Soft Structure: Box Drape

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First, we make the box with a FedEx large mail box and duct tape.

 

I draped on the box using pins. I folded three times and mark the creases.

Then I created the patterns using the sloper.  I messed up with the seam allowance by using 1 inch.

 

 

 

 

After the class critique, I revised and corrected the pattern.

 

I mistakenly sewed the folds for the muslin prototype, but luckily I realized this in the prototype stage so I fixed this with the final fabric.

Project sewn with final fabric.

Box Decorated with the “I AM” words  of the class

Reflection

I truly love this project! This was my first time making my own “mannequin” and draping according to it. Surprisingly, I also found that the industrial sewing machine beme more friendly to me. Initially  I planned to use the home machine, but finally I decided to challenge myself by using the industrial machine. After this semester’s practice of industrial machine in Kirk’s Soft Structure class, I finally get comfortable with it. I started to enjoy the speed of it rather than the technical issues. I was thrilled about this and became more confident. Thank you Kirk! This project also introduced me the importance of grain line, which I had never paid attention to before. Grains could help to keep garments in the right shape and could keep the stretchiness consistent. This was also my first time going to “mood” fabric store. t was an amazing store with thousands of fabrics and notions and I really love the fabric I chose!

The most challenging part of this project is probably the making of the box. Although most of my classmates get it done really quickly, but it took me so long since I kept cutting the neck part through. After wasting two boxes and finishing the final box, I learnt that we should be detail orientated in the future. A tiny move can cause the whole work to be thrown into trash can.

Generally the Box Drape project taught me a lot. Although I still made some mistakes, I felt happy to see some little personal growth!

 Self Assessment Sheet

 

 

 

Int Studio: AD – Art

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I am planning to make a series of garments inspired by some music. One of them is Twelve Variations on Ah vous dirai-je Maman (Twinkle twinkle little star). I chose the word “twinkle” because I felt that was the best word that could show my feeling towards that piece. It was shining, pure and playful. I added facial expressions and musical instruments to show the relationship of music and the garment series. I also want to incorporate the sign of eyes into my design, and”twinkle” also means “blink”. Therefore, I added an eye in the letter “e”. The color of the ad shows my feeling towards the music, and I am very likely to use them as the main colors for the garment series. I used color pencils, markers and pencils to create this ad.

 

After the class critique, I realized that I have misunderstood the assignment. We actually needed to use real objects to make the ad. In the second version, I used star-shaped confetti to build the text, and used the score of the music as the background. The colorful confetti shows the playfulness of the music, and its shiny quality demonstrate the “twinkle” nature of stars. I also used colored pencil to lightly outline the text to make them easier to read.

integrative Seminar: Final Project Brainstorm

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Briefly write three possible final project ideas and submit below.

Consider:

  1. Is it logistically possible to find the research I need in four weeks for a 7-page paper?
  2. Is it specific?
  3. Have I thought of primary sources to examine, analyze, and interpret in the essay?
  4. Are there archives I can visit to find primary sources?
  5. What’s the connection with my Studio project? How does it help, inform, or add another dimension to what I want to do in Studio?
       My first idea is the relationship of music and fashion. I want to focus on how fashion designers can create fashion inspired by music, I will also briefly talk about how music and fashion influence each other.  Because I am probably going to create a series of garments inspired by one or multiple pieces of music.
    My second idea is about the functional fashion. I will research about how designers create fashion that is not only for looking good, but also making our lives easier. If I chose this topic, I would create a series of garments that are functional under different occasions. For example, waterproof garments and garments designed specifically for art students.
    My third idea is about the relationship of fashion and emotion. I can explore how people’s clothes affect their mood and people can manipulate their emotions through their clothes. I will probably create  a series of garments that can reflect or generate various moods.
    For the primary resources, I am thinking about visiting the new school libraries and FIT libraries and taking some interviews.

