Little Pieces: Research Process

'Satire from the Gyre' : Shaun Musculo

Made from popped air rafts.

Knit from the leg sections of discarded pantyhose.

Made from mail order shipping bags.

Made from old Oregan maps.

Made from roadside flags left behind after a bike race.

SO I've been doing a lot of reading up on Japanese design aesthetics because it seems like Japan has been influencing me in my work throughout the last two years and especially in this project. Just out of curiosity I googled 'Japan fashion 2011' and look what I found! Is it just me or do these...? What ever happened to simple elegance? They all look happy though=)

See it here : http://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/trends/2009-spring-summer/colour-blocking/gallery#/image/9

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"Trash & Litter in India - Who Cares!"
: http://www.theindiansabroad.com/2010/06/trash-litter-india-environment-surroundings/

"Trash's Competing Utopias"

: http://discardstudies.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/trashs-competing-utopias/

"Material World Reviews the Bottom of Purses and Backs of Drawers"

:http://discardstudies.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/material-world-reviews-the-bottom-of-purses-and-backs-of-drawers/

Amazing Articles! Just what I was looking for=)


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Discard Studies : http://discardstudies.wordpress.com/
Addressing Waste & Modern Society
Garbage left on the streets worries us. Might it make us sick? Will it kick off environmental imbalances and catalyze exponential increases to the rat population? The garbage strike becomes the basis for fear at a very, very deep level and it brings us face-to-face with conflicts and tensions that we would rather wish away.

Uncollected trash exists as an insult to the notion of how far we have come as a human race, to how completely we have transcended the problems so endemic to the “pre-industrial city,” a place, as Lofland describes it, where “the sheer filth of the streets” was commonplace and garbage as well as human and animal excrement were part of the everyday landscape of the urban (A World of Strangers 32). Many people have come to believe that the modern city has little or no connection to the nightmare Lofland describes; by contrast, it is a place in which we should never (or rarely) see or smell our waste. If the garbage cannot be cleared away, something must be wrong in Denmark at the very core of the waste society. The issue is Platonic; notions of the good and the beautiful pull so strongly against the presence of garbage in the streets. In the midst of the strike, borders and prohibitions become fuzzy, porosities emerge, and most importantly, the categories of modernity begin to vibrate.

(an excerpt from the article. see it here : http://discardstudies.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/garbage-strikes-and-the-imposed-categories-of-modernity/)

"Discard" is seen as the critical step, a commercial and psychological transfer of responsibility which breaks the chain of custody of a product, removes its owner and subjects it to the degradation of garbage management.

Installations of cityscapes using trash by Vivan Sundaram.

"Our enormously productive economy..demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek out spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption, we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."
Victor Lebow | Rebels Without A Cause | Nation Of Rebels

TRASH features large scale photos and videos based on a constructed city of trash that the artist made in 20 x 60 feet of his studio space. Working with wastepickers, the trash was literally unloaded by truckfuls into his studio. Many of the photos have a disorienting spatial quality since they are based on digital constructions from the material shot in the installation.
Mr. Sundaram wishes to draw attention to not only the amount of trash generated by the new urban middle class and elite, but also to draw attention to the fact that these wastepickers work all hours to sort, sift, and recycle all the trash generated.

As Mr. Sundaram says: It’s a huge industry that is part of our landscape. You can’t wish it away, just as you can’t wish away the poor. The urban middle upper class, rather than turn away from the garbage they generate, must face the reality of the people outside their gated colonies.

"If we focus on the categorizing process that defines trash, our attention will be drawn away from the rubbish heap and
concentrated on human behaviour.Trash is created by sorting...nothing is inherently trash." Susan Strasser | Waste & Want

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   For The Love of Patterns

Most dynamic patterns that inspire me!!
See it here : http://pinterest.com/formfireglass/pattern-love/

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   To Market : Research on Mumbai Fashion

Amrich : Amit Vijaya & Richard Pandav

Joyjit Talukdar : Ela, at Bombay Electric

COLOUR BLOCKING!! =) Manish Arora SS10, at Bombay Electric

Mathieu Gugumus-Leguillon, designer at Bungalow 8 - LOVE.

Work process and inspirations
My work starts with the body and its geometry. I believe more in shape and cuts than decoration. Working with very detailed, refined techniques and tricks allow me to incorporate comfort in the designs and then it goes beyond geometry..it becomes about understanding how the body moves.
I never really start with a theme, but more with moods. The sense of the collection usually appears to me at the end of the process- like an invisible thread that suddenly surfaces.
I let my daily inspirations express themselves..from what life brings to me, the women and men I meet, to the places I visit. I feel the constant need to evolve in diverse atmospheres, and that is the best way for me to stay curious, and therefore creative.
How is Bombay street fashion different from Paris’?
In sense of style & color I feel Bombay is more creative. It is going out of its codes and is more experimental, while Paris goes more and more uniform.

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What fashion brings to social responsibility : "Zero-Waste"

Timo Rissanen is a fashion designer pursuing his fashion phd in garment production without the creation of waste. Like Holly Mcquillan, the pattern-cutting is controlled and precise - the cloth folds, over laps and is sued into the dress form thus eliminating any cut pieces.

As an example, here is his ideation, process & pyjama top and bottom displayed in Chicago at the YIELD zero-waste fashion exhibition.

"Zero waste is avant garde cuisine's fashion equivalent because it challenges the basics of making clothes."

Trial on paper for the pyjama top form.

see it here : http://zerofabricwastefashion.blogspot.com/

Into The Fold By Jasmine Glover

See it here : http://dianepernet.typepad.com/diane/2011/02/australian-designer-part-1-gala-curious-into-the-fold.html

Questions :

+ Is there a way to create and treat pleats in a manner that is unique?

+ Can cloth be textured in the simplest way to create cloth that is playful, quirky?

+ When working with scraps what new way is there to put them together that is not patchwork

kitschy?

Its amazing how much pleating has been explored - If you take a look at the titles of these collections

( 'fossil warriors', 'incongruous' & 'ephemeral' ) it lends an understanding of what pleats can do to a flat surface; what meanings it can create in cloth.

Top : www.pleatfarm.com