Final line up

I have chosen five staple items of clothing to base my fashion illustration collection on. I wanted to mix tightly fitted clothing with baggy, bulky items. I aimed to make the collection to look credible as part of the James long brand, so I limited my fabrics down because his existing collections are matching and of a limited palette. 
I chose the knitted sample that is gridded based on track lengths of The Sex Pistols album 'Never Mind the Bollocks', creating a musical reference in the collection, because the punk movement was heavily expressed through music. 



I also wanted a reference to the group work in the line up. I have chosen the baseball stitch themed knitwear to be incorporated into the collection because it refers back to the initial research about the Baseball masks that John Cale used to wear. This was done because it was a relation to the punk movement and the controversy that it caused on stage when John Cale wore that mask.





I am pleased with the line up as I feel that I have achieved a collection that has incorporated the genre of punk without being to generic. I feel the collection is credible to the James Long brand however I feel that the Collection as a whole is a little more vibrant that they would usually be. The collection embraces the combination of tight silhouettes with looser baggier shapes that I needed in the collection to so that the theme of baseball and stereotypical punk wear was referenced.

James long presentation.

I am pleased with the way that my group and I have presented our work to Tom from James long. The groups samples were placed in album sleeves to divide the work into print, stitch work and knit samples. Tom was pleased with the presentation of the work because it was intriguingly packaged and well organised.

 
The group work still needs a lot of refining so that it merges together as clear collaborative group work instead of looking like five individual projects. This could be achieved by us manipulating each other's work. I do feel that the way we have worked has given the collection many dimensions and crossed over many creative platforms which is important to the concept of punk because punk is about individuality. 
To strengthen my knitwear samples, I need to use more luxurious yarns and build upon the reversible qualities that Tom liked in my knitting patterns. 

Bondage

In the fashion drawing work shop it became evident that our group research was fragmented between punk, hip hop and John Kale. This made it difficult to work independently to sketch initial fashion drawings down because our source of visual information was weak. I found that collage isn't an easy way for me to get design ideas down at this stage. To improve that I feel I need to collect images of male poses from advertisements in magazines. I feel that this could help with the Mes en scene of the design collection. 
I researched more into the clients style of James Long because the designs have to be credible to his brand. I focused on the knitwear designs and noticed they are fitted tightly to the torso.

James Long's knitwear

 The patterns usually look patchworked together, which is another feature I would like to incorporate into the designs. I decided to look into the male bondage side of punk that I could pull away shape inspiration and silhouettes that could be relevant to James longs patchwork style without being to crudely obvious to the bondage design. 

Fashion Drawing

Today I did my first fashion drawing sessions. I was interested to know the importance of a muse to create the designs. A muse reflects and represents what your collection is about. As a group we are working from imagery of John kale when he was younger. We needed to capture the Raw ruggedness of John Kale's face and neck so that I could reflect a manly edginess connotation to the designs. I found that drawing his mug shot as a group was helpful because our drawing interpretations of his face were contrasting. I felt that we loosened up our drawing style and complimented elements of each interpretation and created more variations based on one another's work. 
I would be interested in working together as a group on the design work so that we can use each other's strengths to create more interesting designs. I know that I have a graphic drawing style which I think would work well in combination to Marie's looser more washy drawing style. Because it would add depth and contrast to the designs.