Soft Structure: I AM Project Reflection

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The I AM project is both fascinating and challenging to me. In this project, I sketched various designs, chose one between them, came up with original patterns, made muslin prototype, stuffed it with “secret ingredients” and finally made a plush toy that represent or encourage myself. I made a wisdom tooth plush toy because I am going to extract my wisdom teeth soon and I wanted to make one for the tooth fairy. I named it “I AM EARLY” because I really wanted to improve my time management. I hope this toy can encourage myself to always be early for everything. Fashion is a fast-paced industry, I need to practice myself to be early in order to create innovative and original designs before they were thought of and before the trend starts.

 

I really enjoyed the sketching process. When I first received the prompt of this project, I was very excited and quickly sketched multiple versions. It was a bit overwhelming to choose one between them at first, but I soon made the decision of making the wisdom tooth based on both Kirk’s suggestion and my personal preference. The most challenging part for me in this project was probably making the pattern. I was initially struggled to make the patterns out of nothing. I didn’t know how to start. Then I made a cardboard skeleton to help me think about the pattern in a 3D way. After several attempts, I made the first set of patterns and test them on muslin. However, the shape didn’t turn out to be the pointy shape that I wanted. I then redesigned the pattern by testing on pattern paper and small pieces on muslin and finally made the shape I want in the final plush toy. I also messed up a little bit when sewing the prototype: I didn’t sew the upper piece on the right side so the seam allowance was exposed. Luckily I found this mistake early so I finally fixed it with the chosen fabric. I chose white because I want the audience to recognize it as a tooth easily, but I add some little pieces of black and red to create some lovely little features (eyes and mouth). At last, I sew the final piece mainly with sewing machine and partially by hand. Because I found some places on the fabric are too difficult to sew on a small scale.

 

To conclude, I really learnt a lot and enjoyed a lot by doing this project. I was sort of afraid of the sewing machine before doing this project, but now I am much more comfortable using it. I also love the process of creating an art project based on my personal taste, and learnt the importance of prototyping and redesigning. The secret ingredients including the heart, brain and the list of inspiring words were also an important part of this project. Thinking about them always made me smile.

Reading Response: Fashion Photography by Liz Wells

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Our world is now filled with various fashion photography. They are no longer simply about clothes production but “beckon us into a world of unbridled fantasies” (pg. 237). Consumers are promoted to buy fashion product because of the contexts contained in the fashion advertisement, such as “spectacles of beauty (usually conventional), sensuality, eroticism and pleasure” (pg. 237). She brought up that the vast majority of fashion students never visit a factory and almost none of the fashion companies show their factories in commercials. For example, in Miss Dior’s Perfume advertisement, there are only a pretty naked young lady and a small picture of the perfume bottle. The company haven’t shown what does the perfume contain, how it is made and any “real” information of the perfume. Because if these are shown, the audience will consider the perfume as plain as some liquid with pleasant chemical smell and refuse to pay the high price. The imaginary pretty lady persuades people that they will become as attractive and high-class as the lady if they use the perfume. “Production empties. Advertising fills. The real is hidden by the imaginary.” (pg. 251) I agree with this statement and am actually a bit nostalgic about the time when ads focused on the makers and products rather than the illusion. Although these illusion-based ads may be more effective to increase sales and profits according to customer psychology, they are actually drawing people’s attention away from quality. As businesses invest money on these ads (these ads usually cost a lot for hiring stars and designers), they will have less to put on the production and the quality is very likely to decline. A dress from the 50s Dior is probably more sustainable than a dress from modern Dior.’

