karamellHUMBUG: „OFF – the – WALL“ [design brief]

„OFF – the – WALL“

I want to start with a quote I found, because I think it describes quite well, the aim of my work:

“Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is one they would like to show the world… very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe.” [Irving Penn, 1975, photographer]

To me the human appearance in all its diversity and beauty is one of the most fascinating things and a never ending topic to work with. In this project, I focused on my interest for hand drawing bodies and faces and started researching appropriate pictures and photographs, in order to draw unconventional shapes out of them. This brought me to Danielle Booth’s work “human scapes” and Christian Weber, who did a similar series of photographing body details and shapes you would rather recognize as landscapes than as human bodies. I concentrated on researching photographers and found another interesting artist, Rankin who’s sometimes irritating, erotic and rather provocative work, inspired me mostly.

His work brought me to the idea to create patterns, where you don’t see at first what it’s all about – but on the second view it is something different, not just a pattern. Especially with the rather erotic motifs that I chose, my work can become more than “nice-to-look-at” – also kind of provocative in a subtle and sometimes confusing way.

Furthermore I looked at Egon Schiele’s life drawings that I admire, in order to focus on my drawing style. I tried out different ways of sketching bodyshapes and faces and researched the work of several illustrators as Anneli Karlsson, Danny Roberts and Cassandra Rhodin, whose style I really like, because it’s quite graphic and linear – mostly black and white with a considered use of colour.

The development of my motifs started with drawings of different photographs from various magazines and advertisements, which suited the topic. After designing the first repeats on the computer, the patterns strongly reminded me of graphic wallpapers of the 1960s and 1970s. The geometric looking shapes that evolve when putting amorphous shapes together fascinated me and I came across researching vintage wallpapers, fashion and the 1960s in general.

Therefore, the colour palette is inspired by that era and as well by old polaroids, from which the blurry and faded out colour effects in my designs are partly adopted. The 60s fashion designs brought me to the idea to make dresses that remind of baby dolls – feminine and playful, to carry that subtle erotic within the patterns, but consisting of simple fashion cuts (e.g. a-line gown) to highlight the lively prints.

In order to be aware of the current design market and trends, I looked at the 2010 collections of several designers, just to name a few: MiuMiu, where apart from birds and cats, bodyshapes are found in the motif palette. Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti, who uses lips and eyes for patterns on soft and sheer dresses. Zac Posen’s and Jonathan Saunders’ geometric prints on dresses and designers Issa, Lotta Stensson and Missoni, whose fashion is also retro inspired.

According to research, the aim was to mix geometry with human shapes and design patterns for dresses that carry a “summer-of-love” feeling. To achieve all that, the fabric choice led me to cotton and poly-cotton jersey as well as thin woven cotton (e.g. cotton popline), which are common materials for summer dresses because of their softness and airiness. Furthermore cotton is skin-friendly and comfortable, which was another reason to stick to cotton fabrics.

For printing the sample pieces, I used pigments in order to keep the hand drawn character of the rather graphic lining in my motifs, as well as Procion printing, which I chose as a counterpart to create the blurry effects in the background. Procion can be painted directly on an empty screen to get the watercolour character, but it took a long time to get the right shades of colour because they often look different when fixed on fabric, then on screen. Other problems evolved when printing pigments on ripped jersey, which is more elastic than plain jersey. According to that, it was sometimes hard to get a neat pigment print without the jersey tearing apart the lines, but I decided to take the effect into the designs as a reference to vintage used-look, instead of leaving it. Discharge printing was also helpful to get the thin lines onto darker fabric without losing the hand drawing effect. Additionally, I did some designs for digitalprinting to create more playful prints and applied some foil to accent parts and make the prints look 3dimensional. The lasercutter added an engraving effect to the samples, especially on PVC-leather, which I used for creating bags, that completed my collection.

Basically, I want my designs to fit into the current fashion market as well as they should be diverse enough to any existing trends. Further I would consider my collection to target a market of young women (20 – 30), who are interested in buying selected designer pieces as well as every day fashion.

Research Sources For Studio Practice:

Art, Artists & Exhibitions:

Egon Schiele,
Spencer Tunick,
Angelika Krinzinger,
Emma Hack,
Vanessa Beecroft

„The Walls are Talking“ [Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester]

Ron Mueck [Manchester Art Gallery]

Photography artists:

Rankin,
Helmut Newton,
Christian Weber,
Danielle Booth

Illustration artists: