Although I had many favourite outfits from the Fairy Tale Fashion exhibition, I managed to pick out my best two. The first dress was named Magical and Mischievous Spirit made by Giles Deacon for his fall 2012 Collection. I love the look of the distressed fabric, he has made all his pieces in the collection distressed. They either have scratches, rips or pulls and I love this look on garments because they look beautiful but are created roughly. The high neck look is one of my favourites on dresses, I think it adds elegance and grace. Also, I it's clever how Giles has added netting under the sheer fabric, the soft colours with the dark stains work really well together.
Here are some other outfits that were featured in the fall 2012 collection. You can see the repetitive pattern of distress. I think this works really well with the Fairy Tale exhibition because it conveys both beauty and hard work e.g. Cinderella. I can imagine this dress being worn by Cinderella because she is a beautiful character but she also does all the housework.
Photo Credit - Google Images
This was my second dress, the Grey Smock. This is by Yoshiki Hishinuma and was made for the fall 2000 Collection. The techniques used on this dress are very similar to the dress above. In the photo it looks like leather, but actually, it is a sheer fabric coated with white film which has been torn to create a fringe pattern. Then, heat was applied which crimped the fabric and created an uneven texture. I thought the whole process was very clever because the look of the fabric is deceiving.
This was my second dress, the Grey Smock. This is by Yoshiki Hishinuma and was made for the fall 2000 Collection. The techniques used on this dress are very similar to the dress above. In the photo it looks like leather, but actually, it is a sheer fabric coated with white film which has been torn to create a fringe pattern. Then, heat was applied which crimped the fabric and created an uneven texture. I thought the whole process was very clever because the look of the fabric is deceiving.
Before Christmas, our course leaders gave us a Summative Brief. For this brief we had to pick an element of fashion that we had previously looked at (I chose snakeskin) and we had been asked to do lots of research so we could create a report and sketchbook. Whilst in New York, I was looking out for any resemblance to snakeskin, whether in shop windows or for store interiors. However, because it has just been christmas, a lot of the shops still had festive themes and no snakeskin. When at the FIT museum, I saw three dresses that were based around snakeskin. I was really happy to find the middle dress (Alexander McQueen) because I had already planned to use this outfit as part of my report.
"Snakes are feared for their sly, venomous nature, but they also possess positive associations of strength"
(Quotation from the Exhibition at FIT)
I think this quote describes the above outfits perfectly. Snakeskin has connotations of life and death, evil and good, seduction and also nature. It can be used to make products look elegant and luxurious, sexy and explicit or engineered and tacky. I didn't realise how many creative contexts actually use snakeskin, either as a motif pattern or a literal snake. Architecture, interiors, products, styling, phone cases, beauty... the list goes on! I have really enjoyed researching snakeskin and will be posting my findings once I am 100% happy with my final outcome and have submitted my work.
Photo Credit - Chloe Ferdinand (unless stated otherwise)