Liz Wells also frequently differentiate art and commercials. She contrasts Calvin Klein ads and Cindy Sherman’s fashion spreads and put some fashion ads in a museum context. Wells also suggests that Cindy Sherman’s photos loses some of the critical power when entwined with commercial fashion magazines. I neither agree or disagree on this point, but I finds it particularly thought-provoking. Is there really a fine line between profits and art? Should fashion photographers always stay away from commercials to retain their pure artist status? Andy Warhol is famous and has made a lot of money but most people still consider his works as art. I also think there are still some art elements in even a super profit-oriented ad such as the Justin Bieber Calvin Klein one. However, I do admit that in some cases, artists lose power when they enter the commercial world. Does this mean that the society usually associate profits as “fake”? Perhaps because of the massive amount of misleading advertisements, people gradually lose trust to profit-oriented ads. Even when the artist is applying amazing concepts through commercials, the audience may think it as a moral-wash and refuse to treat it as art.

In class writing

Question: Can fashion and fashion advertising successfully address political, economic, or social issues? To what extent?

Although it seems that fashion and fashion advertising are usually purely profit oriented, they can still be powerful tools to address political, economic and social issues. I do admit that most fashion  and fashion ads are designed to promote products and increase sales, but some of them are created to raise people’s awareness and don’t appear to be directly related to the products.

For example, Benetton is an expert of these non profit oriented, shocking advertising. In one of its ads, there was a black woman nursing a white child. The black woman was cropped and only her breasts and hands were shown. This advertisement create uproar in both America and Britain. The way the black woman as cropped – her head was not included in the image – dehumanized her as a nursing slave. According to Liz Wells in Fashion photography, this ad clearly echoed the slave relations , where black people were not treated as humans and were forced to be slaves of white people.This advertisement is definitely successful to evoke the social issue of racism. There are still racism issues hidden in the society and Benetton brought those up in a bold, shocking way. Fashion ads are often presented in large format and in colorful palette. In my opinion, it forces people to focus on the political, economic or social issues they address and make fashion ads a powerful tool to evoke people’s thoughts.

However, I don’t think fashion ad can always successfully address social issues but they normally fall somewhere in between. Because when the ads focus on the social issues, they will usually lose some of the romantic fashion appeal.  The United Color of Benetton is a clothing line. However, in the advertisement I just mentioned, I could barely see any representation of clothes. The ad has actually turned into a social propaganda to some extent. Though it successfully address the racism issues, it’s not a successful ad for clothing. Some of Cindy Sherman’s work seem to be more neutral between fashion as and social propaganda. She is a photographer best known for her conceptual self portrait. In one of her fashion ads for Harper Bazaar (1993), she featured herself in four different guises. This ad fell perfectly on the line between fashion ad and social ad. This ad seemed to criticize the popular street photography where people  dressed themselves in unconventional clothing and posed in various way to look natural. It could also be a promotion of the structural dress she wore. This ad grabbed the audience attention both in terms of its fashion content and social content and makes people curious about Sherman’s intention. Fashion and fashion advertising can successfully address political, economic, or social issues when they are manipulated in a certain way, although they normally fall into the pure profit-oriented ads or social propagandas.

Integrative Seminar 2: Bridge 2 Analysis of the Pillola Suite of Lamps

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Joey Huaiyu Dong

Professor Eric Wilson

PUFY 1011 Int. Seminar 2: Fashion

22 February 2017

Analysis of the Pillola Suite of Lamps

When I first came across the “Energizing the Everyday” exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt Museum, the Pillola Suite of Lamps immediately intrigued me. This exhibition consists of gifts from the George R. Kravis II Collection. It mainly showcases day-to-day objects with great design that enhances people’s lives at home, workplace, as well as during travel and leisure. The objects are organized in various groups, according to their theme, time period, and materials. Together as a whole, a strong connection across time and geography is well demonstrated. We can clearly see how design and technology enhance the society to move forward and improve people’s lives.

