on the mannequin (since I do not usually approach making garments by first creating a pattern) to get an idea of how to construct the final piece.
*A goal of mine is to use sustainable materials and to use already used materials (to recycle/reuse/less waste is occurring). Materials I found: close hangers, brown paper, white paper, borrowed a hot glue gun, borrowed pliers, borrowed makeup, and borrowed a mannequin. Materials I bought: watercolor paper, glue stick, and white spray paint. Materials I already had: watercolors, brushes, pins, scissors, and a hot glue.
The second step was making the final design:
I made the garment out of the paper I found and than spray painted it white. I was going for a minimalist look so that anyone could style their look in the way they wanted to express themselves.
Front Side Back Side
I cut out flower petals and hot glued them together. Some where turned into pins, others were glued onto the dress/coat, and two were used for the bracelets I made.
The bracelets were made out of paper and some wire clothes hangers that I found. I shaped the wire and wrapped paper that was watercolored and sealed it with a sporadic pattern made by the hot glue.
Then I printed out my old project onto a sheet of watercolor paper and cut each angle and pasted it onto the garment. I also took some reused paper and cut it into strips. I then glued them together so that it kind of looked web pattern and then glued that design on certain areas of the sleeves and end of the coat line.
Test trial to see if the flowers will fall off in motion:
Garment is complete!
Front Side Back Side
Details Up Close:
The third step was the photo-shoot:
I put on some white makeup in a brush like affect with some magenta lip stick to match a dreamlike state.
Jasmine (the model) and I headed to the end of the 7 line, because most of the time when my friend and I talk it is when we are at a train station. We also stopped by Times Square ( the connection line to the 7 ) to test out the sturdiness of the garment in an industrial place to see if it would hold up against a crowd of people pumping against the dress/coat.
Test on how durable the garment would be in a crowd of people:
Up close details during the photoshoot:
Throughout this process I learned to see origami, flowers, and our friendship in another way.
Floriography was invented in the Victorian age as an act of discrete message of communication through flowers.“The language of flowers involved more than the simple meaning given to a flower. It also referred to the combining, presenting, and even the receiving of flowers (1).” This brings forth the idea that communication does not always have to be in a sentence or have a traditional formatted context. It also reminds me how in origami certain symbols were adopted to interpret connotation (2). Before written and symbolic instructions the Japan shared their designs verbally until 1797 (3). Both floriography and origami have changed communication contexts throughout the years, as well as holding onto their traditions and adopting a meaning to an object.
This sort of alludes to my friend and I, how our communication has been shifting along our friendship throughout the years have known each other: how we intertwine our languages, communicated by drawings for a while, just spoke in English, translating for each other, text message, video chat, and in person. As for the origami flower my friend made, I feel each time I do a study of it, the meaning it holds starts to accumulate new findings through all kinds of outlooks that are coming more into focus.
(1): https://www.proflowers.com/blog/floriography-language-flowers-victorian-era
(2) https://www.origami-resource-center.com/origami-symbols.html
(3) http://www.origami.as/Info/history.php
Overall, this experience was really enjoyable, and also doubled as a fun way to tie an experience and express it with some recycled materials* to raise awareness about the importance of sustainability.