DECONSTRUCTION

DAY 3 Manipulating silhouette

To begin the process of deconstruction we were told to unstitch only 2 seams in our garment. My initial though was to unstitch the seam connecting the top and bottom halves of the upper collar in the leather jacket. This is because in my head I thought that there would be multiple other layers of different fabrics inside such as a type of light weighted interfacing. This ended up to be true and I managed to expose thin grey woven interfacing which was sandwiched in between these two halves of the collar. The second seam I undid was one connecting one of the sleeves and the jacket front part of the garment however I only unstitched about halfway in order to expose the lining to be visible if the jacket would be worn but with the sleeve to still remain attached. Unfortunately what I found really difficult working with real leather was how prone the fabric was to ripping with minimal force, which left me with small rips in places where I was unstitching seams.

After this I began styling the jacket onto a model with the aim of highlighting the new areas created in the garment. Looking back at my first stylings, my thinking remained fairly conservative and regular, with having the model put her arms through the arm holes therefore I wasn't really changing up the function of this type of garment. When incorporating my additional fabric - a bright fuchsia pink satin - I too remained quite ordinary with my designs such as just by weaving it in the visible gaps and creating knots with it. By doing this I still wasn't actually incorporating these two elements and they still looked separate on the body.

The next seam I chose to unstitch was centre back seam and along the yoke back seam so that the layer of leather would flop down diagonally. The effect created from this was quite minimal, however I overcame the challenge of incorporating my two materials by weaving the pink satin through this new gap I had created therefore in my opinion was a successful design choice overall. The main element I aimed to bring focus to was the different types of intertwining knots I could create, almost highlightingg ideas of restriction which I wanted to reflect in the garment. Leather as a textile is known to be quite taught and can be linked to other contexts to do with the idea of constriction such as in corsets, which is why I tried to relay this sense of tightness in my design. Alongside this, I wanted to change the function of the satin fabric which has more free and loose connotations also into a more restrictive material.

The ways I styled my fabrics and garments was not very large and extravagant however I feel often that is not always necessary and in my case I feel my smaller garment design further portrays the idea of restriction and tightness which I feel is successful.

30/09/2021

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