Re-inventing Clothing

In class we had to bring in 3 items of clothing and re-invent them using the environmental designer we researched as inspiration.

Here's what I came up with using paper clips instead of can tabs!

Magazine History

The first proper magazine was called The Lady’s Magazine and was published in 1770. The longest running magazine Harpers Bazaar began in 1861 under the name The Queens Magazine from England, the name changed in 1968 when Harpers Bazaar bought out the magazine and renamed it Harpers and Queen. The name then changed again in 2006 to simply Harpers Bazaar

Some other magazines we researched included The Delineator founded in 1873 lasting until 1937 featuring articles about needlework, dressmaking and millinery. Vogue magazine founded in 1892 for higher society readers. Cosmopolitan founded in 1886 and still running began as a family magazine focusing interests of women how to look after children, kids section and women’s section based on fashion articles, household decorations, and cooking. Vanity Fair started in 1859 to 1863 as a humorous weekly publication and was reinvented in 1983 by Conde Nast as a more fashion focused magazine.

Fashion and Costume Plates

In the 18^th and 19^th Century fashion printed plates to inform people about new upcoming trends in magazines, costume plates however were made to show how clothing was worn in the past and they showcase costumes from different types of national, theatrical, court and royal dress. They were originally in black and white but in the late 19^th century they started hand colouring them.

Two men began to make publications of fashion plates, Jacques Esnauts and Michel Rapilly from Paris. They produced roughly 342 figure plates and about 72 hat plates. Fashion plates were seen a lot in 1770 in The Lady’s Magazine an English monthly magazine, plates weren’t featured in every issue but were in some.

Fashion Plates and Costume plates are great collectable art pieces now days as they give a great look at how fashion was in the past and how magazines and technology has changed since then.

What’s a Zine you ask?

“zine also 'zine (zn) n. 1. An inexpensively produced, self-published, underground publication”- Bird in the hand Zine Shop 

Starting in 1946, Zine’s are non professional/ non official publications made by fans of a cultural phenomenon, like fashion, music, science fiction and art. The word Zine is an adaptation of the words Magazine and Fanzine.

Zine’s are similar to blogs, anyone can make them and they are a smaller version of a larger publication eg. blogs are a version of websites and Zine’s are a version of magazines. Internet based Zine’s are called E-Zine’s, they are different to blogs as they have more articles information and are more art based where as blogs are mainly pictures and thoughts.

Yay or Nay?

Who determines fashions yay's and nay's? 

Here's my opinion on what's in and out this season!

Yay...

Mid Calf Length Skirts

Prints Revolution- Quirky Prints

Hyper Colour- Bold Colours

Lace Embrace

Pant Suits

Hiking Heels

Military

Oversize Frills

Bright & Boxy Clutches

Sports Day Casual Wear

Nay

Jeggings- defiantly out, personally I've never liked them!!!

Knee High Greek Sandles

Pointy Toe Heels

Fluro Phase

Chunky Necklaces

Head Scarves

Oversize Tees

I got majority of these images from:

http://www.style.com/trendsshopping/trendreport/011811_Trend_Reports/

Escama- Environmental Designer

Escama Studio is based in California and Brazil producing a handcrafted range of womans bags using one main material - recycled aluminium tabs. Escama descovered a way to crochet tabs together creating bags, accessories even clothing now, it is a technique used in brazil mainly. A whole 70,000 of these bags have been produced since 2004 and the artist team has grown from 12 to 100!

Escama's inspiration originated from the Pop Top Fashions of the 70's where can tabs were in the form of pop tops and were pulled completely off the can and some people used them to make quirky hats and accessories.

I found this really cool tutorial on how to crochet can tabs together check it out with this link: http://www.escamastudio.com/how_to.html

Images found at: http://www.escamastudio.com/products.html

Umbrella Inspiration

My inspiration these past few weeks has been UMBRELLAS! 
They are simply beautiful.
Lace umbrellas, frilly cabaret umbrellas, upside down umbrellas, any out of the ordinary umbrellas really.
Their shape, structure and the amount of different designs just amazes me and inspires many thoughts in my mind that I've been relating to my designs recently.

I found these really pretty umbrella images at: http://vi.sualize.us/theduchess/umbrella/

Both of these came from this following website i find both structurally intriguing! http://www.fashion-stylist.net/blog/tag/_umbrellas_/