designers
Coco Chanel, Michael Kors, Tory Burch, and more—explore who has influenced the world of fashion the most, and who might be the next big name.
CUT OUTS
I started creating cuts out artworks to assist with my personal design process for accessories and clothes. Not only was it a way to explore the unpredictability of shapes and volumes, but it also allowed for the chance to layer colours and create new combinations. The series of photographs above document how I was playing with different shapes and altering the layout before sticking down my final design. While the final outcome is a fixed piece, I find that photographs capture this beautiful process of visual and physical artistic exploration, a search to find a voice in different forms and arrangements; this might give expression to a shape that was previously unknown to the eye. It is the endless design possibilities that can be achieved through using the simple tools of scissors and paper that renders this process so dynamic. The form of this "clutched" bag developed from the concept of a simple hand-held bag (a historical accessory used across the centuries) and yet I wanted to modernise any symmetry by creating these abstracted details that constantly pushed a tangible identity. The process of cutting the paper without a fixed idea of an outcome allowed me to develop this series of images which demonstrates that not only should a potential outcome of a bag be considered as an entity in itself but also the process that led to its creation it as integral to its identity. For me, the cut outs are as important as the final product - the dialogue between 2d and 3d in inseparable. Below are some other "bag" concepts that developed as a result of my visit to the Isokan Building in London. the clarity of the white modernist architecture speaks of dynamism in the shadows and highlights and this led me to create cut outs that speak of the architectural lines but also the contrast in tones, which is translated in my contrasting use of blue and yellow. Below this page are some lamp designs which are rooted in my research into art deco design. It is therefore that the product of my path into cut outs has given visual expression to a dialogue between not only fashion and architecture but also to furniture. As I continue t0 push the process of cut outs, I would love to be able to produce a series that speaks alongside clothing. The cut outs are not only 2d works but a fabric in themselves, a textural layering that plays with abstraction and reality.
By Natasha Law5 years ago in Styled
The Start Of A Passion
A year ago when the world shut down, I was left with plenty of time on my hands. Like many others I sought out a new hobby to fill my time. I stumbled across a shirt that I loved from a popular company. While looking at it I said, “that seems easy enough for me to make on my own.” With unearned sewing confidence I began. I went through the box of scrap fabric my mom had pulled out of storage to make masks for a local psychiatric hospital . With no pattern, I began cutting and stitching fabric together. The only sewing knowledge I had was from helping my mom with quilts and making toddler dresses for a service project yet I started flying by the seat of my pants sewing my shirt project and, not surprisingly, the completed shirt had many imperfections. But I still wear it to this day and hope that nobody will comment on the raw edges or the curvy hem.
By Ellis Pinnock5 years ago in Styled
Style Variety: The Secret Project
Why have I always felt the pressure to try and fit in with the modern day social society? Following the latest fashion trends, knowing all the celebrity gossip, keeping up with those trap songs that everyone seems to love, and trying to speak the most frequently used slang words. I just can't do it. As a teenager or for someone in their early twenties, there will always be some sort of expectation on how you must know all about the latest music and fashion trends that everyone's talking about.
By Bethany Gordon5 years ago in Styled
Fashion Expressions
Creativity comes in countless ways paint, design, photography, literature, poetry, music, sculpting, writing and so much more. I have always found joy in expressing myself through the various free artistic forms. For as long as I can remember, my emotional and mental freedom has been released via different creative outlets. Choosing to express myself through fashion design, allows me the independence to create in, anyway I want. Taking part in creative processes such as these teaches the value of other’s works. Oftentimes, we don’t realize the time and effort that goes into creating until we are the ones making the effort to build something.
By avani bodden5 years ago in Styled
Fiber Animals
Calling to mind the feeling of a pair of sharp scissors: the just-perceptible grind of the blades sliding across one another, the low rumble in that soft space between thumb and pointer finger. The rhythm: snip snip snip; the hot tear of a blade gliding across a yard of fabric, rending it in two. Miraculous.
By Jen Wroblewski5 years ago in Styled
The Brand
Hello, my name is Portia Smith, and I am a traveling designer based out of Atlanta, Ga. In 2019 I was in Baltimore, MD, working out of an industrial space for makers called “Openworks”. During the time of this transition, I recently closed my design studio to do some research in the fashion industry and to further develop my brand. Custom pieces and upscaled vintage clothing were the only projects I was committed to, which allowed me to flourish in pattern and fabric manipulation. With the education I obtained from master tailors and seamstress throughout the indusrty I began to think about the fabric that I had left over from my studio. This brought me to an idea to begin a denim project, I wanted to make a crop top and a skirt out of some denim I had in storage in Atlanta. Immediately I got my mom on the phone and I asked her could she send me the denim. She sent me a package immediately. What I thought was the continuous few yards of denim, ended up being scrap fabric leftover from previous projects. My mother mistakenly sent me a whole bag of the scrap denim I had left over instead of the folded whole fabric. I was devastated for about two days; at the time I didn't have a car in the city of Baltimore because I conveniently created a short commute from my house to work so I would not have any other distractions and there was not a fabric store in a close radius of the city. So, I began to sit and think.
By Portia Smith5 years ago in Styled
Cute cows, sharp tools, and successful careers
A ten year old girl without a care in the world sits in front of her TV and turns on a movie with a cow on its cover. The cow was cute, but the 2005 documentary certainly wasn’t. Eyes opened, stomach knotted, life changed, the girl makes a vow to never eat those adorable farm animals again. And she’s kept that vow to this day.
By Rakel Tanibajeva5 years ago in Styled
Break With Tradition
My lifelong creative project is my business, Psychomoda , A fashion studio and shop that I have built from nothing but my dogged tenacity , my basic tools of the trade, and my wonderful customers. On my premises , which is a small shop and studio, I design and make , all of the garments I sell.
By Alison Harm5 years ago in Styled
To my 9 year old self: your childhood hobby is now your career. Top Story - June 2021.
Picture this, my Asian dad who wanted his first born to be a doctor reluctantly handing over my first sewing machine. In that moment, he probably realized that the doctor dream should be passed on to my little sister because there was no denying my love for fashion design.
By Cabrini Roy 5 years ago in Styled
Where Two Oceans Meet
As a young girl, I recall my mother carrying a green composition notebook with her, sketching any garment or detail that someone would be wearing in 1990s Melbourne. She’d come home, rifle through her (it was not yet ‘our’) pattern collection for something similar enough, pull out the cutting mat, the pin cushion, the tape measure, the shears. My mum sewed all of my clothes. All of them. I loved it.To this day, this is still (one of the ways) how we both create.
By Inneka Moorhouse5 years ago in Styled
Love what you do
My passion is sewing and creating. I was born at 10lbs 13oz and have been a thick, or fat person all my life. It wasn’t until I started to embrace that I was different and could dress differently if I just created my own wears. Plus I’m an athlete so super thick thighs and arms with a bust size of 44DDD. This has made everything extremely hard to fit or to buy.
By Monica Cummings5 years ago in Styled
