Gaining a different perspective always gives more clarity as Charlie Goldthorpe from Fashion Communication and Promotion has a background revolving around presentation, branding, and aesthetic styling. Her suggestion of using film is one I have thought of before but felt it was just wishful thinking, placed on the shelf of lack of experience and opportunity, despite having a vison of the editorial obscure abstraction and an art sounds playlist nudging me to be put somewhere in this MA. What would Nic Clear say? Dream big and work out the logistics later, a premise also echoed by the Creative Director of Artichoke Arts agency, Helen Marriage.
Showing me the films of Lara Torres who made clothes from dissolvable fabric, filming the disintegration of cloth to leave remnants of seams floating over a womans body in the bath or or dripping from the drench of rain of a lone figure in a downpour. Recommending the book of an exhibition The Art of Fashion: Installing Illusions and the work of Cat Marks.
An impossible wardrobe for the invisible – 2011 — Lara Torreshttps://www.laratorres.com/an-impossible-wardrobe-for-the-invisible
Having contacted Debbie Moorhouse, Lecturer in Fashion regarding the view of writing an article for the Sustainable Fashion and Textiles journal. Her suggestion of a design article left me in a bit of a quandary to the content and how it could fit my practice in consideration of its self-indulgence. I have often justified my practice as an ethical ostentatiousness due to the repurposing of clothing, use of remnant fabrics and natural renewable fibres. Nevertheless, the writing style I wish to adopt is of critical analysis and lyrically explores sensory perceptions of process and creativity, so how would this apply to this austerical premise of the Journal? With such prolonged influence of austerity giving a nagging guilt with every new purchase of clothing, care needs to be taken not to pull the ration purse strings so tight there is a revolt of revoltingly indulgent consumerism. Resourcefulness and a push to retain creativity in the zero waste boxes of ethical purchasing is a way to alleviate the guilt. So, my working title is Sustainable Creativity in Ethical Ostentatiousness.
We also discussed how this Final Major Project can be viewed in its progress, not as a finite solution but a building block for the next step. With a collected reading list of articles waiting to be reviewed and critiqued this notion runs parallel to the reading for the Project Proposal for the PhD application. I managed to bounce ideas of Alex’s archival mind and insight to get an affirmation of whether my idea is good or naff, or frankly just a bit weird. He got me straight away even down to the idea of stepping back into the physical space of the women of the weaving industry and writing descriptive speculative fiction of a more modern mind in the body of a mid-19th century woman forced to abandon the attic of the weaver’s cottage for the orders of the factory floor. Similarly in discussion with Jill Townsley about the ideas, her perspective grasped the ingenuity of the ideas in their excitement of expanding the field of creative pattern cutting as a multidisciplinary artistic practice. This instant grasping of the concepts of creativity contrasts with the bemused looks of the literature-based Post-Graduate Director and Rowan Bailey, Reader: School Director of Enterprise and Knowledge Exchange who told me to articulate the concepts more clearly. From my tutorial with Rowan, it is clear that the studentship is heavily weighted with community engagement at the forefront and that presently my practice isn’t fitting for the Place-based PhD. Applying for other opportunities such as The Maker Space and Arts Council Funding is more relevant and I intend to look into PhD studentships at other Institutions.
After chatting to Alex and his vision for my progress of curation, consultation, writing and design a skim read of his book Design Art left me thinking about my push be either a designer OR artist, why can’t I be both? Or Consultant and Project Leader?
References
Bailey, R. University of Huddersfield. (2023 4th May). Artichoke Talk [Online Talk]. Department of Arts and Humanities.
Torres, L. (2011). Women crossing the water. [Fil Documentation preformance]. https://www.laratorres.com/an-impossible-wardrobe-for-the-invisible.
This section of my blog takes on a diaristic element to record the in-depth analysis and critical refection of the creative process involved in the paractical content of the Final Major Project of the Masters degree in Fashion: Creative Pattern Cutting at the Unviversity of Huddersfield. I will aslo be uploading the final Portfolio and Critical Reflection.
