A little bit of Issey

Issey Miyake's basic view for making clothes has always been the idea of creating a garment from 'one piece of cloth', and the exploration of the space between the human body and the cloth that covers it. He has always been a designer who I have admired and his ideas around making clothes are coherent with zero waste fashion. Particularly the designs pictured above represent styles that could be effectively weaved into my collection in a wearable/ready to wear way. 

Slowing Fashion - Gene Sherman and Issey Miyake

The photograph above is an image of Dr Gene Shermans notebook which records all the amazing pieces that she formally collects. For Gene the mantra, ‘buy less, buy better’ is evident in her 25 piece wardrobe which includes the pieces of mostly Japanese designers including Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo.

The work of these Japanese designers can be described as timeless, original in design and often unusual, which allows the pieces to easily transcend a six-month fashion season. Gene purchases garment during her two annual trip to Tokyo and when she gains a new piece she retires another which she documents carefully and donates/has donated to power house fashion museum. For Gene, this slower pattern of consumption enables her to create a deeper level of engagement with the clothes themselves and to build over time a personal ongoing narrative and set of associative values. I want my collection to correspond with this kind of value and ongoing history. 

Design Development on female form

Full outfit design development drawings on a women's form. I thought it would be better to get my ideas out of a shape that I am used to designing with however for all these garments I had the male form in mind and was thinking how they could wear the clothes in a different way. 

I like the cross over jackets (first and third). I think they would be very versatile in both mens and women's fashion as you could do the crossover tighter/leave it open (as a relaxed blazer) depending how you wanted it. This style would suit a wider segmentation of the market (from teenagers/ university students etc right through to busy parents for a more casual dress). I also like the second to last outfit however I think that the cropped jacket would not be wearable for a man. The last slouch pants in green, I believe would be very popular for a younger market as they are on trend and a comfortable basic. The trousers with the ties at the ankle are intended to be only worn by the woman as I believe the straight down leg (that would suit a man's figure) would not suit the woman's figure as well. I think this is partially guided by a trend toward tight fitting jeans etc so to have a straight leg seems abnormal. 

For the first outfit, I tried to take that cropped jacket and make it more masculine - I think I did the opposite as the flap down the back makes the whole outfit more feminine, (I am unsure, in two minds..). The color choices have deviated slightly from the Margareta collection for two main reasons - firstly I wanted the colors to be slightly more up beat at therefore more wearable and secondly I needed them to be unisex. I imagine more of a khaki green instead of this quite vibrant one. I will also consider adding slices of black into the outfits as this is unisex and very trans seasonal. 

Design Development Sketches

These are some quick sketches I did - just getting out some key ideas of layers and 'protective' wear.

Maison Martin Margiela

Maison Martin Margiela is a huge inspiration in all my work. I have rented several books from the library and constantly have them on return and literally lug them round with me just for the sake of having that inspiration with me. I love how the house addresses the ideas of ‘the body’ (whatever shape it may be) and somewhat protects it with distressed tailoring. The House’s philosophy is precisely informed by a procedure that refuses to be governed by the compulsive view that fashion should reinvent itself entirely every single season. Two aspects really interest me about the house’s work:

-     1.  The concept of time and its view on the human body. The concept of time is interpreted in various ways: as the duration that is expressed through the use of certain fabrics and the objects relating to the passage of time and the process of ageing; time in the view of the history of fashion and finally time as referring to the history of the garment itself which is made visible through the externalization of the production process = the sewing of darts on outside of garments/ revealing seams etc. How does this relate to my collection? I want to use Hemp fabrics,100% Linens and organic cotton etc that literally break down over time hence have a history – life. I want my collection to be able to be worn in multiple ways by both men and women therefore the clothes make their own history through how the wearer chooses to wear them and how they fit the individual body shape. Lastly, the process of zero waste pattern making could be effectively externalized in the garments with folds on the outside of seams etc – this works (to me) as by wearing zero waste you are literally presenting a change in attitude in our consumer driven society hence this should be exclaimed and presented to outsiders. I also like the idea that the garments – through the fabrics/production literally show the idea of ageing and decay which draws from my inspiration from the Margareta collection of the Grey Gardens documentary.