The suite contains five lamps in total. The lamps all have the same oblong shape of prescription pill while they are much bigger than life-size. The upper parts of the lamps are white, while the lower parts have different bold, saturated colors: yellow, red, blue, emerald green and white. The lamps are fully covered by a layer of thin, transparent ABS plastic and acrylic and all have a small, transparent base made of plastic as well. The plastic material on the surface demonstrates a beautiful smooth and reflective quality, and creates a beautiful light outline for the shadow. In the exhibition, the lamps were bent in different angles and were casting rhythmic shadows of varying levels of darkness. According to the captions in the museum, these angles demonstrated the haphazard look of pills accidentally dropped. There is a vertical line made up of little circles on the lamps and a white cord attached to each lamp. The suite is innovative, clean and undeniably elegant.

One big question that I had when looking at this object was whether it was designed for home use or just for display. For this essay, I imagine that it is placed in a home in the late 1960s. The owner is probably a white male among the affluent or middle class youth. He is from Italy since I pick 1960s when the suite of lamps first came out.  He probably loves hippie culture, is not a main-stream person at that time and is proud of being different. He is ironic about consumerism and the mass produced modernism design and was very interested in the “anti-design movement”. He listened to the Beetles, took drugs and embraced the old slogan of free love and sex.

In my opinion, this suite of lamps is very important in the owner’s house. On one hand, it functions as lamps and is used on a daily basis; on the other hand, it also symbolizes the belief against consumerism and the design norms of the owner. These lamps are representative of Italy’s anti-design movement from of the mid-1960s and 1970s. According to Sparke, the anti-design movement is a protest against the design formalism which characterized the Italian design movement in the early 1960s.[1] It is a post-modern critique of modernism. As Martland analyzed, “When modernism became established and henceforth the new generation of artists considered it to be ‘academic’”[2] .The designers of these lamps, C. Emanuele Ponzio and Casare Casati, are clearly among this “new generation of artists”. And the suite of lamps must also be placed in the home where the owner is bored with the “beautiful” modern design of dull colors. Because the original idea of modern design gradually became a marketing tool in Italy. Object were mass produced for mass consumption for mass media. “Anti design” movement was among the post modernism range and was idealistic and ironic at the same time. This suite of lamps demonstrates the features of anti design very well.

The pills are extremely oversized which links to the ironic scale distortion of anti design. The design shows a deliberate “bad taste” by its straight forward pill look and minimalistic elements. There is barely anything other than the necessary base and cord attached to the lamps. The color palette is also bold and striking. While modernism embraced dull colors which mainly consists of black, white and grey, post modernism usually go with emphasized saturated colors in order to show the opposition.

Another important thing I noticed is the design focus: drugs. The designers were apparently trying to address some social issues rather than focusing solely on the pure functional value of the lamps. The imagined owner of the lamps might be a drug addict or super into the rebellious mystical hallucination of drugs. In 1960s, drugs (marijuana, LSD and other recreational drugs) forms an important sub culture. It was a time when the typical bad connotations of drugs are shifted towards the middle. Drug abuse became extremely popular among psychedelic rock musicians such as Pink Floyd and the Beetles. Many people at that time are unaware of the danger of drugs. In my opinion, this Pillola Suite of Lamps is criticizing people’s dangerous fantasy towards drugs. However, it might be portrayed as a celebration of drug hallucination by its owner at that time. It is very ironic to imagine a hippie drug addict was staring at the lamps, feeling proud of its unique appearance, while the designers were actually trying to criticize him. In addition, this suite is also culturally channeled to other pill inspired pop artwork including works of Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol. They all depicted pills in an oversized, humorous and sarcastic way.

To conclude, the Pillola Suite of Lamps was important in its cultural context and demonstrated both functions and symbolism. It showed support to the anti-design movement against consumerism and the design norms in Italy and ironic attitude towards the drug subculture.

Bibliography

  1. 1. Sparke, Penny. “The Straw Donkey: Tourist Kitsch or Proto-Design? Craft and Design in Italy, 1945-1960.” Journal of Design History11, no. 1 (1998): 59-69. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1316163.
  2. Martland, T. R. “Post-Modernism: Or What’s Become of Us, Tarzan?” The Antioch Review49, no. 4 (1991): 587-98. doi:10.2307/4612467.