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Age group

"What age group are you designing this collection for?"

I dread this question. Of course my faculty are very persistent. I want to make clothes, it doesn't matter for who. Of course from a marketing perspective this is not the greatest strategy so here goes.

When I was asked this question I decided to pick my age group, Ages 21 to 35. Of course when i mentioned how I didn't think our age group would wear skirts above the knee and tops exposing ones midriff my faculty very politely told me that I had no idea what women my age wear. 

This is when I called upon my good friend pot. After a lot of pointing and laughing he suggested I make a survey. It would give me more of an insight on what women my age wear and how much they would like to expose. This is evening/lounge wear so how grand would they want their clothes to be etc.


The link to the survey: 
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XGLJ5ZN

I also vow to keep an eye out for people in bangalore who are interestingly dressed, hopefully by the end of this project I will be less oblivious. Pictures will be uploaded as and when!

What Do I want from this collection?

So we have already established that I take Inspiration from the sixties. But the sixties is an era that encompasses so much! Also most of it has been completely done to death. Of course after saying this the first thing that came to my mind was flower power(shoot me) but after a rather enlightening talk with my faculty I decided to take a closer look.

The first thing that came to my mind from our earlier review meetings was one of my teachers telling me that the sixties were about YOUTH and VIBRANCY. I'm putting this in capitals because my earlier collection began to look like something from my grandmothers wardrobe(now, not when she was younger)

to put it mildly they began to look 'frumpy'

So what better way to start the brainstorm than to make a word cloud:

(wordle is acting funny so you can click on the word cloud to look at a larger image)

This only made me realise that i am living in a time where people are bored,unsatisfied, and are permanently attached to their computers. Our main source of excitement? celebrity sex scandals and which of our many facebook friends 'sexted' the other. Pathetic.


Collection,yes. So it occurred to me that since I was working on the floral aspect I would take it forward(after all this) and another point of interest. The beatniks. How could I use the poetry in my clothing?

The extension

   I know it's been quite a while but to cut a long story short my stint with my client didn’t really work out. Due to some last minute glitches on her side my clothes couldn’t be stitched in time and those that were didn’t look Finished.

    On looking at the finished garments Both me and my Faculty realised that somewhere along the line my initial ideas seemed to have been lost in all the changes that my client and I had Agreed upon.

    This was when they suggested I take an extension so I can finish my project properly. They also suggested I tackle it alone. Coming to terms with an extension is a little hard but when I looked at my work I realised I was not proud of it.

    Since I now had the opportunity to rework and make my project worth all the effort I would take it. So after throwing A good amount of tantrums, scaring my faculty and a short holiday I went back to my moodboards and initial Sketches.

   
   Back to square one.

Back to the artwork

Reworking the artwork was more fun considering now I had some sort of direction to work with. My mood boards helped me with ideas but the style didn't come through. Making them black and white line drawings gave me the opportunity to trace them onto silhouettes or play with sizing later on.


shown below are a few examples:

Discovering the dip pen

Alas We keep coming back to the fact the the painting i was going to do would be on cotton not silk and after a few trials I realised that there were points that needed to be noted when painting on the fabric.


1. The colour is much duller than the original
2. The thinner the fabric the more the colour spreads.
3. Gutta liner is to be used only in moderation and primarily on thicker fabric because it changes the texture of the fabric leaving it slightly stiff even after washing.


When I had almost given up the battle of thin lines I happened upon an old dip pen i used to use in school.
After a bit of experimenting I realised that if held at a particular angle one can literally draw with it like on paper! below are some examples:


First, the dip pen:

JoySilk

This is video was the turning point in my attitude towards fabric painting. here i was, my illustrations getting more and more intricate while my fabric painting was beginning to look increasingly like I've let paint spill on my fabric, letting it take its course when Meera mailed me this video. She found it on a site called joysilk. 
The video basically takes the audience through the silk painting process. She also has a great technique to stretching her fabric without distorting it like I was doing.