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      2.  Maison Martin Margiela changes, significantly, the standardized body as prescribed by fashion. (By this I do not mean going against stick thin models etc – rather diving into the idea of male and female shapes). Various collections exploited the idea of oversized clothing, wrapping the body like “gigantic artificial cocoons.” The spring summer collection (2000) featured garments in two different sizes: “A stereotype made up in white cotton to emphasize the basic characteristics of form and to introduce an aspect of abstraction, and an enlarged version of that stereotype made up in a selection of the most typical fabrics for a garment of this type. The enlargements included secondhand dresses, tops and slips whose form and original size have been transformed by hand rendering, a uniform size 74 for all garments.”

These ideas relate so closely to my thinking. The idea of the body in a cocoon and questioning ideas of size in the fashion world (not dress size but sizes of clothing in general and why this is different from a woman to a man. This brings me to the idea of silhouette that Maison Martin Margiela is so famous for challenging – again looked through via the concept of the body. The 1997 collection experimented with the double production process 

“Jackets are cut to a man’s proportions. Once finished, the internal structure is removed and a second feminine shoulder line is added through the use of shoulder pads over which the original man’s shoulder line hangs.”

 I am having a lot of trouble getting the shoulder line to fit both the men’s and women’s form in the jacket I have draped – this idea could solve my issues! To apply a type of accessory that a women could buy with there unisex garment that covers the original man’s shoulder line. Although the house has not talked about a unisex collection, these ideas that cross over from men’s forms to women’s forms are a substantial starting ground for reshaping the silhouettes of men’s and women’s fashion and in doing so re reading the fashion system that grounds this silhouette!

The photograph above shows a classic trench with the collar enlarged – this present the idea of being protected/hidden. It is made by incorporating two vintage coats (fabrics have a history). I like how the garments still have a deffinate structure and the deconstruction process has not hindered this, they still look new and modern. Also note the tabi boots in this image that are probably the most iconic accessory of the house. They are inspired by Japanese tabi.

Flat garments like the ones above and below also caught my eye as you need zero waste garments to be somewhat flat and geometric to be made into patterns. This image is from the 1998 collection that is a series of flat garments whose structure has been adapted so that when they are not worn, they fall totally flat. Assembling panels of industrial garment patterning create foldable pieces. The collection also includes garments that have full-length zippers along the sides, which allow them to be opened completely and laid flat.

The photograph above shows the displacement of the shoulder line towards the front and flattened through a special ‘crushing’ process. I like the aesthetic that this creates.

In conclusion, Maison Martin Margiela is a house, which I completely admire and am inspired to. I believe, concepts of time and the view on the human body could really cohesively work into my project. 

Shirt toile

These are some photographs/drawings of a unisex shirt I draped. I am applying Maison Martin Margiela's technique of covering the armhole line (of a men's shirt) with a shoulder pad (seen in the drawing). 

Is recycled polyester fabric RECYCLABLE?

I found this blog on recyclable fabrics and what it is doing to the environment. It seems that a lot of the time although recycling has good methods in mind, it ends up defeating the purpose and doing more bad than good in the long run.

