As Fashion Communication students at LJMU we were recently asked to work to a 48hour brief for a competition for 'Seen' magazine.
We were split in to 3 groups of approx. 8-10 people and asked to design and make a paper dress out of back issues of 'Seen' magazine which would then be judged by the directors of the magazine. Then the winning dress would then be worn by their model (Amy Faith) at 'the Death by Glitter Vogue Ball' on Saturday 1st October. This was really exciting stuff, as we were working on a live project that would be judged by someone outside of the university.
In our group there were:
Kelsey Ireland (Me)
Sophie Edwards
Natalie Oldershaw
Ryan Martin
Amie Hunt
Charlotte Hunt
Lottie Williams
Charlotte Hyland
Khloe Vaughan
Harriet Kenworthy
The brief we were given was to make the dress from the back issues and to make it as bizarre,outlandish and theatrical as we could whilst still promoting the magazine.
So we began sharing ideas within our group and drawing down rough sketches of how we think the dress would look. Some of us had also brought in pictures from the internet as research for ideas for the shape and style of the dress. Below is a few I found so you can get and idea of what we were looking at...
We began tearing out pages from the magazine and folding it to make many pleated fan shapes, that we could then later attach together to make the skirt.
I really liked this shape made by pleating the paper diagonally and the folding it in half. I thought this would be good to use on the top of the dress.
To get things done quicker we chose to work on separate parts of the dress in smaller groups. So the group was split and each working on a task.
Me and Ryan got together to make the top half...
One side of the dress was going to have a large shoulder structure that stuck up & out from the dress that would be loads of pleated front covers of 'Seen' magazine so this would be promoting the magazine showing their logo several times. I said it would be a good idea to make a corset top so it could be easily fitted and removed from the model and also it fitted perfectly with the brief we were given. So we took the front and back covers of the mag and stuck them together long ways to create a long rectangle shape were we then hole punched the ends to thread ribbon or string through to create the corset fastening.
Once the corset shape was made we could begin attaching other pleated pieces and the shoulder piece of front covers to it. We used staples and double sided tape to attach everything together.
This is what the top looked like once we had worked our magic...
Nat, Amie and Charlotte worked together to make the skirt. They started by making a skirt from calico so they could attach the pleated magazine strips to it to make it easy to get on and off. They stapled together strips of pleated magazine pages to make each layer of the skirt. The bottom layer was made from layered front covers from issue 4 which were all the light blue colour. There was then a smaller pleated layer attached over the top of the bottom one to create a nice layered effect to the skirt. These were both fastened using velcro. We checked the size for the dress on one of our group members Sophie who was a similar size to the model from the measurements we were given.
Khloe and Harriet decorated the shoes in theme with the dress, they looked really good, but when Harriet tried them on we had to cut the fans down on the inside of the foot because they were catching on one another as she walked.
I also made a head dress with help from Sophie to give the outfit to give it that etc WOW factor! We attached small prints of the logo to it to promote the magazine. We then tried it all on Sophie again, we were all a bit unsure of the head dress because it looked a bit to busy and you could hardly see her head...
...but... we were then discussing our design with our tutors who liked the head dress and one of them turned it backwards and put it on Sophie and we loved it! it didn't look to busy, it fit with the dress and it was still promoting the magazine.
The fans were also made for that etc WOW factor and to fit the brief, it was Ryan's idea and the logic behind it was so the model could be hidden behind them and then appear to be 'SEEN'. I thought it was a brilliant idea as the theme for the brief was bizarre and theatrical and the model would be able to use these as props when walking down the catwalk.
All three dresses were then modelled by 'Seen' magazines chosen model Amy Faith in a mini catwalk display put together by our class in our studio. The winning dress would then be displayed at 'the Death by Glitter Vogue Ball'
No comments:
Post a Comment