Instructions
No matter what I do I cannot step away from garments as vehicles for stories and messages. Even when I joined the workshop ‘Paper fragment: disclosing hidden processes’, facilitated by two classmates, what poured out of me was a soliloquy narrated by the pattern of the garment I was trying to make.
It’s difficult for me to determine whether it was a subliminally driven based on my current research or whether this inclination was what instinctually poured out of me based on the instructions I received. I am interested in detangling the superficial but fiercely symbolic value construction inherent in the fashion industry and trying to look beyond the garment at its tangible materiality. But I am starting to suspect that there might be more entangled in the fashion system and the garment beyond what is physically perceptible.
We already tell stories with our clothes, based on how we curate our outfit, but there are deeper stories waiting to be revealed. If we talk about intuition, shouldn’t we also consider knowledge and insight from the sensorial realm and not only that gained from conscious reasoning? To reverse the damage from the industrial process, we might need to look beyond three dimensionality, two dimensionality and even beyond our own cosmology. Hell, if all the technocrats are racing to join the metaverse, a completely intangible universe, I propose that there might be a materialverse. A realm where the inanimate matter we so readily abuse is conscious and has agency.
My participation in this workshop is a whimsical tribute to what the garment might be thinking or experiencing.
Intuitively creating the garment
I choose to work with an object I was wearing that day.
Process
I am a pattern and I have something to say!
- Take the clothing off (your body) – In my case a vest.
- Get a flat peice of paper.
- Lay the garment on the piece of paper that is spread out on the floor.
- Flatten the garment so as many pieces as possible of the garment are actually in contact with the paper.
- It’s OK if there are folds. It’s natural.
- Take annoying jewelry, that prohibits you from writing properly, off and lay it on the floor away from where you are tracing.
- Gegin tracing. Start anywhere you like.
- Trace lightly at first.
- Make traced lines more clear.
- Indicate arm holes.
- Look at the shape critically. Can you see the original garment? (Vest)
YES/NO - Do you think you can make a vest with this pattern?
YES/NO - What can you see or what can you make?
- Write the story of your garment around the edges.
- Incorporate your story into your design.
Thoughts
What am I? Am I even a pattern anymore? Am I useful? Am I just a weird flat shape or an object? Do I have a purpose? Am I a bat? I kind of look like a bat, don’t I? What’s the point of having a pattern for a bat? Shall we try be a garment? Fine! OK! Whatever! Let’s be a garment then. How do we achive that? We need to change a bit. Where do we start? Let’s change to be functional. Let’s repsond to the body. Lame! Let’s be cool. Let’s repsond to what people want! What do people want? How should I know I am a garment. I just don’t want to be disposed of too soon. Agreed. True that. Let’s be valuable!
Final Result
My pattern is alive!
