Concepts
Inspiration from Vetements Oversized Hoodies
I chose Vetements’ 2017 Summer’s Black ‘French Terry’ Hoodie to pattern, because it’s a street wear brand I really like and their in general oversized hoodies are really famous in the industries for being unisex and less sex-oriented. In My opinion, their style of hoodies blurred the line between female and male, which gives all female the opportunities to dissemble the message of power and masculinity. In addition to my personal favor, the general style and size-fitting of Vetements’ hoodies really match with the main concept of my final design.
Sketching & Pattern Remaking
Modification to Original Pattern
I altered the original Vetements hoodie’s pattern by adding creative 3D Sculpting fabric manipulation technique that I invented in a previous project and removing the hood from the original design. It makes the garment even more visually intimating and exaggerated on the powerful image of 21st women kind. The organic growing triangle shapes extend in space, and transforms in size as if it’s living on the garment, which gives my design the liveness and the potential to rise discomfort and awareness in its audience. The sharp edges of each triangular shapes indicate an uncompromising attitude and living style. From a distance, it even looks like an embedded fighting weapon in a human body, indicating the message of boldness and strength. This addition of details elevate the original Vetements’ design and have a more stressed voice on garment itself’s powerful image.
Making Process
Before I made this muslin project, I never officially learned how to sew a collar and was often rushed into making before planing it thoroughly out. This time, due the level of perfection I want to reach for my final garment, I went on Youtube and learnt how to perfectly sewed a collar. The sewing part went smoothly because I got myself a brand new tabletop sewing machine that’s really easy to work with, however, the draping, pining and preparation process were really challenging, especially on constructing the sleeve with organic shapes. I need to put the already sewed base on a manikin with one sleeve still not fully connecting and try to pin the shapes I made onto the sleeve to see how it transforms when it not longer lies on a flat surface. It was truly not an easy process, but I definitely have learned a lot and prepared enough for myself to move on to the final making of this project. Also, as I move further to my final garment, I will learn more techniques that will be beneficial to my existing design, like how to make pleated skirt and asymmetric hemline.
First Failed Tryout
When I first tried to construct the 3D shapes onto the oversized jersey I patterned mimicking Vetements’ hoodie, I made each triangular shapes the same size, which turn out to be not as visually appealing as I imagined. Due to the symmetrical alignment of the shapes, the shape edges of the triangular shapes were hid in at the side line. Therefore, when the garment was being observed form the front side, I didn’t see any extension of the garment popping out from the left and right edges. More or less, the initial liveness and powerfulness I want to expressed is not fully elaborated in this tryout piece and I decided to abandon it.
Second Successful tryout 
After the first unpleasing experience, I decided to put more values on the variation of the shapes and constructing 3D sharp edges to the garment. I intentionally stayed away from symmetrical alignment and make sure all the construction are diagonal, which give my piece more randomness and therefore boldness and liveness. It turnt out to be extreme successful and much better than the last piece. Overall, the patterning and reconstruction were really inspiring and fun, and I believe the techniques I had newly obtained will be super beneficial to my final project.