A fabric made of “recycled material” has a certain percentage of polyester which comes from these chips that the recycling facility has manufactured.  Using these chips has several issues which are exclusive to the textile industry:

• The base color of the recycled polyester chips vary from white to creamy yellow, making color consistency difficult to achieve, particularly for the pale shades.  Some dyers find it hard to get a white, so they’re using chlorine-based bleaches to whiten the base.
• Inconsistency of dye uptake makes it difficult to get good batch-to-batch color consistency and this can lead to high levels of re-dyeing, another very high energy process.  Re-dyeing contributes to high levels of water, energy and chemical use.
• Unsubstantiated reports claim that some recycled yarns take almost 30% more dye to achieve the same depth of shade as equivalent virgin polyesters.[1]
• Another consideration is the introduction of PVC into the polymer from bottle labels and wrappers.
• Many yarns made from recycled polyester are used in forgiving constructions such as polar fleece, where the construction of the fabric hides slight yarn variations.  For fabrics such as satins, there are concerns over streaks and stripes.

Most of the plastics in use today can be recycled but, because mechanical recycling produces a less stable polymer, the products which can be made from this recycled plastic are of “less value” than the original.  The products made from the “chips” must be a bit forgiving, such as carpet, plastic lumber, roadside curbs, truck cargo liners, waste receptacles (you get the idea).  William McDonough calls this “downcycling”.  No matter how many smiling people you see throwing their bottles into a recycling container and “preventing the plastic from entering our waste stream” as the media likes to put it – the reality is that the recycling can only be done mechanically a few times before the polymers break down and the plastic is no longer useful or useable – every time plastic is melted down, its molecular composition changes, its quality degrades, and the range of its usefulness shrinks.   So after going from a virgin PET bottle, to carpet fibers, to plastic lumber, to a speed bump – that’s when it enters our waste stream.  So recycling plastic doesn’t prevent this occurrence – it just postpones it.  Read more about “the seduction of plastic” .

To add insult to injury, if you had bought the fabric mentioned above and hoped the fabric would be recyclable as claimed:  probably not gonna happen, because remember how the recycling facility had to separate bottles to make sure each resin was melted with similar types?  Think of the fabric as similar to bottles with different plastic resins:  many fabrics are woven of different types of plastic (60% polyester, 40% nylon for example), or there is a chemical backing of some sort on the fabric.  These different chemicals, with different molecular weights, renders the fabric non-recyclable.  Period.

And even if the fabric we’re talking about is 100% polyester with NO chemical backings or finishes, there is a problem with recycling in the system itself.  Although bottles, tins and newspapers are now routinely collected for recycling, furniture and carpets still usually end up in landfill or incinerators, even if they have been designed to be recycled because the fabric must be separated from other components if it’s part of an upholstered piece of furniture, for example.

Chemical recycling is the alternative technology and it does exist.  During chemical recycling, the materials are chemically dissolved into their precursor chemicals.  Polyester, for example, would be broken down into DMT (dimethyl terephthalate) and EG (ethylene glycol).  These chemicals are then purified and used to make new polyester fiber.  But the reality is that this is difficult and expensive to do.  Patagonia has made using recycled plastics a priority and gives a good overview of the process with interesting comments about the unique problems they’re encountering; read about it here.

Currently, fabrics identified as being “recyclable” really are not  - because the technology to recycle the fibers is either too expensive (chemical) or doesn’t exist (mechanical) and the infrastructure to collect the fabric is not in place.    Few manufacturers, such as Designtex (with their line of EL fabrics designed to be used without backings) and Victor Innovatex (who has pioneered EcoIntelligent™ polyester made without antimony),  have taken the time, effort and money needed to accelerate the adoption of sustainable practices in the industry so we can one day have synthetic fabrics that are not only recycled, but recyclable.

So when you buy a fabric made of recycled polyester, remember it’s at the end of its useful life as a plastic  – and you are contributing to our dependence on non renewable resources and to the overwhelming burden of non-degradeable plastic in our environment.

Jordan, C. (Ed.). (2011, november 11). Is recycled polyester fabric RECYCLABLE? Retrieved may 8, 2012, from O ecotextiles : http://oecotextiles.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/is-recycled-polyester-fabric-recyclable/

This article pretty much looks at how reusing plastic is just prolonging when it is going to be unusable. Does this defeat the purpose? I believe it is better to REDUCE before thinking about RECYCLING