Article by Leanna Daley
A white room full of inspiration boards, fabric pieces and pattern sheets. Fashion and textile students busily preparing their collection for the end of year undergraduate catwalk show. Designers dying materials, selecting fabrics and showcasing their inspirational final designs. I was excited to explore further.
Firstly I met with Parveen Daroch, a third year student, and followed her as she took me through her ‘sweet and toy’ inspired collection. “I’d say my pieces are quite quirky and mad.” My eyes drifted to the lime green hat reminding me of the mad hatter in Alice in Wonderland. As part of her collection, Parveen has decided to design three dresses and three hats. She picked up the lime green sample hat. “My hats are inspired by liquorice sweets and sweet wrappers”. I saw it too, with the elongated top hat style and wave manipulated fabric on the brim. She brought out 2 more hats, one a hot pink colour and the other a lemon yellow. Each hat design was unique in its’ own way and I was furthermore intrigued to see her dress collection.
I asked to see the designs for her dresses and she bought out the prints for the dresses that have been specially printed for her by a company. An illustration enthusiast, Parveen observed well known/popular sweets and toys and implemented them into her creations. The first print was inspired by space hopper toys. I noticed the vibrancy of her prints which made me want to look closer at the designs. The second print was a mixture of sweets and toys, “there’s a Lego piece in the corner” accompanied by gummy bears. The last print is of a Pacman game sequence, which I found clever as I didn’t notice it at first. Asking her if there are any popular artists that inspired her, Parveen goes on to say “I like artists such as Rob Ryan and David Shrigley, they really helped me.” No matter what other artists inspired her, her designs are truly original and fun. The last question was ‘What process of production do you enjoy the most?’ She thought for a while...”I’d have to say making the hats, experimenting with the fabrics.”
Introduced to Leigh Thomas another third year fashion student, we delved into the inspiration behind her collection next. “My collection is military themed”. She opened up her sketch book brimming with military styled pieces such as gold and silver military buttons, black and white lace fabric patches and colours such as poppy red and war green. “For my collection I’m creating three dresses and three brooches”. Flicking through her book she found her dress designs. “At first I wasn’t sure whether to create flowy or structured pieces?” Two of Leigh’s dress designs included shoulder pads (very eighties). This is where the feminine joined with structure, as the shoulder pads made the collection stand out and enter the fashion forward realm. Even though the concept was military, Leigh’s designs certainly had a feminine edge to them, making them even more endearing with their jersey like material.
The brooches that are set to each outfit were a design in their own right. My eye immediately focused on one brooch. Metal was the theme of this creation. It started with a kilt pin attached to a clasp by fine gold chains, it lead to two embossed metal pieces which were “sand blasted to look vintage”. Each detail was carefully planned and gave it a rustic, old timely feel.
The final designer of the day was Sophia Lear with her elaborate 6 piece circus themed collection. Asked to describe her collection, Sophia replied “Glamorous, unique and vintage circus meets sequins”. Attention grabbed, Sophia produces a book called The Circus by Sophia Lear, ribbon bound. Get ready for a show I was thinking and it really was an exhibition of her circus inspired designs. “A lot of my inspiration came from animal performers, ring masters and circus freaks you find within the vintages circuses”. There were even a couple of pages dedicated to circus folk .
The structure of the dresses themselves was slim fitting “the collection itself is quite tight fitting as it’s a means of practicality”. Keeping with the exciting theme she showed me the colour pallets for the garments with pops of purple, cornflower blue and yellow. Keeping with its bold edge, draping was introduced along with copper sequins, lace and silk, think Ring Master.
When it came to artistic inspiration, Sophia recreated that of Richard Gray, an artist that worked with wooden figurines. Sophia implemented this by fusing together circus posses to help produce illustration ideas for her collection. Performers such as; The Lion Tamer and The Ring Master were the focal point of her designs. Asking her what part of the process of production she enjoyed the most, she replied “ Pattern cutting and seeing your designs come to life.” and I was excited to see these collections come to life too.
Innovative, unique and home grown talent. These three designers are just part of a course of students who will be unveiling their individual collections in June. If the sweet and toy, military and circus collections are anything to go by, then there is a variety of collections to feast your eyes upon.
I walked away feeling inspired.