Evaluation

After the group watched the four wearing it videos we chose to look at community couture. The reason behind this decision was that this video was the one that all group members were most interested in. We therefore felt that it was most likely to sustain our interest and be the source of inspiration as the project progressed. We wanted to look at how fashion could look in the future.
Our initial idea centred on how in the future, people may not be able to afford clothes and how the economic downfall could create a trendless world. In this scenario, people may be forced to make new clothes out of old. Alongside the group project each member had an individual research project; mine being the make do and mend era of the Second World War. On reflection I consider that this was a good choice, because there were strands from both projects that I could link together.
For the community couture project we decided that we wanted to engage with the community. So we asked the people of Manchester to donate clothes. To promote this idea, we each made a poster and then placed clothes bins around the university campus. We were really surprised at how well the idea was received, as when we went to collect them, the clothes bins were all full. To look at the range of clothes that we had collected in greater detail, we needed a large space to work. This is when we went to Hotspur House and set up washing lines so that we could peg out the clothes; comparing and contrasting the items. We then each chose several items to start sampling with.
With the clothes that I selected for sampling I thought about how I could incorporate the two themes together of community couture and make do and mend. I therefore used odds and ends from around the house to combine the two. During the sampling period group member swopped with one another and worked on somebody else’s piece. This was really interesting as it enabled us to learn from each other and we got to know more about different techniques. It was also fascinating to see how the work from two people who had different perspectives linked together to make one complete piece.
My experimentation with samples led me to make decisions about my final piece. This was a recycled bin liner with a donated skirt on top. I made the skirt and top into a dress and embellished the bin liner into the dress using the embellishing machine. I really liked the results as it gave a leather look effect. I then created a ruffle around the sweetheart neckline and the bottom to give the dress more of a couture look. This was the dress that I displayed in the final exhibition with the rest of the groups final pieces at Hotspur House. We decided to do the exhibition in order to film it as part of our end footage that is to be shown at MOSI. The night went really well and it was good to see that although we all had very different ideas collectively we created something that came together as one whole piece. We all invited friends and other people from the course; the feedback was great.
The final part of the project was a video of our journey. We found it hard to choose what to include as we were limited to 5 mins. As a group we put together a story board selecting the key elements. We looked at photographs, samples and video footage that we had gathered throughout the project.
Reflecting on this project has been a good personal learning experience. I have learned that I like to work as part of a group and that the collaboration is inspiring and working with others and bouncing ideas around can lead to some really creative end pieces. Having other people to work with has enabled my motivation to be maintained and I have put more effort into this project than earlier work and this is
perhaps because I have had a commitment to the group and haven’t want to let other group members down. It also really helped that I had a genuine interest in the subject matter and I was able to link the individual and group pieces together.